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February 03, 2003

FIRSTHAND REPORTING? Here's an interesting, though unconfirmed, story from reader Tim Kramer:

My main hobby is flying. I own a Viet Nam era observation airplane (a Cessna O-2A that is still in Air Force paint scheme) and am also partners with two other gentlemen in a Cessna 210 (holds six and goes fast). My brother is an airplane mechanic in Nacogdoches Texas and one of my partners is the director for the NASA Center for Space Commercialization (you can probably see where this is going).

My brother happens to be a Cessna 210 expert and has our plane in his shop. My partner and I had planned on an early Saturday breakfast in College Station and then fly up to Nacogdoches to visit my brother. We drove separately to the airport and on arrival my partner indicated that he had heard that there was some problem with the space shuttle and he need to stay by the phone. So off I went alone. I didn't have my watch with me, but I am guessing that I was in the air a bit before 9:00 am CST. The sky was as clear as it could get and I had a nice tail wind out of the southwest. Winds on the ground were straight out of the south at about 10 knots. As I knew that there was a problem with space shuttle I was monitoring an AM radio listening for news and heard some mention of Palestine Texas not far from Nacogdoches. About 25 miles out of Nacogdoches I contacted the FAA and was told that they new of nothing that would keep me from getting into the airport. There was a pipeline patrol aircraft in the area and he didn't say anything of the event either.

I was traveling on a 50 degree heading and at an altitude of 3500 feet, just about at a 90 degree angle from the debris track. Looking east there appeared to be what looked like a plume of smoke that was being blown from east to west. I didn't think about it at the time but the wind was blowing southwest to
northeast. Obviously the plume was latten debris that was still in the air being carried by the wind.

There is a lake on the west side of the Nacogdoches airport which I passed just south of. The surrounding area is a combination of open fields and commercial forest lands that are densely planted with pine trees. On the occasion that the forest are harvested it is not uncommon to see fires of remaining stumps and branches being burned.

There were fires in the area, but not an unusual amount given the forest practices. There was an aircraft landing ahead of me that turned out to be a state airplane (another Cessna 210 actually). I landed about 2 or 3 minutes behind him. Now you have to picture this, I am arriving in an Air Force observation aircraft, there has been a major disaster involving the space shuttle, and my other partner had called the airport to see if we were OK and the phrase NASA came up. So I park and get out, a group of people run up to me to ask if I am the guy from NASA. They then take me to a hangar and show me this large tank (photo attached) which evidently landed on the runway not to long before I landed (lucky me, I would have hated to run into it). By now it's about 9:30, or so, and it is apparent that the shuttle debris has landed on parts of Nacogdoches.

My brother comes around the corner and explains what had happened. Sometime between 8:30 and 9:00 there was a violent shaking and then a loud boom (probably some big piece traveling over head at greater than the speed of sound). Then it began raining airplane parts. He came across several items including a section of tire that landed across the road. Some state troopers came by and pulled the tire segment off the road. Also, someone had called the FAA to tell them about the tank that landed on the runway. I guess the news media got a hold of the tank news and the story was out about shuttle parts landing on the runway. The police closed access to the airport and soon you could see cars gathering around the perimeter. Not long after the police closed the airport, two F-15's flew over very slowly (news reports say F-16's trust me they were F-15's). The airplanes were followed by a flock of helicopters from every news agency within a 200 mile radius, about a dozen. This all occurred at about 10:00 am. The helicopters landed and took on fuel. The guy in the state airplane took a state police officer up for a look and came back about an hour later.

A Coast Guard helicopter arrived and stayed on the ground until after noon and I believe they went back to where ever they were from. None of us who were flying could see much from the air, there just wasn't anything that left a huge smoking hole. The news choppers were just out to get feed for the talking heads back in the newsroom. For the most part we all stood there wondering what we should do and quite honestly there wasn't much to do. The local and state police were the only ones I saw on the scene other than the two fighter planes and the Coast Guard guys.

There were many local volunteers who were helping keep people away from the debris. There was some stuff on the news about people hoarding the debris to sell on e-bay, but I didn't see any of this, nor did I hear about any. It is my feeling that everyone behaved quite well and it was amazing that no one was hurt.

This is an interesting story. Tim's timeline seems a bit out of sync with my understanding of when things took place, and the remark about his brother hearing in advance that there was a problem seems odd, too. I've emailed him to ask about those. And, of course, this is unconfirmed email, and so can't be treated as entirely reliable. But it's interesting enough I thought I'd post it here.

UPDATE: Kramer emails:

My partner (the one who works for NASA) knew that something was wrong with the shuttle. Most of the people I talked to when I got to Nacogdoches had figured out what happened. The times I wrote are CST, and keep in mind that there was a lag between the break up and when pieces actually hit the ground. I got there sometime between 9:00 and 9:30 which was after when most of the debris fell, but before the arrival of any state and federal people. I think the interesting part that I saw was how the pieces impacted vertically. Watching the never ending video you get the impression of a comet impacting the ground and sliding for miles. It looked to me like the pieces landed at a reasonable velocity and this did not do much damage or hurt anybody. Hope that this is helpful.

It is.

January 20, 2003

KEN SMITH SENDS THIS REPORT FROM THE PORTLAND PROTEST:

In keeping with my policy of attempting to get all sides of the issue, I attended the Jan 18th antiwar demonstration in downtown Portland.

Despite the fact I graduated high school in 71,I have never been to a demonstration before. Sincethe last two here in Portland (Aug/Nov) both ended in teargas, police charges and arrests, I advised Sharon to not attend. "As if" she replied.

So I left the leather jackets at home, dressed in black with a grey sweatshirt and tried my best to not look like a thug or a cop. According to Sharon, the effort was wasted.

I took the MAX train downtown and arrived at about 11am. I walked to the North Park blocks where the anarchists, socialists and communists were going to meet. The Portland IndyMedia website proclaimed they didn't need no stinking permit to hold a march, and that all the right-minded folks would be in this 'feeder' march that would eventually merge with the 'approved' march at the South Park blocks.

It was a bright, sunny day, around 40 degrees. Out of the sun, with a 5-knot breeze, it was downright cold.

Hmm, at 11:30, an hour before the march was to leave the square, there were only ten people present. Four of them were street people. So, it being pretty cold, I camped out with a coffee in the Powell's Technical bookstore across the street, waiting for people to show.

People started arriving around noon, in groups of 3 or 4. There were plenty of signs and lots of handouts. The All-In-Black Brigade was heavily represented. There were at least four guys in full anarchist riot regalia: full eye protection, black knit cap, scarf over the nose, cammies and heavy black boots. Needless to say, I got quite a few funny looks as I wandered around picking up handouts.

Most of the handouts were straight socialist/communist screeds on the class war. These are always amusing when passed out by a guy riding an $1100 bike.

There were a few giving the "Top 10 Reasons to Not Invade Iraq".

Around 12:45 we left the square with about 500 people and about 30 cops. The cops had their plastic handcuffs and nightsticks, but nothing I would consider to be heavy-duty riot gear. Everybody appeared to be in a good mood. The "No War Drum Corps" had two bass drums and around six snare drums, so there was a good deal of noise. Many folks had empty 5-gallon water cooler jugs for drums, and a few had regular pans.

They marched up Broadway to Pioneer Square. The original flyers and the half page ad in the Metro section said the rally would be at the square. When we arrived, the fools who want to put a seasonal ice rink in the square had a huge white tent there, so the march went around the square and up two blocks to the South Park blocks. I estimated the 'feeder' crowd was up to a 1000 or so by then.

Whoa! When we got there, I could hear the loudspeakers, but couldn't understand the words very well. The feeder march had come in at the north end of the Park blocks, and the main crowd was to the south of that corner. I managed to make my way through the densely-packed crowd over to the Historical Society building, where I climbed an 8-foot wall to get a good look.

People covered two whole blocks (approximately 3/8ths of a mile) and about 300 yards across. I estimated it at 15-18,000 people. The news called it 20,000; the police called it 16,000; the organizers called it 30,000. Typical.

The people in the feeder march were much more radical-looking than the folks at the approved demonstration. The main crowd had a lot folks in the 20-35 age group, with about 5% of the crowd being people over the age of 50. Hundreds of bikes, strollers and dogs. You would be amazed at the number of organized canines: I saw at least twenty dogs with variations on "doggies/puppies for peace". One beautiful white Malemute had a blue ankh (peace symbol) spray-painted on his side.

There were about 12 handout tables set up in the main square, and a small bandstand. The PA system was first-rate, with three bands of speakers (JBLs) set out every hundred yards or so.

As has been noted by other observers, the causes are all over the map: no collective bargaining for transport workers; racial profiling; the new INS reporting requirements; the Israeli/Palestinian mess; no war -- spend our money at home instead, etc.

After about 5 speakers, they started the march around the city center, and promised when the crowd returned, there would be two more speakers and live music. I had to wait nearly 40 minutes for enough space to clear so I could get off the wall and down into the crowd. This time seemed considerably longer, since the small choir they had did nearly nine million verses of "We Shall Overcome". This was probably requested by the police, since it had the remarkable effect of making people leave the square faster.

I cut across the main crowd and joined the march at about five different places. The anarchists were using chalk to draw inane slogans on various walls; the police looked on and did nothing.

I saw exactly four people who were in favor of war, and/or deposing Saddam. One was a 60-something veteran, very large. I asked him if anyone was giving him a hard time, and he said "everyone". I shook his hand and told him he was not alone. He was quite grateful for the support.

Another anti-anti-war person was more interesting: a woman with a "Depose Saddam" poster. She was a political exile from Iraq, and had not seen or heard from her husband after he was taken away during the night by the Iraqi police in 1989.

When I returned to the square, the sun was going down, and a brisk day was turning downright chilly. The crowd never got any bigger than about 3000 after 3pm (the rally started at 1pm) and the promised last two speakers never appeared. The live music was absolutely awful -- four people with their own custom protest tunes trying in vain to get anyone to sing along. They gave up after half an hour.

Observations:

The crowd lacked passion. On numerous occasions, someone would start a chant, but I never saw more than 50 people join in -- it was usually 10-20. It just seemed like a big party.

People were in a generally good mood.

I did not see a single Muslim woman with a headscarf.

I saw about 3 men who looked to be Middle Eastern.

I talked to at least five different cops: they all pretty much agreed with me on the crowd size, and were all amazed at the lack of violence. According to reports, there were no arrests that day. There were less than 100 police present. KGW had a van with a camera on a thirty foot pole overlooking the square. There were helicopters around all day.

They passed the paint buckets for donations: from my perch up top, I could see into them -- I'd guess less than $500 in the one with the most cash in it.

Slogans/Posters (Humorous):

"Pre-Emption is for Losers"

"War is like, sooooo 20th century"

"War Does NOT Increase Penis Size"

"Who Would Jesus Bomb?"

"George Bush Likes to Kill People -- that's Fucked Up"

Picture of Barbara Bush -- "Stop It, George!"

Slogans/Posters (Say Wot?):

"If War Worked, We'd Have Peace Now"

"9/11: America's Reichstag Fire"

Slogans/Posters (X causes Y):

"Aggression Breeds Terrorism"

"War Creates Terrorists"

Impressions:

I was proud of my country and city after seeing this demonstration. A whole lot of people peacefully made their point, and no animals or children were killed in the doing. Others who disagreed with the majority were able to speak their minds, with no fear of physical abuse.

There was no attempt by the speakers to make any real points -- I guess that would be wasted in that sort of forum. However,the handouts contained nothing that hasn't been shredded in the blogoverse. Frankly, I was not impressed.

I was worried about the size/fervour of the crowd -- I've seen how violent protests can directly affect foreign policy. But I now agree with other observers -- this is not the same antiwar movement that drove Nixon from the White House. There is a noticeable lack of passion, evinced by the small amount of donations, inability to get chants going,and the fact it petered out after a 2-mile walk around the city.

I'll be at the next one, to see if a more imminent war brings passions to a boil.

So there you are. No pictures, though. Take a camera next time, Ken!

December 28, 2002

HERE'S WHAT FRIST SAID on the Senate floor in encouraging people to support the vacccine language (kinda blowing the "secret" theory). It appears in the Congressional Record at S11247-02, S11279, dated November 18. I've adjusted the formatting a bit, italicizing some long block quotes to make it easier to read, but it's all here. Frist opens by discussing responses to an erroneous New York Times article on vaccine dangers:

Mr. FRIST.
Madam President, I rise to address a homeland security issue that we will be voting on tomorrow morning. Specifically, I would like to discuss the Lieberman amendment. This amendment strips out certain provisions which Senator Lieberman and other proponents of the provision believe are unrelated to the underlying homeland security bill.

More specifically, I want to address the issue of vaccines. There are three claims that have been made by the proponents of the Lieberman amendment, as they relate to the vaccine provisions. For my colleagues who were not on the floor Friday, I refer them to some of my underlying comments on the policy of the homeland security bill and the vaccine provisions which I mentioned on the floor Friday.

This afternoon, what I would like to do specifically is examine these three claims. First, the proponents of the Lieberman bill say that the underlying vaccine provisions in the bill remove individual rights to sue. Their second claim is that Thimerosal, contained in vaccines, causes autism. The third claim I would like to refute is that these vaccine provisions do not belong in the homeland security bill.

Claim No. 1: The proponents of the Lieberman amendment say the vaccine provisions remove individual rights to sue. They are saying these provisions are an example of Republicans fronting for special interests; that they take away individual rights to sue and provide legal immunity from liability for vaccine makers. *S11280

My response is that these provisions do nothing more than require injuries that are related, or allegedly related, to a vaccine to first proceed through the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VIC program). The VIC program was very specifically established in the mid-1980s for all injuries that are allegedly related to a vaccine.

Since the mid-1980s, all such injuries alleged to be caused by a vaccine are collected and channeled quickly and appropriately first through this Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. A no-fault, efficient alternative to our tort system; very quickly.

That requirement is law today. The provisions that are in the underlying homeland security bill simply restate and clarify what that law is and what that law does. If there is an alleged vaccine-related injury, you first go to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. After a period of time, whether or not the program decides in your favor, whether or not there is what you regard as adequate compensation, at the end of that program, you can simply state that you still want to go to court. Whatever that program decides, you are free to go to court. You are free to sue, and there are no caps in terms of liability.

The provisions in this bill take away no one's right to sue. The provisions in the underlying homeland security bill provide no immunity from liability.

A little perspective: There are currently about 875 cases alleging injury due to the presence of a preservative called Thimerosal that is no longer used in vaccines. Right now, these 875 cases are in front of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, consistent with the law since the 1980s. These cases are in no way affected by the provisions in the homeland security bill. I want to repeat that. These 875 cases that are in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program are being dealt with in an orderly process that was outlined several months ago, and they are in no way affected by the provisions in the underlying bill.

If individuals are unsatisfied with what the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program decides, at the end of it, you can say: Forget what you have concluded from me; I am going straight to court. Anyone can do that today, and one can still do that with the provisions of this bill.

The only people who are really affected by the language in this underlying homeland security bill are the trial lawyers who are trying to circumvent the very law this body passed in the mid-1980s-a law which has worked very well since that point in time. The trial lawyers basically are trying to create a loophole in the current law.

The provisions in the underlying homeland security bill state very simply that you first go to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and for good reason. After which, you can still go to court and sue with no caps or no limits.

Claim No. 2-and this one probably bothers me as much as any because it is twisting medical science. I am not sure exactly what the reasons are, but this claim is Thimerosal-containing vaccines cause autism. Additionally, proponents claim that Thimerosal as an additive in a vaccine has a causal relationship to the autism, a disease with increasing incidence. The incidence of autism is increasing. We do not know why, and that is why it is important for us to conduct the appropriate research.

There has been a lot of misrepresentation about the various vaccine provisions in the bill, but this one really irks me the most. It is grandstanding which crosses the line because it is not what science says. It is not what the medical community says. It is not what medical science in the broadest sense says. In fact, it is the exact opposite of what the Institute of Medicine has said.

Last week on the floor one of my colleagues said these provisions in the underlying homeland security bill-saying why they must be stricken-said specifically:

Liability protection for pharmaceutical companies that actually make mercury-based vaccine preservatives that actually have caused autism in children. . . .

That is scientifically wrong. Science does not validate it. Let me tell you what science says. I quote the October 2001 Institute of Medicine record. The report is called "Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Neurodevelopmental Disorders." That report concluded:

The hypothesis that Thimerosal exposure through the recommended childhood immunization schedule has caused neurodevelopmental disorders is not supported by clinical or experimental evidence.

The argument that is being used in support of the Lieberman amendment as the reason to support stripping these provisions is based on a false premise, a totally false premise, according to medical science today. What bothers me about it, and the reason this bothers me more than any of the other three claims, is probably because it scares parents. It says vaccines are going to hurt your children, and that demagoguery is going to mean these parents are not going to let their children get these childhood vaccines. These vaccines fight diseases that have caused pandemics and epidemics, diseases that will kill children if we do not make the vaccines available. Epidemics will occur, and death will ensue.

I challenge my colleagues to go to the American Academy of Pediatrics and to the Institute of Medicine and ask that question: Does Thimerosal, according to the scientific literature, cause autism? The answer is no.

A number of the people on the floor have also held up a New York Times magazine article quoting it as further proof that the preservative Thimerosal causes autism. I do not want to spend a lot of time on it, but I do want to read what the people who are quoted in the article are saying.

I ask unanimous consent that two letters be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

___

INSTITUTE FOR VACCINE SAFETY, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, BLOOMBERG SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH,
November 11, 2002.
Proposed title: Misleading the public about autism and vaccines.

TO THE EDITOR: The unfortunate use of a sensationalized title in the article published November 10, 2002 in the New York Times Magazine "The not so crackpot autism theory: reports of autism seem to be on the rise. Anxious parents have targeted vaccines as the culprit. One skeptical researcher thinks it's an issue worth investigating," absolutely misrepresents my opinion on this issue. Also, the caption under the photograph of me "Neal Halsey says that vaccinologists have no choice but to take the thimerosal threat seriously" is not a statement that I ever made. There is no "threat" as thimerosal has been removed from vaccines used in children. The headline, the press release issued prior to publication, and the caption are inappropriate. I do not (and never did)believe that any vaccine causes autism.

I stated to the author on at least two occasions that the scientific evidence does not suggest any causal association between vaccines and autism and he reaffirmed that the article would reflect my opinion. Unfortunately, the title implies the opposite opinion. A "fact checker" employed by the New York Times asked me several questions and minor corrections were made, but I was never shown the text of the article and no questions were asked about the title that implies a belief that I do not hold. It was my expectation that the title would be about thimerosal and the difficult decisions that were made during the past three years that have resulted in the removal of thimerosal as a preservative from vaccines administered to infants and young children. Changes in the use of thimerosal were made by the Food and Drug Administration and the vaccine industry with urging by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Public Health Service in a concerted effort to make vaccines as safe as possible.

The sensationalized title sets an inappropriate context for everything in the article. Readers are led to incorrectly believe that statement in the article refer to autism. I have expressed concern about subtle learning disabilities from exposure to mercury from environmental sources and possibly from thimerosal when it was used in multiple vaccines. However, this should not have been interpreted as a support for theories that vaccines cause autism, a far more severe and complex disorder. The studies of children exposed to methylmercury from maternal fish and whale consumption and the preliminary studies of children exposed to different amounts of thimerosal have not revealed any increased risk of autism.

Inappropriated reporting has contributed to public misunderstanding of vaccines and other health care issues. The use of deceptive title is one of the primary means that newspapers have misled the public. The New York Times and other newspapers need to conduct self-examinations into this role in misleading the public and modify procedures accordingly to help prevent future major misrepresentations of scientific data and opinions. Another disserve to the public comes *S11281 when scientists become reluctant to talk with the media for fear of being misquoted or misrepresented. I have already spent a great deal of time correcting the misinformation in the Sunday's NYT Magazine article. Naturally, the next reporter from the NYT who contacts me will be met with skepticism and reluctance unless changes are made to prevent recurrences of this debacles.

Apparently, editors, not authors, write most titles. To avoid misinterpretations authors should propose titles and assume responsibility for making certain that titles do not misrepresent the opinions of individuals or information presented in the article. Proposed titles and subtitles should be included in the review by "fact checkers"' when interviewing people whose opinions are included in the title. The best way to avoid these problems would be to permit individuals referred to in articles an opportunity to read a draft of the text before it is to late to correct mistakes or misunderstandings.

The New York Times and other newspapers and magazines should have policies requiring authors, editors and fact checkers to disclose personal associations with issues covered in articles they are involved in preparing and they should be relieved from their responsibility for articles where they have personal issues or conflicts of interest.

The general public and parents of children with autism have been misled by the title of this article and the news release. This is a disservice to the public and the value of my opinion has been diminished in the eyes of physicians, scientists, and informed members of the public. I encourage interested readers to review my scientific publications and to read objective reviews of this and under other vaccine safety issues conducted by the Institute of Medicine (www.iom. edu).
NEAL HALSEY, M.D.,
Director.

----

DEPARTMENT OF PEDIATRICS, DUKE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, Durham, NC.
Subject: Thimerosal issue.

TO THE EDITOR: As one of the two authors of the July 7, joint PHS/AAP 1999 statement that you cite in your article on "The Not-So-Crackpot Autism Theory" it is appropriate that several misconceptions in your article be rectified. The EPA guidelines on mercury levels related to methyl mercury, a very different compound from ethyl mercury which is the metabolite of thimerosal. Three other guidelines issued by federal and World Health Organization agencies were not exceeded by the vaccine levels.

Nevertheless we chose to recommend the removal of thimerosal, not because there was any evidence of its toxicity to vaccine recipients, but to enhance public confidence in vaccines. To the credit of the pharmaceutical industry, within 1 year all vaccines for children were free of thimerosal.

The only possible exception is influenza virus vaccine which is not recommended for children less than 6 months of age and for which a newly licensed product is now available free of thimerosal. Despite the absence of thimerosal from these products over the past two years, there has been no decrease, in fact an alleged increase, in the incidence of autism among our childhood population-strongly suggesting other factors involved in its etiology.

Regrettably this exemplifies another issue where the best-intentioned actions have served to benefit no one other than the liability lawyers who feed on events of this sort as sharks in bloodied waters.
Yours sincerely,
SAMUEL L. KATZ, MD,
Wilburt C. Davison Professor
and Chairman Emeritus.
____

Mr. FRIST.

Madam President, I will quote a couple paragraphs from each. The first is from Dr. Neal Halsey, who is profiled in the article in the New York Times and who is characterized as being concerned about the Thimerosal threat. Dr. Halsey heads up the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Vaccine Safety, and he wrote saying that this story

absolutely misrepresents my opinion on this issue. . . .There is no "threat" as thimerosal has been removed from vaccines used in children. The headline, the press release issued prior to publication, and the caption are inappropriate. I do not (and never did) believe that any vaccine causes autism.

He continues:

I stated to the author on at least two occasions that the scientific evidence does not suggest any causal association between vaccines and autism and he reaffirmed that the article would reflect my opinion. Unfortunately, the title implies the opposite opinion.

He concludes:

The general public and parents of children with autism have been misled by the title of this article and the news release. . . .I encourage interested readers to review my scientific publications and to read objective reviews of this and other vaccine safety issues conducted by the Institute of Medicine.

The second letter is from Dr. Samuel Katz, Professor and Chairman Emeritus at the Department of Pediatrics at the Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. Katz writes:

As one of the two authors of the July 7 joint PHS/AAP 1999 statement that you cite in your article . . . it is appropriate that several misconceptions in your article be rectified. . . .we chose to recommend the removal of Thimerosal, not because there was any evidence of its toxicity to vaccine recipients, but to enhance public confidence in vaccines. To the credit of the pharmaceutical industry, within 1 year all vaccines for children were free of Thimerosal.

Dr. Katz concludes:

Despite the absence of Thimerosal from these products over the past two years, there has been no decrease, in fact an alleged increase, in the incidence of autism among our childhood population-strongly suggesting other factors involved in its ideology. [etiology] Regrettably, this exemplifies another issue where the best-intentioned actions have served to benefit no one other than the liability lawyers who feed on events of this sort as sharks in bloodied waters.

The final statement is from Every Child by Two, the Rosalynn Carter-Betty Bumpers Campaign for Early Childhood Immunizations in a statement released today:

Most importantly, we are concerned that the Senate may be inadvertently fueling fears that vaccines cause autism. In fact, well-respected studies concluded that the evidence is inadequate. Much research is available to support these conclusions.

Madam President, the third claim-and I will be brief on the third claim-we have heard on the floor from the advocates of the Lieberman amendment, which I encourage my colleagues to oppose, is that the vaccine provisions do not belong in the homeland security bill. I would argue just to the contrary. If we do not have a stable manufacturing base for vaccines, there is absolutely no way we can prepare our communities and our Nation in the event there is a biological warfare attack on our soil.

We talk a lot about smallpox, and we all know today we are inadequately protected because today we are inadequately vaccinated against smallpox. We cannot destroy the manufacturing base for our vaccines today. We started with 12 vaccine companies in this country, companies that made vaccines. In large part because of the liability issue, the number of companies making vaccines has decreased to four vaccine manufacturers in the world. Only two vaccine manufacturers are in this country, and at the same time, the National Institutes of Health is embarking upon a new initiatives to develop a vaccine for botulinum toxin, a major initiative on their part. If we vote to strike these provisions, we are putting at risk our manufacturing base which we absolutely must have to be a prepared Nation. Vaccine development cannot be ramped up quickly because manufacturing is a highly complex process. These important provisions further stabilize the vaccine supply system, and thus, are key to our ability to establish appropriate homeland security.

Those are the three claims we have heard over the last 2 to 3 days. I encourage my colleagues to look at earlier statements on what the vaccine provisions are specifically.

I urge my colleagues to vote against the Lieberman amendment tomorrow and to move forward on this important homeland security bill.

So what we have here is Frist urging people to vote the way the Rosalynn Carter / Betty Bumpers Campaign wants them to. Some vast right-wing conspiracy.

November 07, 2002

RACHAEL KLEIN WEIGHS IN on the Cornell vibrator-sale issue. (You can read the original story here, and a criticism of Cornell's plans, to which Rachael is responding, here). Here's what Rachael had to say, via email:

First of all, the angry guy who lets society and her hundred year old rules have total command over his dick, his mind, and his heart and makes sweeping generalizations like "a widespread rejection of all hidden laws," is hard to comment on because every sentence merits an eye-rolling rebuttal. That will take too long.

Anyway:

Is this an issue of Cornell, men, women, or Ithaca?

God forbid a little humor, and maybe even creativity get thrown in the mix of this topic, but I guess news is news and this is no exception. Although you have to question one who doesn't even convey the quietest of coy little smiles when writing about sex, let alone when writing about an Ivy League school selling sex toys at its student health center.

And wasn't Cornell voted suicide capital of the nation some years ago? Well, they can throw that stigma out the window -- should they, of course, actually sack up and stock up. Cornell hasn't lived it down among the California kids with that little statistic, as old as it may be.

Christopher Dial said it all. Maybe people will finally feel a little more comfortable doing something they've been doing already for quite awhile. And maybe the really big wimps who don't do it for lack of courage will start. And maybe the ones who never even have given it any thought will finally learn something.

Like when boyfriends use vibrators on their girlfriends--blowjobs tend to skyrocket in quality (and frequency in some cases): a phenomenon that remains hidden under the near ton of fear-inducing myths about sex.

One student fretted about the possibility that they might sell Hustler (which we all highly doubt, including probably her …) -- even if they did, I would simply equate it to the fact that several schools have multiple sickening, artery hardening edible garbage producers, e.g. taco bell, pizza hut, etc.

Simply Hustler's equivalent but in the cuisine sense.

But this doesn't even matter because they won't sell Hustler. Hustler is to vibrators what a two dollar hamburger is to cooking in a kitchen. "Huh?," you say. My point exactly.

And how can one condemn tools for abstinence?

Should they REALLY want to make this a health issue, all they need to do is apply it to the idea of safe sex. One player is as safe as it gets, and toys just make it easier. Sex education and safe sex are issues now whether the chastity obsessed, like it or not, admit or not.

So, we should all (Cornell included), acknowledge this new element of outspoken sex stuff and work with it. We can sit back and *sigh* about nuclear weapons, but we can't grow up and accept the evolution of society's views about sex.

The weather is totally dire there anyway, so not like they have much else to do.

Thanks for writing me and letting me know about this thing at Cornell. Sorrry I'm so long-winded but sometimes I can't totally believe this stuff is so loudly controversial. I mean, geez, it's mostly latex and plastic, and most kids will buy this stuff somewhere else anyway but it can't hurt to make it available, not to mention accompany it with pamphlets and stuff. Great idea.

I've been trying to encourage her to start writing for BlogCritics. If you have any words of encouragement, email 'em to me and I'll pass them on.

June 09, 2002

FAQJ: Frequently asked questions by journalists

I've been interviewed a lot by journalists lately, and I've noticed that they ask a lot of questions that don't tend to wind up in the final pieces. That's probably evidence that they're just not very interesting questions, but on the off chance that some people might be interested, here are some of them, with my answers:

How do you find time to do this?

It takes less time than people think. Much of InstaPundit gets squeezed into the cracks of the day: with always-on Internet connections at home and at work, all I need is five or ten free minutes to come up with a post. (Longer stuff, like this, is done -- as this is being done -- on my laptop. Right now I'm sitting in the playroom while my daughter plays with Barbie dolls). There are a lot of wasted five-minute intervals in most people's days. I've managed to put more of mine to work.

Of course, it still takes up time. My other hobbies have suffered somewhat. But that's okay. I have a lot of hobbies.

How does it feel to be a celebrity?

I wouldn't know. Being a blogger celebrity is like being a star bowler or stamp collector: you may be well-known within the group that cares about that stuff, but most people don't know who you are. Because journalists read weblogs, there's a little more crossover into the general world, but there aren't that many people who have heard of weblogs, much less any particular weblogger. It's nice, but it's nothing to get a swelled head over.

Does your wife object to your blogging?

Everyone asks that. (Would they ask a woman if her husband objected to her blogging? I doubt it). Not too much. My wife is a forensic psychologist who writes books and op-eds, appears on TV shows, and is currently producing a documentary film. She understands about extracurricular activities.

What about your academic work? Do your colleagues like InstaPundit?

For the most part, to the extent that they're aware of it, they seem to like it. People occasionally email me things that they think will be good for InstaPundit, or comment that they like a particular post. My Dean has been very supportive.

Part of a law professor's job description is "public service and education." I'm supposed to write op-eds, talk to community groups and alumni, etc. InstaPundit is just that sort of thing writ large. I've got several law-review articles in the pipeline, so it's not interfering with my other writing. If it were, I guess I'd scale it back. And it's definitely helped my teaching in Internet Law -- there's nothing like hands-on experience after all. It's even changed my views on some questions.

How do you find the stuff you link to?

I follow links to pages from which I follow links to others. I have a variety of places I tend to look, but I try to branch out and find new stuff. I don't want the Blogosphere to become too much of a self-referential echo-chamber, so I've been making an effort to link to sites different from mine: Christian bloggers, lefty bloggers, etc. (Some people say it's a mistake to try to drive traffic to other sites, but that's precisely what I've tried to do. I'm not trying to build an empire here, and I want to see the Blogosphere as a whole flourish.)

I also get a lot of helpful links from readers. Two of my readers, S.E. Brenner and Paul Music, are virtual one-person news services, and a lot of other readers send interesting stuff from time to time.

Do you think weblogs are having an impact on the mainstream media?

Yes. Not least because of the occasional angry email from mainstream media folks who don't like what I say about them, or the more common email from mainstream media folks calling attention to something they've written. That indicates that they think weblogs matter.

And you can see ideas percolating out from the Blogosphere into the general world. But I think the biggest influence is just the sense that people are being watched. People write for two audiences, someone once said: the people who don't know much, and the people who know a lot. Forgetting the second audience tends to make for bad writing. The Blogosphere helps remind people that it's out there.

Do you think weblogs will replace mainstream media?

Probably not. I think you could aggregate weblog content to produce a decentralized version of a newspaper or magazine -- a little like what Oliver Willis is doing with The American Times -- but whether that will actually happen I don't know. I think that the relationship between weblogs and mainstream media is probably more symbiotic than competitive.

Do you think people will be able to make money from weblogs?

Andrew Sullivan kind of is already. I'm not -- at least not on any kind of hourly-rate basis -- though InstaPundit is more profitable than a lot of "mainstream" publications, which is to say it's not in the red. And if you consider the Drudge Report a weblog (something about which some people disagree) then someone already is. I don't know what he makes, but it's certainly a better living than the average journalist.

A bigger question is whether weblogs need for people to make money. I think the impulse among humans to share opinions is pretty well hardwired, meaning that as long as weblogs aren't expensive, people will happily do it at a loss. Bigshot journalists may care more about whether they can make money out of blogging, but even there I'm not sure it's all rational economic calculation. Andrew Sullivan blogged himself out of a steady gig with the New York Times and I doubt that made sense economically. People value being able to say what they think at a non-economic level.

What do you think will come next? Have you considered audio or video?

Yes. In fact, as soon as my audio hosting service finishes a server upgrade, I'm going to roll out InstaPundit Radio, with more-or-less weekly features of audio commentary and interviews. As for video, well, we'll see. I could offer the kind of 30-second talking head video clips that MSNBC offers -- but does anyone really care about those? I'm not sure. I might try it just for fun.

Fun is what this is all about. If I really wanted to make money, I'd be spending my time doing consulting work for liquor companies.

How do you decide which sites to add to your permalinks?

I'm not very organized about it, and I'm constantly noticing that I've left someone out that I meant to include. (I have a memory like a Ferrari -- when it works it's great, but there's a lot of downtime involved). Anybody that I find interesting is likely to be included, whether I agree with them or not. Some things that keep people off: a consistently nasty tone, lots of spelling errors, or too many emails pestering me to put them on. I don't mind being asked, but I do mind being spammed.

Why did you leave Blogger and Blogspot?

Pyra Labs and Blogger deserve a huge medal for almost single-handedly starting the blog explosion. And I found Blogger and Blogger Pro entirely adequate. Pro was somewhat more reliable, but not great. Blogspot's hosting was basically free, but also not terribly reliable: as I write this it's been down for about 8 hours. Plus, I felt (slightly) guilty about how much bandwidth I was consuming. I talked with Stacy Tabb of Sekimori and she found me a great hosting deal and set me up with Movable Type as part of the site redesign. I wasn't actually anxious to make the move, but Blogger's reliability problems meant I wasn't opposed to it, either. Movable Type isn't perfect, but it's been much more reliable than Blogger and every bit as easy to use.

Nonetheless, I encourage people who want to start a blog to start with Blogger. It's an easy way to get started, and it's entirely adequate for most people's needs. I ran InstaPundit on a Blogger/Blogspot combination for nine months of very heavy traffic, and it worked fine. I hope that Pyra makes it big: they deserve to.

Do you think there's a feud between the older-line techbloggers and the newer set of "warbloggers"?

No. Some people like Nick Denton have said some things along those lines. I read some techblogs -- mostly Doc Searls, sometimes Dave Winer or Jason Kottke -- but for the most part we have different interests. I like the techbloggers just fine, though I don't agree with everything they say on politics. And I'm sure they don't agree with what I say sometimes. Big deal. People don't have to agree on everything.

Will the blog bubble burst?

Sure. But it'll be like most Internet bubbles: the real bubble is in attention. Napster got a lot of attention a couple of years ago. That bubble has "burst," but there's actually more filetrading going on now than there was then. It's just not on the cover of newsmagazines. Similarly, someone will soon announce that blogs are "over," but weblogging will continue at a higher rate than it's going on now. It will just have become part of normal life. We don't hear much about the "electric light revolution" anymore, but that doesn't mean we've all returned to candles.

Will you miss the attention when it's gone?

Maybe a little. But this is a hobby. I've got a life.

May 30, 2002

TEEN SEX LETTERS! Here are a few. Will Wilkinson writes:

Loved your FoxNews piece. I've been arguing the same thing for years, that teens as a group are a weird hybrid of a welfare and leisure class. What I've missed in the discussion is a frank recognition that the evolutionary psychology of sex, together with the economics of birth control, creates a situation on which demand for sex by teens is huge, while the costs are ever diminishing.

From a biological perspective, teens ARE adults. And fashion and culture have always fixated on the sexuality of youth because we're wired to detect reproductive viability, which is highest in the young. There's a reason why there are so many "teen" porn sites, and it's not socialization. The cultural stuff is a reflection of biological inclination. And then public high schools hand out condoms, and huge numbers of high school girls are on the pill anyway. So the demand for sex is high, and the costs in terms of potential for pregnancy are about as low as they've ever been in history.

I know folks of my generation (X) have largely come to see sex as a recreational activity. Emotionally tricky, sure, but a recreational activity nonetheless, mostly dissociated from reproduction and institutions like marriage that emerged to internalize and manage the costs of inevitable sexual behavior. (There's also a good reason why the average age of marriage goes up every year or so). So fretting, or abstinence education will do next to nothing. What the anti-teen sex folks have to do is come up with some way to reduce the demand for sex among teens, which is unlikely, or raise the cost, which is hard when birth control and STD prevention and treatment keeps getting better. Scaremongering sex-ed courses might raise the perception of cost in the short-term, in the way scaremongering anti-drug propaganda can do. But those perceptions tend to get exploded by eventual observation of the real costs, and causes distrust in the information conveyed by adults. "I see friends have sex and they don't get pregnant, contract diseases, get abused, sunk in depression, etc. And they're having a lot of fun. So why are they telling us we're all going to ruin our lives?"

As long as teens aren't being stupid about disease and birth control, it's just hard to see what the problem is. Yes, it's emotionally tricky. But that's life. And that's what parents are there for, to help their kids learn how to nagivate the emotional complexities of adult life.

Home-schooler Dave Thomas writes:

I was pleasantly surprised by your column in Fox News today regarding teen sexuality. Our kids are refreshingly engaged in life and enjoying a broad spectrum of activities with kids their age of both genders. I believe that this is due, in large part because they are not under the extreme social pressure imposed upon children in public schools to 'score with the babes'. Being the different ones, we always feel that there are very few individuals that see the virtue in home schooling for social and educational reasons (people always ask, 'how do they socialize? We reply 'Just fine. Your children are OVER socialized'. Read 'Lord of the Flies'). The following is a post I made on your website:

My wife and I home school our two boys, 14 and 16 years of age. We do so for many of the reasons stated in Glen Reynolds column in the Fox News website. Our boys are well respected, successful (our oldest placed third in the state for trumpet performance, our youngest eighth on oboe), have been offered scholarships, and are pleasant to be around. The enrichment music program that we participate in is full of children(300+) just like this! It is amazing! They don't date, and they don't care! They are much happier being friends. Classes are also not separated by age, which is also detrimental to the social development of children. I wish Mr. Reynolds would do an analysis of home schooled children in light of the research results surfacing concerning children in government training (public school) programs.

I really do wish you would consider an in-depth look into the social circumstances of home schooled children (and the enrichment-course environment) in comparison to public school children.

Well, maybe one day. I was homeschooled for a year, though it was for practical reasons (we were living abroad and my mother was a teacher anyway). It was the greatest period of intellectual growth in my childhood, though.

April 10, 2002

THE FUTURE OF EUROPE: Here's

THE FUTURE OF EUROPE: Here's an exchange of email I had with British solicitor and frequent InstaPundit critic Martin Pratt. I found it enlightening, and I hope you will, too.

From Martin:I got a letter (on paper!) today from the ex principal of the school I taught at in India in my year abroad between Secondary School and University (such a year is becoming more traditional amongst British School leavers, but back in 1992 I felt quite a trailblazer) who asked about how I thought Europe's attitude towards the Muslim world would develop, particularly with regard to the Indo-Pakistan conflict. Hindu/Muslim relations was something he and I had cause to discuss frequently whilst we were stuck in curfews following the destruction of the Babri Mosque by militant Hindus in Ayodhya on 7 December 1992, which resulted in the worst communal violence seen in India since partition.

I am sitting here trying to write a response, but frankly I don't know what to say. The India/Pakistan issue is something I can't see anyone getting hot under the collar about. But regarding the Middle East, as you point out, there has always been partisanship. Despite the British public's traditional pro-Palestinian sympathies, Blair is sticking his neck on the block by supporting Bush and by implication the Israelis. Additionally, the British public's traditional Euro-Scepticism now runs in total conflict with its frank mistrust of Sharon's actions since the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Added to this the Northern Irish conflict is often mentioned, heavy handed action by the British Army from 1916 onward simply resulted in it being the best recruiting sergeant for the IRA imaginable, pictures of Israeli troops rounding up Palestinian militants remind many here of the disastrous military policies of the British Army in Ulster.

On the other hand we are the only major European country that can say that we had nothing whatever to do with the Holocaust, in fact it get on my nerves certainly to be included in any collective guilt by implication simply because I am a European. Anyway, there are two diametrically opposed traditions in British society which are becoming increasingly hard to reconcile, Arabism and pro-Americanism. Despite the Guardian and the Independent, the most popular dailies in the UK - the Mail, the Telegraph, the Times and the Sun - remain hostile to Europe. Both the Guardian and the Indie are minority reads in their sectors. I know you quote from the Guardian extensively, but the response I got to an enquiry in my short lived blog would suggest that the registration requirements of the Conrad Black owned Telegraph (his wife, Barbara Amiel, quoted the offensive comment dinner party by the French Ambassador regarding Israel) preclude Bloggers from linking to it. Nonetheless, it outsells the Guardian in its paper editions by about 4 to 1.

We are intrinsically a European nation, our habits and sports are European, whereas much of our culture is shared with America. But if economics wins out, and it usually does, then we have free movement of goods and people across the continent, and two thirds of our trade with the EU, as opposed to trade barriers and hard to obtain 30 day tourist visas to visit the US. Sadly, in those circumstances it is not hard to see which way we will jump if we are forced to choose, which I am sure we will be.

My reply:Well, there's a cheerful note. I only hope that when the EU implodes -- and I think it will -- that it does so gently. I'm deeply worried. And I'm not so much worried for the United States -- Europe is a problem for the US, and will be a bigger one, but it's unlikely to be a threat -- but for Europe.

Martin's response:Structurally, if you will excuse my French, the EU is fucked. Totally, it just doesn't work.

Employment Law, my field, is where it has most influence on day to day lives of the average citizen. All the EU does there is re-hash UK discrimination law (which was in turn based largely upon the US Civil Rights Act), screw up the drafting and sell it back to us in an inferior form. Don't get me started, it is absolutely awful. But even in its current utterly crap form, we do get a lot out of it. I don't have to marry my (Danish) girlfriend for her to stay in the UK for example. If they sorted out the constitutional defects, it could be great. I agree that the current structure may well implode, but that would be utterly disastrous for the UK. Metric Martyrs not withstanding.

And I'm pro-Europe for a Brit.

My reply:Well, I've never been against the *idea* of the EU. In fact, back when I used to teach International Business Transactions and would do a survey of EU law (well, it was EC law then) I remember thinking that it made sense. But the execution seems to have gone down the tubes in the last ten years.

I worry about one of two outcomes. The most likely, I fear, is the bureaucratic "our approach is failing -- we must redouble our efforts!" That will cause things to get worse until the collapse is very severe, and the dislocations involved could, under the right circumstances, produce something rather nasty and fascistic along the way, something that will be made worse by the growth of pervasive surveillance, etc.

The other possibility is a "velvet revolution" where everybody just realizes it isn't working and stops. That might produce a soft landing where the good parts -- mobility of people and capital -- stay, while the bureaucracy and dumb regulations don't. The problem as I see it is that too many people have too much invested in the bureaucracy and dumb regulations to let that happen absent a major shock to the system, and maybe not then (see, e.g., Japan as an example; they just can't make the changes that everyone agrees are necessary).

April 01, 2002

BY THE WAY, the whole

BY THE WAY, the whole AOL thing is an April Fools' joke. Just thought I'd point this out, since I've been getting email ranging from "congratulations!" to "screw you, you sellout!"

January 06, 2002

WHY USING PARALLEL PASSAGES IN

WHY USING PARALLEL PASSAGES IN CLAIMING PLAGIARISM IS DANGEROUS: From Alexander Lindey, Plagiarism and Originality, pp. 60-61:

Whether the virtues of parallels outweigh the vices is open to debate. The fact remains that the vices are considerable.

1. Any method of comparison which lists and underscores similarities and suppresses or minimizes differences is necessarily misleading.

2. Parallels are too readily susceptible of manipulation. Superficial resemblances may be made to appear as of the essence.

3. Parallel-hunters do not, as a rule, set out to be truthful and impartial. They are hell-bent on proving a point.

4. Parallel-hunting is predicated on the use of lowest common denominators. Virtually all literature, even teh most original, can be reduced to such terms and thereby shown to be unoriginal. So viewed, Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper plagiarizes Dickens' David Copperfield. Both deal with England, both describe the slums of London, both see their hero exalted beyond his original station. To regard any two books in this light, however, is to ignore every factor that differentiates one man's throughts, reactions and literary expression from another's.

5. Parallel columns operate piecemeal. They wrench phrases and passages out of context. A product of the imagination is individible. It depends on totality of effect. To remove details from their setting is to falsify them.

6. Parallels fail to indicate the proportion which the purportedly borrowed material bears to the sum total of the source, or to the whole of the new work. Without such information a just appraisal is impossible.

7. The practitioners of the technique resort tooo often to sleight of hand. They employ language, not to record facts or to describe things accurately, but as props in a rhetorical hocus-pocus which, by describing different things in identical words, appears to make them magically alike.

8. A double-column analysis is a dissection. An autopsy will reveal a great deal about a cadaver, but very little about the spirit of the man who once inhabited it.

9. Most parallels rest on the assumption that if two successive things are similar, the second one was copied from the first. This assumption disregards all the other possible causes of similarity.

Applying these to the case at hand, many -- though not all -- don't apply. It seems very likely to me that the language in Ambrose's book came from Childers' But is that plagiarism?

Classically, plagiarism constitutes taking someone's work as a whole and passing it off as one's own, which pretty clearly didn't happen here -- at least, it's not what Barnes is alleging. At most, based on what Barnes says, what we have is sloppy work. It has become a fad to call the repetition of short passages "plagiarism," but that doesn't fit the classical definition -- and by using the word "copycat" Barnes clearly means to criticize more than Ambrose's efficiency in organizing his research materials, and Mickey Kaus is clearly ringing the plagiarism-alarm bell.

Journalists, of course, have a weird double-standard on plagiarism. They in fact lift people's ideas in their entirety without attribution all the time (a woman from the Atlantic Monthly once interviewed me for an entire hour -- then wrote the story putting all my quotes into the mouths of more famous people (who, to be fair, I'm sure she called and got to say those things again) and left me out of it entirely, which to my mind is plagiarism but which to a journalist would not be -- and they effectively reprint press releases on a steady basis. Yet Kaus is no doubt right when he says he's known journalists who got canned for far less than what Ambrose is accused of.

The rule for journalists seems to be: idea theft is fine; prose theft is fine if it comes from people who don't mind, as with a press release (even if the reader is fooled as to the source), but if you use even a short passage verbatim from another journalist -- perhaps because that is easily proved -- then you're a pariah. As a norm for journalists, this may make sense (though it seems awfully, er, convenient in a lot of ways) but (1) it's not clear it has a lot to do with ethics; and (2) there's no obvious reason why the somewhat self-serving rules that journalists apply to themselves should be applied in exactly the same fashion to other people.

December 30, 2001

READER MEGAN MCARDLE (PENN '94)

READER MEGAN MCARDLE (PENN '94) SAYS U. PENN. DOESN'T WANT CORNEL WEST EITHER:

Sir:

I must protest the callous way in which you and Mr. Tepper attempt to foist Cornel West upon us. I can only suspect that the cause is the kind of ignorant prejudice which caused Penn to be labeled the "armpit of the Ivies" while I was there. I am not only offended at such thoughtless stereotyping of the University
which gave the world the first computer, but also saddened at the ignorance of our recent history which enables Mr. Tepper to make such a thoughtless suggestion.

I was at Penn during the infamous water-buffalo incident. At least, it was infamous to us; perhaps less so to the non-Penn world. So to recap: a black sorority was staging a loud march up Locust Walk (Penn's main drag) during exam week, causing a transplanted Israeli to lean out his window and shout "Shut up, you water buffalo!" -- apparently an approximate translation of a Yiddish insult. This quaint vernacular landed him in a disciplinary hearing which had evidently been convened only in order to confirm what our Department of African American Studies had already decided -- water buffalo was a racial term. The professors involved couldn't produce any historical use of the term in a racial context. The shouter produced ample evidence of two things:

a) he spoke yiddish fluently
b) there was indeed a yiddish insult that could be translated as water buffalo (or not -- it's not clear that anyone had ever tried to translate it before).

Arguments from the department (via the administration) ultimately devolved to the premise that if you shout at black people, it is because they are black and not because they are noisy and disruptive. I was there, in that dorm. They were so noisy and disruptive that I, who grew up in Manhattan, had to decamp for my boyfriend's.

Later that year, I had the privilege of experiencing this myself -- my appalling roommate, who stole a great deal of money from me, brought me up on racial harassment charges for accusing her of stealing. An AA studies major, I might add, and she seemed to have internalized Mr. West's lessons: I did not like her.
She was black. Therefore, I was a racist. The preliminary hearing was convened during finals week, and while I was given a week's notice about the hearing time, I was not permitted to know in advance what the charges were. The anxiety caused me to blow finals in calculus and economics, which years later nearly kept me from getting into business school. But I digress.

I was exonerated, because my roommate was not only venal and vindictive, but also dumb as a bag of hammers -- but when I walked into that hearing, the presumption was clearly of guilt. They started the hearing by talking about sentencing. The final irony is that the same judiciary board that was ready to prosecute my alleged racial harassment told me that it wouldn't be worth it to prosecute my roommate for stealing, as she was about to graduate. Accusing someone of stealing is an expellable offense; actual stealing isn't. (And now I'm perilously close to sounding like those wackos at WAR. To clarify: I don't think blacks are living the good life on the backs of us poor ol' whites. I think racial harassment is horrendous, though I would rather see it dealt with by ostracism than expulsion. But I ALSO think stealing is horrendous.) Only the open confrontation of these practices by Alan Kors forced the administration to change the Orwellian show-trial atmosphere of disciplinary proceedings involving racial or gender-related accusations.

Anecdote is not evidence, of course, but I offer it to illustrate that the Water buffalo incident was not, in fact, isolated -- it was part of a pattern that was pervasive enough to turn an ordinary dispute between roommates into another of the racial incidents for which it was nearly impossible to present a defense -- and that this was common enough not to make the paper. Having experienced first-hand the nadir of Penn's racial balkanization, I find Mr. West's complaints eerily familiar. The base assumptions are the same as they were at those aforementioned show trials -- Mr. West is black, and therefore anyone who disagrees with him is a priori both wrong and racist. His fuzzy thinking is of a piece with his atrocious writing (I thought you were exaggerating until I studied the site) and his distressing judgement in releasing that CD. I am astounded that Mr. West could have gotten through such an extensive education without learning the rudiments of either grammar or logic; I will not speculate as to whether the fault lies with modern academic institutions in general, or the insular and insulated enclaves of ethnic studies, but ultimately the responsibility is Mr. West's, for his unwillingness to acknowlege or embrace objective standards, much less humility or self control (the reader may here insert his own editorial comments on middle aged academics releasing rap albums). If he is called upon to do so, he dismisses these standards as racist.

This is exactly the kind of thinking that my beloved alma mater does not need in any department. I have no wish to foist him on Harvard or Princeton. But I don't see why the big three should force their Hand-me-downs on us; our lower prestige does not mean that we have abandoned scholarship. We've endured our share of racial snake-oil salesmen; we don't need any more, and shouldn't have to take them while we're still healing from the last round. Frankly, I'm hurt that anyone would even suggest such a thing. Perhaps Bob Jones University, which has found a home for much third rate scholarship, and which clearly does not mind racially divisive rhetoric, could find a place for Mr. West.

Well, I was with you until you got to the part about middle-aged academics releasing albums. . . . But then my problem with West isn't that he released an album -- it's that it sucks. And it sucks in a particular, self-centered, blowhard kind of way that's so typical of West and of so many Harvard academics.