Presidential Politics, College Edition

Published February 8, 2010 Higher Education , Reflections 3 Comments
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I’m reading Game Change, which is every bit as juicy as I’d hoped it would be. I recommend it highly.

As I read about primary fights and smoke-filled rooms, though, my thoughts are carried back into the past, and try as I might to resist this tide, I can’t. So I will share with you reflections on how presidents of another venerable American institution, our liberal arts colleges, are selected. The money involved and the stakes at risk are teeny-tiny compared to our national elections, but the hubris and the ego of the players every bit as supersized.

Much soul-searching takes place campus-wide when a president announces she’s leaving. Such an announcement comes for a variety of reasons; it could be because the president has gained a new perch on a higher branch of the tree of learning, or because he’s ready at last to start living large on his pension, swollen as it is by deferred compensation, or because the faculty is coming after him with flaming torches and weaponized copies of the college’s governance documents. No matter. The trustees will gravely instruct the faculty to think deeply about the qualities most important for the institution’s next leader, and will themselves endeavor to answer the same question. Not, you understand, that they actually will do the q-and-a themselves. No, for that and other time-consuming tasks they will hire an executive search firm, just like Fortune 500’s do.

The real fun begins when the board, which—contrary to faculty conceit—is the hiring authority for bodies presidential, inevitably must choose between the lady or the tiger: academic vision or fiscal know-how. There is not a board of trustees of a liberal arts college, even the ones with bloated $1 billion-plus endowments, that does not agonize over this awful decision.

The board at a small Ursuline women’s college, the College of New Rochelle, recently had to decide. In justifying the board’s choice, the chairman said,

“Although financial needs and educational needs are both part of the picture, in the College of New Rochelle’s case, financial needs are absolutely paramount at this time,” said Michael N. Ambler, a former lawyer at Texaco and a member of the college’s board since 1993. “We felt that the crying need for the college over the long haul was financial in order to keep it alive, and without that, we were nowhere.”

To pull the CNR back from the brink of nowhere, the board in its wisdom dispensed with a search and named the vice president of finance, eight-year employee Judith Huntington, president. Ms. Huntington is a former audit manager at KPMG and holds a baccalaureate degree.

The chairman elaborates on the board’s choice:

With “virtually no endowment” (about $20 million, for an enrollment of 6,000 students), “the financial requirements of CNR are very difficult to meet,” Ambler says. “We have balanced our books, based on regular revenue and rather small gifts from alumnae, and Judy has been responsible for a great deal of our ability to do that.”

Huntington, he says, has nearly a year to more fully “familiarize herself with the educational side, to the extent she didn’t already have it.” Hiring a president with stronger academic credentials and lesser financial bona fides could have put the college’s future at risk, he suggests. “If we had an educator as president, I’m not sure the college would survive.”

There are two sets of Monday morning quarterbacks that sit in judgment of a board’s actions: the faculty and the alumnae. Both groups at the College of New Rochelle began full tilt analyzing the decision, writing letters and issuing statements. Did these manifestos take the board to task for its failure to consider the academic mission of the institution? Did either group question if the board investigated whether the education offered by CNR might be the reason for its shaky finances? No, of course not. In fact, education seems to have been the last thing on the quarterbacks’ minds. They were upset—stop me if you have heard this one before—over process. Seems the trustees conducted their “search” under cover of darkness, so sure enough

a group of alums wrote an impassioned letter (which was soon followed by others) urging the board to “recognize that more than anything else, at this critical time, the College needs a rigorous, open, inclusive and transparent process to identify the best person to lead CNR.”

The head of the Council of Faculty had these fighting words to offer: “I understand the concerns of others and respect and share the concern for the procedures that were followed in this case, we’re all best served at this juncture to be behind [the board’s decision].”

I wish President-elect Huntington all the best. She seems like a nice lady with a big job ahead of her. But I weep for my former professional home, of which CNR is but a leading indicator of the demise of liberal arts colleges should they continue down the path it has blazed. The choice between academic vision and fiscal know-how is no choice at all, because if you don’t have the former you don’t need the latter. A sustainable budget that sustains a poor curriculum is sustainable in name only. The financials might be balanced, but after the students have gone and the faculty are left scratching their heads trying to figure out what happened, the accountant can shut off the lights on his way out.

The College of New Rochelle isn’t the first institution to make this potentially fatal mistake; it’s just taken it to the next level. For years many colleges have instructed their search firms to find them a president who can raise money. The search firms do their best to comply, but with this “or else” dictum guiding their actions they must range further and further afield from the traditional academic leader, a man or woman of scholarly accomplishment, comfortable in the classroom and capable of making informed decisions about the business of education—teaching, learning, and research. Instead, they offer up pseudo-executive types, who may or, more likely, may not have had up-through-the-ranks academic careers, but who know their way around a spreadsheet and a cocktail party of high rollers.

Sadly, the colleges who look for this kind of savior in a pinstripe suit often get exactly what they want. The new president arrives. The beans are counted. The procedures are put in place. The outside experts are brought in. Never mind that the faculty is in turmoil, so distracted are they by the thought that something new or, horror of horrors, something additional might be asked of them, that they fail to realize the Sturm-und-Drang of the new regime has sapped them of any capacity to invigorate what very possibly is an anemic academic program much in need of a transfusion of new ideas, new commitment, and new passion. The place grinds to a halt, but, by golly, it can account for every bean!

I am a great fan of capitalism. Maybe I even think that greed is good. But as a capitalist I look at liberal arts colleges who hire accountants as their presidents and I scratch my head. Isn’t the first principle of capitalism to make your product so good it’s the one everybody wants to buy? Are penny-perfect spreadsheets and word-perfect governance documents an acceptable substitute for an education that will enable students to stretch their minds, test their principles, and expand their aesthetic capacity?

I don’t think so.

NOTE to readers: All quotations are from “Finances First,” by Doug Lederman in the Febuary 8, 2010 edition of Inside Higher Education.

The Joke’s on Us

Published February 6, 2010 Politics , Rants , Single Women Leave a Comment
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So Representative Patrick Kennedy (D-Rhode Island) calls Scott Brown’s successful candidacy for the US Senate a “joke.” The representative’s addled reasoning has something to do with “seven out of ten of Brown’s voters [being] labor households” and Brown’s swearing-in date. If, in fact, seventy percent of Massachusetts’ union members helped elect Brown, the Democratic party is in deep, deep trouble. But what exactly is the joke here? According to Howie Carr, it’s Representative “Patches” himself. I agree that Patches is good for a few laughs: he gave a rousing stump speech for Brown’s opponent “Marsha” Coakley, after all. And he has the darkly humorous habit of DWA, driving while asleep. But I am not a fan of Carr, so I am uncertain that young Kennedy is the punch line here, however easy and irresistible that conclusion might be.

I think what caught up with the representative is simply the time of year. It put him in a jocular mood (or would have, if he knew the meaning of the word). February, when winter gets down to business, is the worst month of the year, a joke of a month really. Think about it. February begins with a needle-nosed rodent opining on climate change. It ends a few days short of an authentic month. And in between are the Oscar nominations, the Super Bowl, and Valentine’s Day. All risible, in my opinion.

First up, the Academy Award nominations. Since the last time I saw a movie in a theatre was during the last millennium, one might suppose I am not qualified to have an opinion, but come on…ten nominations for “best picture”? Now that is a joke. Is the American viewing public so blessed that a double-digit number of pictures are so terrific that they can vie for the title “best”? Given that one of the nominated films, Up, is a cartoon, and another, Avatar, seems like it should be considered a cartoon since I understand there are oversized Smurfs running around in it, the number ten does seem a bit inflated. I don’t believe George Clooney is capable of making a good movie, let alone a “best” so, so I’d knock Up in the Air out of contention, too. The rest of the nominees seem awfully predictable to me, and for the wrong reasons.

What can a single woman say about Valentine’s Day: Wait until next year? Chocolate is bad for my complexion? Fredericks of Hollywood messed up my order? Best to go into twenty-four hour seclusion, to forestall putting herself in the harm’s way of being the butt of “good-natured” joshing about her spinsterhood, or, worse yet, being forced to listen to others’ romantic escapades. Her attitude is best expressed by a memorable remark from a long-ago colleague of mine: “Valentine’s Day. What a joke.”

But then there is the light at the end of the tunnel, the Super Bowl. I have never understood football, and have no interest in educating myself. But I look forward to “game day,” as the NFL stupidly insists it be called by every entity that’s not an “official sponsor,” as much as any rabid fan. On Super Bowl day, the stores are deserted, parking anywhere is not a problem, and one is free to roam this great land of ours without fear of traffic, crowds, or lines at the supermarket. Try visiting a Home Depot or some other manly refuge tomorrow afternoon (or whenever it is the game is on); you’ll feel like you are in an episode of the Twilight Zone…the usually bustling aisles eerily silent, the overpowering aroma that inevitably hangs in the air when a critical mass of guys with ass cleavage congregate strangely absent, and wives who’d ordinarily hang on to hubby’s side for dear life are listing oddly to left, as if leaning on their phantom meal ticket. But the best thing of all about Super Bowl day is that all that’s left to endure when it’s over is the winning team’s victory parade, then it’s bye-bye bruisers till next fall.

So, Patches, I forgive you. I don’t think you meant what you said. I think you were simply a victim of February.

John Edwards starring as Norman Desmond

Published January 31, 2010 Politics , Single Women , Stray Thoughts 3 Comments
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It would be rude of me to ask if you have ever seen a sex tape, and ruder still I suppose to inquire as to your possible starring role in one. As I spinster I can assure you that my theatrical inclinations are limited to pretending I am interested in the lives of my friends’ children, but if attending a screening of Debbie Does Dallas counts as watching a sex tape, then I guess I have. I understand that what one or more consenting adults do in the privacy of his/her/their bedroom is his/her/their business, and if the inclination is to memorialize the activity electronically, whether for future reference or as means of sending Uncle Jonas into cardiac arrest for early collection on an inheritance, so be it. But let’s be honest, you and I are but faces in the crowd, and it’s highly unlikely that no one save a few intimates is going to be much interested in our celluloid escapades.

But not everybody who opens up for the camera is a private citizen, and the public’s need to know about the lives of the rich and famous pretty much demands that Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee use the subtle angle of a ceiling-mounted video cam to give us the skinny on those parts of their bodies that are not tattooed and those unconventional parts that are. Sometimes, of course, a fledging actress such as Paris Hilton, she of the life-like appearance in such gems as House of Wax and the Hottie and the Nottie, needs to give her career a goose. A release of an independently produced cinema verite in which the depths of her capacities are plumbed could be just the thang.

Between the worlds of the hoi polloi and the Hollywood bottom feeders, though, is the middle ground of people who are in the news because they are newsmakers or because their fifteen minutes are ticking. In the latter instance I think of Carrie Prejean, who’s so 2009 that I probably need to remind you who she used to be: the Miss California contestant who briefly became the poster girl for what she called “opposite marriage.” Her career as a spokes model came to a premature end, though, when the poster turned out to be of the centerfold variety, and an iPhone app of her making her own fun became available. Presumably Miss Prejean is back in her aptly named hometown of El Cajon, where one supposes she is even unto this day licking her…wounds.

But the blockbuster sex tape has got to be the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction one of the ambulance-chasing shyster turned one-term senator turned serially unsuccessful presidential candidate John Edwards and his extramarital cupcake Rielle Hunter. As cupcakes go, Miss Hunter is in a class by herself, and I mean than as a compliment. She’s stayed out the public eye, and she doesn’t appear to have a book deal in the offing. Edwards himself though is a different kettle of fish. I’d always suspected that his perfect coif was a substitute codpiece, and now that we’re pretty sure his extra-conjugal congress has been recorded for posterity—if the National Enquirer says so, it must be true—I am feeling rather smug that my suspicions have been confirmed.

You know, I can almost understand why a Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton, or even a Carrie Prejean would engage in a little boudoir porn. It kinda fits their bleachy blond beach bod personae, and in the sorry world of popular culture it probably is a good career move. But for an over-the-hill adulterer who aspires to public office to yell “Action!” before jumping into the sack? He may have proven that he doesn’t shoot blanks, but he surely shot himself in the foot.

Before I began writing this post I asked myself, “what is left to say about John Edwards?” Six hundred and forty-seven words later I have my answer: nothing.

The State of the Union Address

Published January 27, 2010 Politics 1 Comment
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The first thing I noticed about the State of the Union Address was that VP Biden and Speaker Pelosi coordinated their outfits—he resplendent a purple and lavender striped tie, she in a shapely lavender suit. presumably their choice of color, a blend of blue and red, was a sartorial homage to bipartisanship. The President wore the hackneyed albeit obligatory power-red tie, a defiant display of his famous postpartisanship, I suppose. The next thing I noticed was that the Speaker must be getting a bit forgetful: she sported the same false eyelashes that had her blinking the Morse code behind President Bush at last year’s State of the Union Address. There she was, once again sending cryptic ocular messages via her flashing corneas.

It was only after that that I noticed what the President was saying…bailout…root canal…recovery…jobs bill. Yawn. Thirty billion for small business loans…small business tax credit for raises and new hires…eliminate capital gains for small business. Those ideas perked me up. But those earning over $250 K will not have tax cuts. When, later in the address the president said this, my perkiness deflated: increasing taxes on small business owners grossing over a quarter of a million will offset and more whatever incentives he offered them at the outset of his speech.

Back to the soporific: building “the infrastructure of tomorrow” and “clean energy projects”… “awful last decade of speculation”…American innovation. Nuclear power and off-shore drilling. Huh? That sounds good. But apparently those good ideas will be held hostage to the Senate’s passing cap-and-trade legislation. Fund education; reform health care; control the deficit, which was caused by the profligacy of “the last eight years.” Bad, bad “last eight years.” But, the president lectured, we must be “bi-partisan” because “what frustrates Americans is that every day is election day”: one wonders if the President includes himself in that admonishment to both parties.

It was not until one hour into his address that the President mentioned “protecting America” (as opposed to “defending America,” interesting choice of terms). To his credit, he used the words “terrorist” and “Al Qaeda,” although he spoiled the effect somewhat by adding that “we captured or killed more terrorists this past year than all of 2008.” Does the President not understand that snide cracks such as this give the lie to his claims of wanting to dampen the flames of rancorous partisanship? Does he understand that when he completed the approximately three minutes he devoted to the “protection” of America and shifted to other foreign policy issues such as continuing to fight the spread of AIDS, he missed a wonderful opportunity to tip his hat to the “last eight years” by acknowledging the tremendous funding the Republican administration directed toward the scourge of AIDS in Africa?

The President’s first State of the Union Address was marginally better than I thought it would be. President Obama kept his condescending tone to a minimum, though it did break through now and again. And he did say some things that, upon first hearing, I did not disagree with. But in the end, I still had an answer to the “one simple question” he posed at the beginning of the speech. “How long,” the President asked, “should America put its future on hold?” It is a simple question, so simple even I can answer it: until January, 2013.

One Year Later He’s President Misunderstood

Published January 23, 2010 Higher Education , Politics 1 Comment
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In the fall of 2008 Robin D. G. Kelley, professor of American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California, delivered a lecture entitled “Confronting Obama: A Primer on Race and Empire for the New U.S. President.” Professor Kelley’s audience was large and sympathetic: undergraduates, fellow professors, and retired academics in the main. I was there too.

Kelley began his talk bowing and scraping to memory the deceased rabble-rousing intellectual gadfly for whom the overall lecture series was named, a genuflection required of all speakers in the series. His audience endured the ritual politely, but was clearly impatient to get to the good stuff. Their impatience was rewarded.

For over an hour Kelley held forth, his congregation raptly attentive. His every mention of Obama’s name was responded to by huzzahs. His caution not to take for granted the election of candidate Obama was followed up by the chant so dear to the professoriate and its acolytes: “Racism! Classism! Sexism!”

Toward the end of the sermon, as I was enjoying the usual somnolent effect the lefty doxology has on me, I was jolted into full attentiveness by Kelley’s startling conclusion that candidate Obama would say what he needed to say in order to secure election, but that we, the savvy intelligentsia, could easily interpret the campaign code of centrist rhetoric and parse the radical mysteries beneath it. I was stunned. And believe me, having spent as many years as I have in the belly of the academic beast, there is little in the way of leftist glossolalia that can shock me. Kelley’s speech did, and my hat’s off to the man.

What I found so hard to believe was not only the open admission from a supporter that Obama was working hard to deceive voters into thinking that he was something he was not, but that a room full of purportedly intelligent, ethical people were cheering on the deception. What I did not find so hard to believe was the communion of speaker and listeners, united in their smug assessment of their superior intellect and their contempt for the American voter. That much was business as usual. Kelley’s extraordinary if unflattering honesty about Obama was not.

So here we are a little more than a year later, one-quarter of the way through what has all the makings of a failed presidency. Unemployment is sky-high; economists are nervous about a double-dip recession; our staunchest ally has just raised its terror alert; and our president has done little more than lecture citizens on their shortcomings. Like a common scold, Obama has lectured us on everything from where to set our thermostats to our inability to evaluate evidence before jumping to conclusions to our choices for the evening news.

The president, of course, doesn’t see things in quite the same way. Like Kelley, he believes that Americans are a little slow on the uptake and need his guidance. Consider his conversation this week with George Stephanopoulis. Says the president, using the pronoun royal, “we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values. And that I do think is a mistake of mine. I think the assumption was, if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on the, you know this provision, or that law, or are we making a good, rational decision here [Stephanopoulis’s interruption omitted] that people will get it.” In other words, the American people are even dumber than he thought during his campaign: they don’t “get it.” Time to trot out the “core values” rhetoric that Kelley so shrewdly identified as bait-and-switch.

Of course the president goes on to explain to Stephanopoulis why we don’t “get it.” Our judgment has been clouded by the white-hot rage we continue to feel about George Bush. We lack the rationality to appreciate Obama’s tinkering with “this provision” or “that law” because we “are angry, and…frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”

A positive take-away at last. Bush and Obama are indistinguishable. This must mean we are finally judging our presidents by the content of their character and not by the color of their politics.

Did She Leave the Campaign in a Huff?

Published January 21, 2010 Politics 3 Comments
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One overlooked aspect of Scott Brown’s campaign strategy is the absence of his wife—Gail Huff, a general assignment reporter for Boston’s WCVB-TV, an ABC affiliate—on the campaign trail. While the primary motivation may have been avoiding potential conflicts of interest arising from her job, the fact that Brown did not use the little woman as a campaign prop is refreshing and I hope trend-setting. Voters after all elect the candidate, not the spouse. Elections are not two-for-one specials.

Wives play a weirdly distorted role in their husband’s political careers. More so, I think, than the husbands of female candidates, the obvious exception duly noted. Voters, we are led to believe, obsess about the political wife’s wardrobe, how she wears her hair, her favorite recipes, her intelligence vis-a-vis the candidate’s. The foregoing might be interesting, but important? Relevant? I don’t think so. I suppose for a candidate with little or no platform, or whose grasp of the issues is flaccid, the distraction of a burning home fire might be a welcome one, but for the most part I think the attention paid to a candidate’s wife is diversionary as well as a vestige of pre-feminist, sexist reportage. The truth is voters don’t care—as evidenced by Brown’s decisive win despite his wife’s disappearing act—about the height of the heels a candidate’s wife wears, or the color of her latest nail varnish, even though we are routinely treated to these breaking developments as if they were substantive to the election.

On the other hand, the trouble a candidate’s wife’s words can conjure for her husband is the stuff a reporter’s dreams are made of, even though these gaffes reveal nothing about the candidate’s ability to govern or legislate. A few samples to refresh your memory:

Nancy “I Have a Little Gun” Reagan
Barbara “It Rhymes with Witch” Bush
Teresa “Now Shove It” Kerry
Michelle “[America is] Just Downright Mean” Obama

Indeed, sometimes Candidate A’s wife is an asset to Candidate B’s campaign. Did anybody, besides Teresa, think, for example, that Ms. Heinz-Kerry’s pronoucements were helping her husband’s dismal campaign? Even though some of her statements, I confess, were unforgettable, as when she confided to People magazine in an election-year interview that the husband prior to Senator Kerry was “the love of my life.”

Brown’s run ought to have political strategists re-evaluating the merits of a wife’s role in a husband’s campaign. The voters of Massachusetts were not afforded the opportunity to be distracted by Gail Huff’s wardrobe; the voters of Massachusetts did not have their attention on the candidate derailed by ambush stories on a slip of the tongue Huff might (or might not) have made. I say “Bravo/Brava” to Brown/Huff, for bringing campaigning into the 21st Century by respecting Huff’s right to be her own person and by respecting the voter’s right to focus on the person actually running for office.

Surf’s Up!

Published January 19, 2010 Politics 5 Comments
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AP is reporting that Scott Brown (R) has defeated Martha Coakley (D) in the special election to fill the US Senate seat left vacant by the death of Senator Edward Kennedy. Brown’s unofficial margin of victory–52% to 47%–is more than respectable, and while Coakley had a predictably strong showing in Boston, Cambridge and their upscale neighbors to the west and south, Brown had a broader appeal, winning easily in communities as disparate as tony Andover and working-class Chicopee.

As a citizen of the Commonwealth whose vote in the last presidential election was washed away by the tsunami of change that Obama rode into office, I am delighted that the ornery, contrarian nature of the Massachusetts electorate has sent a wave of another kind, a shock wave, through the corridors of power. Yes, for the last few weeks it’s been clear the tide was turning in Brown’s favor, but to see a Republican elected to something other than the office of governor is as refreshing as it is astonishing.

Even now I imagine the pundits and spinmeisters are opining about the “Massachusetts referendum” on health care, are placing their bets on the upcoming mid-term elections, and are asking what all of this means for the president’s ability to move his agenda. Good for them. But for now I will simply savor the moment: neither the dimming star power of the Kennedys, nor the eleventh-hour invective of President Obama, nor the slimy tactics of the Coakley campaign could overcome the common sense of voters who turned out in droves.

As Mr. Brown heads to Washington, I offer him my best wishes and support. Oh, and one more thing: Blame me! I’m from Massachusetts!

Vote for Scott Brown

Published January 16, 2010 Higher Education , Politics 4 Comments
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A number of years ago a fight erupted on Beacon Hill, the seat of all Massachusetts politics. The brawl was between Governor Michael Dukakis (D) and the entire bicameral legislature, led in the House by Speaker George Keverian (D). Although fisticuffs did not ensue, in the mature manner which the art of politics is practiced in the Commonwealth, the Speaker stopped speaking to the Governor. What the fight was about was of little consequence—the Governor objected to the legislature’s engineering the appointment of a bird-brained former State Senator (D) to a highly paid administrative position within the bureaucracy of the public system of higher education (essentially, business as usual in the Bay State)—but its aftermath was one of revenge and recrimination. “You might forget,” said Speaker Keverian to a local television reporter in reference to the political death match in which he and the governor were embroiled, “And you might forget,” the Speaker continued, fixing his chilly dark-eyed stare on another member of the press, “But I won’t forget.”

During that same decade, Massachusetts Senate President William Bulger (D) made an example of an upstart state senator from the hinterland of Springfield, a mid-sized city in what the folks on the Hill refer to as “the western part of the State,” the frontier land that extends from Route 128 to the New York border. Senator Alan Sisitsky (D) had all the makings of an up-and-comer: young, brash, liberal and intelligent, he nevertheless lacked the street smarts not to go head to head with Bulger. Shortly after Bulger took Sisitsky’s office away from him—Sisitsky’s desk was moved into a hall of the State House—Bulger verbally assaulted the junior senator so viciously that the young man flipped out on the senate floor and was carted off for a good long rest. He never returned to Beacon Hill.

So, with the special election for US Senator entering its critical final phase, it seemed a good time to look back on the ways in which Massachusetts Democrats turn on each other when the going gets tough: they have long memories for slights real and imagined, and they have no qualms at all about eating their young. But most of all, they scorn losers. Such is the party that spawned candidate Martha Coakley (D). Should she lose on Tuesday (hope for the best, I always say), my advice to her is get out of town, fast. She’ll return to her job as Attorney General, finish out her term, then retire quietly from elective politics. Oh, she’ll likely find a sinecure at one of the dozen or so “institutes” on one of the state university campuses, where she’ll teach one course a year on law enforcement or women in politics, and the campus will proudly tout her occasional appearance on campus as a real coup in their bid for academic respectability and more importantly send a message to the Democrats in State House that it always pays to be nice to the university.

What astonishes me is that this scenario might actually come to pass. Scott Brown (R), a State Senator from the South Shore, has run his campaign as if it were taking place in a state where voters think about the issues before pulling the lever at the polls. He has run a campaign that assumes voters will take into account what is best for them in the here-and-now and what will be best for their children in the future. Even more astonishing, his campaign has taken a high road, leaving Martha alone in the dust of her dirty tactics and negative campaigning. But most of all, Brown has run a campaign that is a campaign. He did not take a three-week Christmas vacation (Coakley did); he did not concede defeat when Coakley took her premature victory turn after winning the Democratic primary.

Massachusetts voters have a wonderful opportunity on January 19. They can give the Democratic party in the state the kick in the pants it deserves for taking them for granted for so long. They can elect a senator—Scott Brown—who will be beholden not to party bosses (there are no Republican bosses in Massachusetts) but to the voters who elected him. And, should Brown go to Washington and help put the brakes on the catastrophe that is the health care legislation, the good citizens can dust off their ancient bumper sticker, trim a word from it, and proudly tell the world, “Blame Me. I’m from Massachusetts.”

Harry Reid: Don’t Get Me Started

Published January 12, 2010 Higher Education , Politics 2 Comments
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Over the last thirty-six hours or so I have watched the unfolding story about Harry Reid’s “racist” comments with great interest, and greater sense of nostalgia for the campus where I spent so many years. Even though I am not there now, I can tell you with complete confidence what the on-the-ground reaction is: while most students are either too wrapped up in their studies or the compelling dramas that are their personal lives to register the debate about the senator’s vocabulary, a small but influential group are busily organizing anti-racism workshops and calling for the (college’s) administration to do something about its systemic biases. Actually, it’s a little early in the semester for this ritual to begin, but getting a jump on the protest season with an out-of-the-gate cri de coeur means there’ll be more time left before Commencement to agitate about animal rights, transgender rights and the food in the dining commons.

Of the panoply of evils in the hormone-fueled world of undergraduates, at least at the institution where I toiled, racism trumps them all. And this is why I scratch my head when apologists for Senator Reid’s words, such as the Boston Globe, critique them for a “stunning lack of sensitivity” as opposed to their racist implications. Because where I come from, that’s no distinction at all. Any lack of “sensitivity,” let alone a “stunning” one, is prima facie evidence of racism, pure and simple, the kind academics will use to create a teachable moment about “white privilege” and class oppression. Students will want to meet with the (college) president to urge he make a statement, and the president will in turn point out that two years ago he created the position of “special assistant to the president for diversity and multicultural education,” so the students should talk to the assistant instead. The assistant will then pull together an “emergency task force” of faculty, students and a token staff member or two. The task force will demand a budget for pizza and brownies, meet solemnly for weeks, then report that more study is needed and that the entire campus, trustee to cafeteria worker, must complete an on-line litmus test to establish each individual’s “intercultural effectiveness.”

Let us pause briefly to consider the following, all true on the aforementioned campus: the “special assistant” was relieved of his teaching and advising duties thereby reducing the faculty by one and reducing the faculty of color by a significant percentage; the funds for the pizza and brownies come from the same budget that has no provision for underwriting the additional cost to students of laboratory, music, or studio art classes or for their independent research; ditto for the money spent on the “intercultural effectiveness” survey. But I digress.

The college will purchase the “intercultural effectiveness” survey instrument and the concomitant training for the special assistant and another administrator so that they are qualified to “interpret” the results. And that’ll be the end of it. The staff will take the “intercultural effectiveness” quiz (on college time, an additional hit to the strapped budget in terms of workers’ productivity), and a few faculty will as will the more earnest trustees. The president will direct his senior administrators to complete it—or else—and then report proudly to the board of trustees on the spectacular progress he has made rooting out racism on campus. Then, one semester will go by with no “feedback” or follow-up. The “further study” recommended by the emergency task force will not take place; the good sports who took the survey will wait in vain to learn the results and find out just how racist they really are. Then another semester will go by. And another, until the time and money spent on the exercise are forgotten. Soon it will be an election year, and a prominent politician will say something stupid and the cycle starts again. A new “emergency task force”—perhaps this time called the “anti-racism coalition and their white allies working group”—will chow down on pizzas and brownies. Whatever information could have been gleaned from the “intercultural effectiveness” survey (if indeed it is still on hand) will be deemed too dated to be worth resurrecting, and so a new survey instrument must be purchased and administered.

The Globe editorial admonishes Senator Reid: “the senator ought to focus on modernizing his own half-century-old dialect.” Sounds like the clarion call for sensitivity training to me. Easier and less expensive, I think, to skip the pizza-and-brownie budget and the exorbitant fees for the “intercultural effectiveness” survey and let the good voters of Nevada root out the old racist come November.

Low Society

Published January 8, 2010 Stray Thoughts 2 Comments
Tags: , , , , , ,

Just as the tail of the Tiger was sashaying off the front pages, a youngish woman named Casey Johnson died, and her demise set off a new round of daily reports of sex and scandal among the rich and would-be famous.

As you know if you have been sentient for the last seven days, Casey was a black sheep heiress of the Johnson & Johnson fortune. Her parents cut off her access to her share of the family swag because, reportedly, of her drug-fueled lifestyle. Her mother also took custody of her granddaughter, afraid apparently that Casey was unfit to raise the girl. It’s not hard to imagine why Sale Johnson Rashad would feel this way: Casey, in no particular order, had in recent months 1) her hair set on fire by a girlfriend; 2) allegedly stolen jewelry and clothes from her ex’s current girlfriend; 3) been living in the kind of squalid rental that defines the seedy side of Hollywood. She was also “engaged” to a self-promoting dynamo/ecdysiast with the sleazy name of “Tila Tequila.” Ms. Tequila is one of those ultra-petite and oddly proportioned femuncula reminiscent of Pia Zadora.

If you are like me, you only became aware of the engaged couple in the aftermath of Casey’s untimely departure. Although I vaguely remembered reading about the pixie cut pyrotechnics, I did not remember who it was that had the hot hairstyle. And as far as Ms. Tequila is concerned, not only had I never heard of her, I still don’t exactly understand what the basis of her fame is. She is, I gather, a nude model, singer, reality TV star, and clothing designer, again in no particular order.

I have followed this breaking story with interest so avid it perplexes. There is nothing new here: poor little rich dope fiend dies a premature death estranged from her family and entangled with a grade C celebrity. We’ve heard it all before. There is no moral lesson here: heiress leads empty life and dies, friends blame her wealth and upbringing. Heard that one, too. No, I think what has me so intrigued is the way in which this one story defines our contemporary notion of “society news,” the stuff that used to fill the “women’s pages” of the daily paper, and that is gasping for its dying breaths in the “Style” section of the Sunday New York Times even unto today. When I hear or see the term “socialite” I think of Brooke Astor cuddling dachshunds to her bosom as she wrote generous checks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I do not think of aimless young women willing to engage in unappetizing PDA’s or reveal their private parts and sordid private lives to cameras and the world. If that’s what “society” has come to, we are in more trouble than I thought. Next thing you know they’ll be letting the Irish into the Vincent Club!

But all is not lost, I think. In contrast to Casey and Tequila there is Victoria Beckham, she of the emaciated form, bad complexion, tattoos and perpetual frowns. I had been prepared to sneer at the former Posh Spice, a pastime practiced by many readers of the British tabloids. I thought that she was a washed-up singer from a manufactured “girl group” who managed to snag a rich, buff, sports celebrity for a mate. End of story. And in fact, Posh is all those things, but I have come to understand, she is also a whip-smart entrepreneur, whose latest endeavor—her clothing line—manages to be edgy and classic at the same time. At 35, she has succeeded in a range of fields with the canny intelligence of a natural business woman and the confidence of a seasoned dealmaker. I was surprised to learn of her privileged upbringing. Surprised, I guess, because unlike Paris or Casey, Posh could have settled for being famous for being famous but she didn’t. And so when I see the endless photos of her in the Daily Mail, I don’t wonder or even care if she has tipped off the paparazzi, I think she is scoring free advertising for the multiple products that make up the Victoria Beckham brand. You go, Spice Girl!

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