Posted 5:10 PM by Robert

Hyperdowdified IV: Lesson From The Bonobos

Maureen Dowd essentially admitted her odd penchant for reacting to bad date news by resorting to inter-species sexual analogues in her April 10, 2002 column "The Baby Bust" (which might be subtitled "Why Can't Men Be More Like the Bonobo?:"

[A] successful New York guy I know took me aside for a lecture that was anything but sweet. He said he had wanted to ask me out on a date ... but nixed the idea because my job made me too intimidating. ....

Men, apparently, learn early to protect their eggshell egos from high-achieving women. ....

In the immortal words of Cher: Snap out of it, guys. Male logic on dating down is bollixed up... If men would only give up their silly desire for world dominance, the world would be a much finer place. ....

[L]ook at the bonobo. Bonobos, or pygmy chimpanzees, live in the equatorial rain forests of Congo, and have an extraordinarily happy existence.

And why? Because in bonobo society, the females are dominant. Just light dominance, so that it is more like a co-dominance, or equality between the sexes. ... The males were happy to give up a little dominance once they realized the deal they were being offered: all those aggressive female primates, after a busy day of dominating their jungle, were primed for sex, not for the withholding of it.

There's no battle of the sexes in bonoboland. And there's no baby bust.

It's interesting that in this year-old work Big Mo admits the connection between her own dating misadventure and her bonobo analogue. Big Mo reworks this same kind of material in her more recent column - but there are some telling differences that have opened up in the ensuing year. Of course, the new source materials - what she calls her creepy-crawly girl-eats-boy love stories - are much nastier and more hostile than the tales of bonobo love she tendered last year. Last year Big Mo also seemed annoyed and disappointed that the successful New York guy I know did not ask her out on that date - although she doesn't even refer to him as a "friend" - but the more recent column evidences no continuing desire on Big Mo's part for male companionship or frolics. Those "aggressive female primates" seem to have lost their lust. There is also a rather tender focus on the hope for children in the prior column, which is entirely missing in the new one - sexual bitterness seems to have replaced sexual hope.

And, as an aside, there are reports that the bonobos is the last of the great apes to be discovered and yet may be the first to become extinct, a problem they face [b]ecause apes have few offspring, [so human] hunting has a dramatic impact, and a significant part of the population can disappear within a single generation.

Posted 11:39 PM by Robert

Davis Descending XIII: Arnold Rising?

The Financial Times runs an extensive profile of the man who may be the next governor of California.

Posted 11:10 PM by Robert

Trend Away, Trend Away, We Will Cross The Mighty Ocean To Lagos Bay

"If you look at the data, 74 percent of African-Americans self-identified as Democrats in 2000. Sixty-three percent self-identified as Democrats in 2002, an 11-point drop on their side," said Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie.

It is true that many African American will not be swayed by the President's trip to Africa. But it's not necessary that more than a small minority of them be positively affected for the trip to be highly successful.

But the real irony of the President's Africa trip is the marvelous (for him) way the whole thing is playing out with respect to the current fracas over the intelligence used in the last State of the Union address. Central Intelligence Agency head George Tenet (white) is now taking the blame and giving Republicans who care to get involved someone other than the President to blast. That blame is being largely handed out to Mr. Tenet by the President's two main defenders in this matter: Condoleezza Rice (African American) and Secretary of State Colin Powell (African American).

The CNN coverage of the whole matter today was priceless. Condi's and Colin's competent faces and voices defend the President, nearly-ecstatic local African reporters struggle to contain their joy and excitement at the leader of the world's most important nation visiting their country and treating it seriously and without condescension - all while hostile white CNN operatives breathlessly report the President's "problems" with no clue that he is treating them and their Democrat confederates to a world-class suckering - or, as some call it, a rope-a-dope.

The more the television networks dig in, the more African Americans generally get to see a President whose main advisors and defenders in times of potential crisis are African Americans - who defuse the crisis from the shores of Africa itself while local Africans cheer. To the extent the Democrats challenge the President on this matter, they will have to go through - and will have to be seen going through - Condi and Colin. Not a pretty sight, especially to a Democrat. It is hard to believe that the hostile, white American television reporters don't see the ironies and significance of the matters they are covering. But there those reporters are - quite literally broadcasting that they think they finally have the President where they want him.

But I'll wager that the whole show isn't lost on the brilliant Donna Brazille. Casandra's is never an easy role to play.

Exquisite. There hasn't been entertainment of this high order since the President's speech to the United Nations.

Posted 10:36 AM by Robert

Davis Descending XII: Demons At The Gate And The Automatic Campaign

According to a new survey by Old Spice Sacramento was ranked only the 72nd sweatiest city in America even with all the perspiring that Gov. Gray Davis and his advisers must be doing over the recall campaign.

We read of perspiratory, ill-conceived schemes such as Davis advisors researching grounds for legal action and saying they might challenge the signature-gathering process in court. Perhaps recall-bankroller-and-likely-candidate Darrell Issa has disguised himself as a Davis advisor just for the purpose of infiltrating the group and promoting that scheme, since one doesn't have to be an "expert" to figure out that If Gov. Gray Davis decided to mount a court challenge ... the best outcome probably would only delay his day of reckoning with California voters and could end up antagonizing them. For the Governor, that should not be a tough cost-benefit calculation. As the saying goes: do the math.

That should leave Davis mounting some kind of "campaign." Yes, where 51% of people polled favor his recall, demonizing every single person who dares to raise his or her head to argue that Governor Davis shouldn't govern anymore is going to take a lot of sweaty, gritty work! No wonder we read that Strategists for Gray Davis conceded Tuesday that a recall election was likely and moved into full campaign mode.

"Full campaign mode?"

That's an interesting thought that warrants a reality check and a bit of history. In reality, the mood of California voters and the future of Governor Davis are now being almost completely determined by the $38 Billion state budget deficit and the state government's failure to fix it. State legislators know that - which is why state Senate Republicans on Thursday presented a package that proposed to close the state's shortfall by using a combination of borrowing and spending cuts and pointedly rejecting tax hikes - where Democrats and the Governor are demanding significant tax increases. Mr. Davis can "campaign" as much as he wants, but "campaigning" is not going to fix the budget or the state's finances -although it might convince some voters that the Governor is too busy "campaigning" - that is, attempting to demonize and antagonize the very legislators whose cooperation he needs to actually do his job. All the maneuvering over the budget on both sides is an "automatic campaign" with the Governor's recall as its focus - the Governor's own nominal full "campaign" will just be marginalia to the automatic one. (One also has to wonder at the effectiveness of a "campaign" if the best spokesman the "campaign" can come up with for leaders of California's business and labor establishment [who] denounced the proposed recall of Gov. Gray Davis as a threat to the state's economy is a geriatric lawyer - Warren Christopher - whose last significant political role was a disastrous turn as Al Gore's unsuccessful attorney in the Florida presidential fiasco (Gore eventually booted him in favor of the overrated David Boise to preside over the final fiasco), which followed Mr. Christopher's earlier disastrous turn Secretary of State under President Clinton and his even more disastrous advance of his protoge Zoe Baird for Clinton Attorney General.)

Even so, any "campaign" will have to be directed at convincing voters that it is legislative Republicans who are to blame for the failure to fix the current budget mess. There is a lot of distracting prattle in the media about who is to "blame" for the deficit, but that is not central to determining how it should be fixed now.

There are at least two major reasons why the Governor is at a big disadvantage in any "campaign" to demonize his legislative Republican tormentors. Most importantly, while a campaign to demonize legislative Republicans will probably drive their approval ratings down, the legislature is not up for election this year or in March 2004. This is not California's first budget deadlock - and history reveals a fairly clear record as to how the electorate will respond to the mess. Governor Wilson and the Democratic-controlled legislature had their own deadlocks - and the approval ratings of both the Governor and the legislators fell precipitously during and immediately after the fighting. But then, within months of the passage of a budget, the effect of those fights had dissipated. If past is prologue, a really big, continuing fight over the budget - complete with whatever "campaign" the Governor mounts - will drive the approval ratings of both the Governor and the legislature to all-time lows.

But only the Governor has to face a recall election before those all-times lows dissipate. If Governor Davis can bring in a budget - any budget - soon enough, he will probably survive the recall. That's why the Republicans won't pass a budget that the Democrats will accept.

Further, no Republican in the legislature is elected by a state-wide vote. So state-wide approval ratings don't in themselves mean much to an individual legislator - but the Governor will live and die by those ratings. Worse for Mr. Davis, Republicans - who now constitute just a little more than one-third of the legislature - have been driven back to their safe districts. That means there are very few "swing" legislative districts in which the Governor can "campaign" to demonize an individual Republican legislator in an attempt to pry him or her loose from Republican discipline. And, as noted above, a demonized Republican legislator will have many months to recover.

It will be even harder for a "campaign" to budge the budget or any fence-sitting Republicans because state Republican legislative leaders have made it clear that any Republican who breaks ranks in the budget show-down will face opposition from the Republican Party in 2004. For most Republican legislator considering breaking ranks, that should not be a tough cost-benefit calculation. As the saying goes: do the math.

All of which makes that Old Spice ranking of Sacramento even more peculiar.

Posted 1:31 PM by Robert

Epidemiology Imitates Art

The famous novel, The Plague, by Albert Camus describes a fictitious epidemic of bubonic plague that besieges the Algerian city of Oran in the 1940's.

Today Drudge links to this BBC report:

A team from the World Health Organization and other international bodies went to the Oran region after reports of plague emerged last month.

Posted 1:17 PM by Robert

Hyperdowdified III: It Ain't Necessarily So

One of the more common - in both senses of that word - errors of the Maureen Dowd excursion into sexual genetics discussed in posts below is her naive conceptualization of cytogenetics, the science which attempts to correlate cellular events with genetic phenomena. Some might start with Big Mo's obvious obsession with the significance of size in a sexual context. But the less of that kind of thing the better.

Big Mo commits many peculiar cytogenetic errors. But her personal confusions seem to reflect the confusions in her personal life, and therefore have little general significance, so they're not worth commenting on in specifics.

What I would like to do here is note a fact that the reader may want to keep in mind the next time he or she comes across the kind of crass analogizing and bull-slinging about inter-species sexual characteristics and genetics that Big Mo's column in some ways typifies and which increasingly plagues popular science writing. Specifically, this:

There are two categories of chromosomes, autosomes and sex chromosomes. With cockatiels [and all birds], sex is determined by a heteromorphic (i.e. morphologically dissimilar) pair of chromosomes called sex chromosomes. In humans and some other species, these chromosomes are labeled X and Y. A male human has the XY complement (the heterogametic sex) and a female human has the XX complement (the homogametic sex). In some species, such as birds, the complement of sex chromosomes is the opposite of the above. Geneticists have assigned a different lettering scheme to make this distinction. The letters used are Z and W. A male cockatiel [and every male bird] has the complement ZZ (the homogametic sex) while the female has ZW (the heterogametic sex).

That is:

Human females are the ones that have two of the same sex chromosomes and human males are the ones that have two different sex chromosomes

- but

bird females are the ones that have two different sex chromosomes and bird males have are the ones that have two of the same sex chromosomes .

The significance of this inter-species genetic structural sexual difference is not understood. But it should serve as a warning against facile cross-species thinking. And one might also want to keep in mind some other molecular genetic history:

Already in 1949 Murray Barr and E.G.Bertram found in the nervecells of a female cat a small dark body as well as in most of the body cells. They identified this later on as sex-chromatin (a sex-chromosome in shrinked condition). This sex-chromatin is also called the Barr-body after its discoverer. Later on it was also found in the cells of other mammals but only in females.

Eventually it was Ohno who proved in 1959 that strictly speaking the Barr-body is one of the two sex-chromosomes in a female. The observations of Ohno soon were confirmed for other female mammals including humans. Although one expects to find two sex-chromosomes in all body cells of a female mammal, only one is to be found the other is the so called Barr-body.

During evolution in placental mammals the Y-chromosome has lost all genes which were allelic to the genes on the X-chromosome. The result is that most and maybe all X-linked genes in hemizygous state (XY) occur in males. Each X-linked gene must have been adapted to the hemizygous state by doubling the amount of "product output".

When this redoubling was achieved in an efficient way (during evolution), the genetic difference between the male having only one X and the female having two X-chromosomes became to large. A certain need to compensate the dosage effect for X-linked genes between the two sexes arose. In mammals this is achieved by inactivation of one of the two X-chromosomes in individual somatic cells in the female. In consequence this means that the expression of X-linked genes in individual somatic cells of both sexes is hemizygous making the female mammal a genetical mosaic dependent on the sex-linked genes.

A good example are cats with orange and black marks on their fur. The orange-black fur is caused by two alleles of one gene on the X-chromosome, one for orange and one for black. Dependent on which X-chromosome is deactivated, cellclones appear with either the active gene for orange or the active gene for black. The mechanism of inactivation is rather involuntary.

In birds the X-linked genes occur in hemizygous condition in hens. Yet there is no indication at all for dosage compensation of these genes. On the contrary, the X-chromosome of birds even shows a certain dosage effect. The full expression of an X-linked mutant phenotype requires even the presence of two dosages of a mutant gene in the heterozygous cock.

Posted 9:48 AM by Robert

Hyperdowdified III: Getting Personal

Tom Maguire e-mails some very interesting materials, including an article on Maureen Dowd by Catherine Seipp that may be a definitive portrait of the columnist as clueless egomaniac. Ms. Seipp believes that Big Mo's crimes against readers now fall into three main categories—formulaic nuttiness, posturing, and condescension.

Well, yes, but these are mere devices to conceal Big Mo's biggest problem: sheer inability to understand the substance and implications of the matters of world-historical importance on which she chooses to write. Ms. Dowd's talents are almost exclusively verbal and observational - not generally analytic.

Why does Big Mo not write about what she knows - or at least could hope to understand? Why doesn't she write about matters she experiences in, and understands from, her personal life? It's not a rhetorical question. Wouldn't writing about more personal matters be a better use of her particular talents, and the talents of all hyperliterate capital-W Writers with an eye for detail and an ear for the shuffling going on behind the curtain, as her critic Katherine Boo characterized Big Mo and her disciples (as recounted by Ms. Seipp)?

Tom Maguire e-mails this note regarding what Ms. Dowd sees when she turns off the lights:

[Maureen Dowd] was a working class Irish kid born Jan 14, 1952 (so now she is 51), never married, no kids (as best I can tell, which is not easy). She has been romantically linked to Michael Douglas (1998) and Aaron Sorkin (2003).

Apparently no kids? Does it strike anyone else how creepy it is that someone who affects such a self-consciously personal "woman's view" as Big Mo's leaves unclear whether she has ever had a child?

Never married? 51? Michael Douglas and Aaron Sorkin? The choice of men seems especially telling. The first never married her (although he has married two other women) and dropped her for trophy-squeeze-and-ultimately-wife Catherine Zeta-Jones, and the second is a confessed, well-known, arrested drug abuser with a famously foul temper.

Is it a wonder that this woman would write columns that are increasingly bitter towards men - and all things male? Is it a wonder that she does not care to convey telling details about any matters close to her own home? With this approach to men, would one be surprised to learn that Ms. Dowd has been the victim of actual domestic abuse? “Ms. Dowd does not speak to the press,” her assistant told New York magazine media columnist Michael Wolff in 1999 (again via Ms. Seipp). Well, of course she doesn't. The "press" would ask personal questions.

Could it be that Big Mo increasingly indulges in what OpinionJournal terms her custom of writing breezy, trivial columns on matters of world-historical importance because writing on matters of personal significance is increasingly unbearable for her? That is: Are Ms. Dowd's columns increasing flights of escapism from her own sour experiences, and the Times is inviting its readers along for the increasingly bizarre and sublimated rides?

Yes, this is speculation, but it is speculation about a woman whose most recent column implicitly likens men to parasitic worms imbedded in a huge, bloated female, among other gross indicia of hostility. And it is certainly no less speculative than what one reads every day in Big Mo's own columns.

As an aside, Big Mo is of course happy to include in her column a reference to the old story about female praying mantises devouring the heads of their mates. But Snopes says the story is not quite true, and appears to be mostly untrue for the insects in their natural habitat (that is, outside the laboratory). More hyperdowdification.

MORE: Here and here and here and here and here.

UPDATE: Paul Jaminet at Brothers Judd sums it up nicely:

The [Supreme] Court has not yet addressed whether [a] Constitutional right extends to the bio-engineering of small parasites that can generate sperm from within a woman's reproductive tract, or to the production of quasi-males who can be eaten during procreation. But is there any doubt that imagining these possibilities sends a frisson through Maureen Dowd?

Posted 3:40 PM by Robert

Hyperdowdified II: Other Reactions

Some people seem to have an even stronger reaction to (against) today's Maureen Dowd column. The following has arrived by e-mail from an astute female reader:

I read this Maureen Dowd column and it made me angry. This piece is unbelievably offensive. I can't believe the NYT would even publish such a thing. ... She should be thrown out of the media, the same as that gay-bashing radio talk show host. This piece is so offensive it makes me ill. The use of pseudo-science (since when does the sloppy musings of some evolutionary biologist nicknamed "Deer Abby" at an unknown college in London qualify as scientific research?) is just the kind of thing I hate most. ... The "cutesy", "girly", "in the know" tone makes the piece even more tasteless and wrong headed. Your blog response was more measured than mine would have been. I think the woman must be a crazy creep. ...

Which raises the question: Why is Maureen Dowd's repeated bashing of (usually, but not always, heterosexual) men and what she sees as their traits (traits which, to be sure, she stereotypes offensively) different from Michael Savage's gay bashing?

Posted 2:44 PM by Robert

Complete And Utter

Drudge links to this story about a mother who allegedly made a deal with her grandmother to sell her son for $500.

The article notes that Additional felony charges of forgery and uttering are pending against Burns.

"Uttering?" What the heck is a charge of "uttering?"

Oddly, the first - and obsolete - definition of "uttering" in at least one dictionary is: to offer for sale

But the charge of the crime of "uttering" this errant mother faces has nothing to do with selling anything - including her child.

As one legal dictionary puts it (under "forgery"): "Uttering" is defined as "offering as genuine an instrument that may be the subject of forgery and is false with intent to defraud". This doesn’t involve just any writing. The document passed off as genuine must have some legal significance like a check or a deed.


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Posted 1:14 PM by Robert

Hyperdowdified!

Maureen Dowd seems determined to expand on her past elliptical achievements! As did Vidkun Quisling, the leader of the Norwegian national socialist Nasjonal Samling Party, Ms. Dowd has contributed her name to the English language with the term Dowdify: To substantially distort the meaning of a statement by omitting a portion of it and attributing the altered statement to the original author or speaker.

Today's column is a much more ambitious effort on Big Mo's part! Today, Big Mo is substantially distorting the meaning of current research in a whole field of biology by omitting a portion of it and attributing the altered results to the field. All that to make some nasty, unfunny point that she never bothers to actually reveal.

Should misrepresenting research by omitting entire fragments be "hyperdowdifying" it? Or perhaps the term "dowdify" should be kept intact, and its meaning taken as expanded.

As is so often the case with Big Mo, the point of today's column is unclear - heck, it's even unclear if the column has a "topic." But she does continue what OpinionJopurnal terms her custom of writing breezy, trivial columns on matters of world-historical importance. Specifically, Big Mo is for some reason in a dither over research suggesting that the Y chromosome may have become smaller over the last so-many-thousands-of-years, weirdly concluding: Perhaps that's why men are adapting, becoming more passive and turning into "metrosexuals," the new term for straight men who are feminized, with a taste for facials, grooming products and home design. Yes, it's hard to believe, but the editors at the Times have allowed this column to be a survey of eccentrically selected biology literature - Big Mo herself describes today's subject as creepy-crawly girl-eats-boy love stories.

Could today's column be a biology lesson which is also a response to some bad date or social break-up she has just experienced? Big Mo seems to focus (can Big Mo "focus?") on genetics and animal analogues, so her bile flows generally towards what she truly sees as the "opposite sex," regardless of whether she has dated them, or could - regardless even of their sexual orientation. And, goodness, she unaccountably omits her trademarked terms such as "testosterone drenched" and "testosterone poisoning." There's not even a reference to Donald Rumsfeld!

Whatever her motivation may be, she clearly writes only about research concerning reduction and shrinkage of the Y chromosome and its significance, but other current research finds the reverse, as Maggie Fox just reported for Reuters:

The closest look yet at the Y chromosome -- which makes men different from women at the most basic level -- shows it is not as puny as scientists believed, researchers reported ... The tiny chromosome in fact carries more genes than mainstream wisdom had dictated. Most seem to be devoted to sperm production, the U.S. researchers reported.

While Big Mo's topic and motivation are unclear, she definitely includes a good deal of anger at men in today's effort. A male columnist attempting a misogynistic enantiomorph of this (and many another) Big Mo effort would find himself on the unemployment line with Michael Savage. Does Big Mo ever write about her positive relationships with men - as, say, Times food critic Amanda Hesser does with substantial charm (in-Times and out) about her "Mr. Latte?"

Of course, there is a big difference between the role of Big Mo's columns and that of Amanda Hesser: Big Mo rarely has something substantial to communicate in her columns, where Ms. Hesser always does in hers - be it about eggs, butter, olive oil or some other winning comestible. Indeed, Big Mo seems hardly a columnist now at all - her style now being more suited to reporting how she spent the night hurling eggs from a car than folding them into a delectable soufflé, a style the result of shedding credibility, depth and insight furiously over the course of her tenure as a Times columnist. And can Big Mo's worsening penchant for bad, juvenile puns (here, unbelievably, "Y" with "why" and "X' with "ex-") do her employer and the Pulitzer committee proud?

As Big Mo herself might now phrase her comparison with Ms. Hesser: Better to be an eggs-columnist than an ex-columnist.

Posted 4:36 PM by Robert

More Corporate Governance In Disneyland: Holding Hands At Midnight With Mr. Eisner!

Recently Michael Eisner and the Walt Disney Company - among the nation's most egregious debasers of substantial corporate governance - have been telling the world that they are running around, trying everything new, in hopes of improving Disney management accountability. But nothing meaningful has changed.

Some shareholders aren't convinced by the Disney/Eisner charm assault - and have sued over the disastrous Disney/Ovitz fling.

Now the Delaware Chancery Court has released an opinion regarding that disastrous Disney/Ovitz fling that gives some insight into just how awful management abuse at Disney can be. Some care is required in construing this decision because the Court did assume the facts as the plaintiffs alleged them. But the facts pretty well square with what has been publicly reported.

Ovitz’s tenure at Disney was unsuccessful and negotiations regarding his termination among Ovitz, Eisner and one board member began. That board member wrote two letters to Ovitz, indicating that Ovitz would face a non-fault termination and that he would receive nearly $40 million in cash, plus vesting of three million stock options. The letter was signed by Eisner and the board member. There was no record that the board as then constituted either reviewed or approved the letter, nor did they raise any questions about the termination.

The plaintiffs contended that Disney’s by-laws required the board’s approval of Ovitz’s nonfault termination. The Court concluded (assuming the truth of the facts in the complaint) that Delaware corporate law’s “theoretical justification for disregarding honest errors simply does not apply to intentional misconduct or to egregious process failures that implicate the foundational directoral obligation to act honestly and in good faith to advance corporate interests.”

Despite writing that the “Court is appropriately hesitant to second-guess the business judgment of a disinterested and independent board of directors,”Chancellor William B. Chandler III, wrote that “[t]hese facts, if true, do more than portray directors who, in a negligent or grossly negligent manner, merely failed to inform themselves or to deliberate adequately about an issue of material importance to their corporation. Instead, the facts alleged in the new complaint suggest that the defendant directors consciously and intentionally disregarded their responsibilities, adopting a ‘we don’t care about the risks’ attitude concerning a material corporate decision.”

Chancellor Chandler also stated that, “where a director consciously ignores his or her duties to the corporation, thereby causing economic injury to its stockholders, the director’s actions are either ‘not in good faith’ or ‘involve intentional misconduct’. Thus, plaintiffs’ allegations support claims that fall outside the liability waiver provided under Disney’s certificate of incorporation.”

The plaintiffs also contended that, because Ovitz was serving as an officer prior to finalizing his employment agreement, he owed the company a duty to negotiate honestly and in good faith so as not to advantage himself at the shareholders’ expense. The Court made note of Eisner and Ovitz’s twenty-five year relationship and stated that Ovitz should have negotiated with an impartial entity – such as the compensation committee – rather than with his good friend. The Court also held that the final version of the employment agreement differed significantly from the summaries of the drafts that were provided to the directors, and the Court was therefore unable to dismiss the claims against Ovitz since the facts as alleged sugges ted that the subsequent changes were not the result of arms’ length bargaining and were the product of Ovitz engaging in a self-interested transaction by negotiating with his close personal friend.

The Court goes on to state that Ovitz did not advise the Disney board of his departure, but worked with Eisner to negotiate a contract that was ultimately entered into without approval by the Disney board.

All in all, nice work if you can get it.

Posted 3:43 PM by Robert

You're So Forgiving!

OpinionJournal has been commenting on a photo of Sen. Hillary Clinton once carried on - but now deleted from - her Web site. The photo is (was) of the Senator speaking at a press conference with someone rather close by with a sign that appears to read RELIGION IS IMMORAL. Jim Taranto notes: Hillary isn't actually carrying the sign herself, and can hardly be blamed for the (perhaps) nutty views expressed by a denizen of the peanut gallery.

I agree with Mr. Taranto - but some people here in California don't seem to have the same standards, as the Sacramento Bee reported regarding a little trick pulled by some opponents of the effort to recall Governor Gray Davis:

A group created by organized labor to derail a recall against Gov. Gray Davis on Tuesday showed a willingness to play hardball politics when it attempted to indirectly link a Republican congressman financing the recall campaign to Nazi sympathizers. At a news conference, a spokesman for Taxpayers Against the Governor's Recall ran a 10-minute videotape shot by Democratic operatives during now-U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa's failed run for the U.S. Senate in 1998. The video showed an Issa campaign table set up at the entrance to a Southern California gun show; elsewhere on the grounds, the video showed one or more exhibits displaying a flag with a swastika. ....

The video never shows Issa, nor does it record any interaction among Issa campaign supporters and anyone displaying Nazi paraphernalia. Instead, the lens zooms in on images of swastikas inside a building at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds, which was hosting the Great Western Gun Show, then pans outdoors, where an Issa for Senate table was set up next to a National Rifle Association registration booth.

"These are the things that are on display at gun shows like this," said Carroll Wills, a spokesman for the group calling itself Taxpayers Against the Governor's Recall. "It's not to suggest necessarily that Congressman Issa is himself a Nazi sympathizer. However, I think that there are an awful lot of politicians who would eschew the idea of participating in any event where that type of flag is shown."

Is that the right standard? Instead of allowing Senator Clinton so much political distance from the offensive sign - which was, after all, posted on her own websight - should Mr. Taranto have snarled: "It's not to suggest necessarily that Senator Clinton is herself a hater of all religion. However, I think that there are an awful lot of politicians who would eschew the idea of participating in any event where that type of sign is shown."

Is it all in the Coast? Or is it the political persuasion?

Posted 12:47 PM by Robert

Say What?

The Man Without Qualities doesn't know whether a law suit filed against Clear Channel Communications by a "radio personality" who says she was fired for failure to support the Iraq War has any merit. I haven't seen her contract, for example. Perhaps it grants her unusual content control.

But this "radio personality's" construction of First Amendment rights and a related state law - as suggested by media coverage of her suit - is nothing short of terrifying:

The suit cites a state law that declares a person cannot be fired because of political opinions. [The plaintiff "radio personality"], who was named the 2002 Radio Personality of the Year by the South Carolina Broadcasters Association, said she believes it's an employer's right to broadcast what it wants, but that it shouldn't stifle opposing views. "Either don't talk about it at all or make it fair," she said.

That sounds nice. Most people like free speech. So lets see how this particular view plays out.

Suppose an individual "radio personality" in South Carolina - where this all took place - wants to support the Ku Klux Klan on the air. Then, in the plaintiff's opinion, she would have that right regardless of what her employer wants, even though the employer happens to hold the FCC license and operate the station and pay her to talk on the air. The most the employer can do - she says - is hire someone else to debate the "radio personality" or somehow "make it fair" - or just not talk about the issue at all. And it appears some court is to determine what is "fair."

But in the plaintiff's view, an employer/FCC-licensee certainly can't fire a sacred "radio personality" for chattering on the air about how good it feels to wear one of those white hoods and burn a cross. See, she cites to a state law that declares a person cannot be fired because of political opinions.

And a fortiori the employer/FCC-licensee can't fire the "radio personality" for refusing to read an editorial written by the employer that people should not wear those white hoods and burn crosses. That would stifle opposing views - in the apparent view of this plaintiff "radio personality."

And what if this "radio personality" (or anyone else) wants to express her heart-felt support for the KKK privately to another employee of whatever race on employer premises? And, by the way, what exactly is a "political view"? For example, is a belief that radio stations should not be privately owned, but should be owned only by the state, a "political view" that any red blooded "radio personality" can promote on her employer's station - subject only to some kind of "equal time/fairness" rebuttal right on the employer's part?

Might there be some difference here - apparently undetected by the plaintiff - between merely holding a political view and expressing it on the employers dime and premises?

Link via Drudge.

UPDATE: Will Michael Savage be filing a similar suit against his former employer?

Posted 11:36 AM by Robert

Semiconsciousness

Semiconsciousness. That's how one could characterize a front-page Los Angeles Times report on the future of gasoline prices in California and throughout the West. But, on the bright side, semiconsciousness is half way there!

The good news: The Times reports the bad news - that is, the real reasons gasoline prices are probably going to keep creeping up in this part of the country for years - right at the beginning of the article:

Without new refineries, additional pipelines, expanded port facilities or a slowdown in consumption — none of which is likely — motorists in California and neighboring states will pay ever more at the pump, analysts warn, and endure more frequent and longer-lasting price increases. "Prices are going to go up," said Claudia Chandler, assistant executive director of the California Energy Commission. "As supplies get tight, that's the way that the free market allocates resources — by price."

Amazing. The article even includes a fairly reasonable description of how NIMBY and BANANA and NOPE sentiments are mostly responsible for the refinery and pipeline shortages. The Times does not even follow the customary format for liberal mainstream media when insertion of basic economics is allowed in articles on energy economics and finance: place the ravings of the conspiracy theorists first, with the sensible "supply-meets-demand" and/or "supply-is supposed-meet-demand" protests from industry sources and some sensible professional economist buried at the back of the article. Contrast Times obeisance to the customary liberal media energy economics format: Times coverage of the recent California energy crisis still leaves suggestions that producer and supplier conspiracies were mostly responsible for the price rise, even to the point of implying that the rather modest bone tossed to this theory by the FERC is something more than a bone. And in that case the Times has made essentially no effort to point out that even where rules may have been broken, the rules often worked against market efficiency. In short, conspiracies rule at the Times with regard to the recent California energy crisis!

But in this article about the future creeping gasoline crisis, it's the conspiracy ravings that the Times tucks in the back, where (with a barely maintained straight face) the Times presents the obligatory suggestion that California gasoline prices are being set by six public energy companies in a long-term anti-trust conspiracy.

Of course, in a reasonable world, the actual content of the article wouldn't belong on anyone's front page. And even here the headline is wrong. The correct headline should be something like: MAINSTREAM LIBERAL MEDIA OUTLET DISCOVERS ECONOMIC LAW!

Tomorrow's "discovery" for the Times and liberal Californians generally:

NIMBY AND BANANA AND NOPE SENTIMENTS CAUSE CALIFORNIA HOUSING TO BE MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE THAN IT SHOULD BE! LESS WEALTHY PEOPLE HURT MOST!

And who knows what could happen after that. Maybe the Times and its liberal readers will discover gravity?!

Posted 10:35 PM by Robert

Payment, Please

Former President William Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton have reportedly earned $40 million since Mr. Clinton left the White House.

But Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw, Williams & Connolly and Wright Lindsey & Jennings are reportedly all still waiting to be paid an aggregate of about $6.5 million for legal work performed for them in connection with the Whitewater scandal and Mr. Clinton's impeachment proceedings.

Skadden Arps is said to be owed $1 million, Mayer Brown $250,000, Wright Lindsey $250,000 and Williams & Connolly said to be owed $5 million.

Posted 2:10 PM by Robert

This Could Explain A Lot!

Do the following:

Go to the Google search page www.google.com, and then type: weapons of mass destruction

Don't press Search!!

Next click the "I'm feeling lucky button"

UPDATE: The "I'm feeling lucky button" now sends one to a new site. Until this morning, the Google "lucky" button linked to a site with this appearance. Similar versions also appear here and here and here.

Here's an article about it.