And, as an extra-added bonus...

Here's another side of the whole bonus/executive-compensation issue that you may not have given due weight or even been aware of. (I knew that many people aside from CEOs received bonuses and "depended on them" to one degree or another, but I was unaware of the breadth and complexity of the situation.) Though the ink tends to go to the Wall Street bigwigs taking home millions on top of their already generous salaries, the omnibus figure of $18.4 billion that Obama derided as "shameful" includes many lesser bonuses paid out to scores of employees as part of, in essence, "regular" compensation. Further, the $18.4 billion figure was down 44 percent from 2007.

I'm not saying that this added info should be regarded as persuasive; and I'm certainly not putting it forward as a winning rebuttal to any of what we said last time, or have been saying all along about this country's corporate excesses. But it does provide some context that you may find worthy of incorporating into your overall feelings on the matter.

Again, in the end, I think one's opinion is going to come down to a trio of related questions: (1) How much is "enough," (2) Does the government get to make those calls?, and (3) Then who does, if anyone?

Next up: GOP appoints Al Sharpton majority whip. Or...

...why I lied in my post of January 19.

First off, OK, I didn't really lie. What I meant by the assertion that I was "giving up" talking about race was that I was giving up talking about it in the way I usually talk about it, i.e., arguing that it doesn't/shouldn't exist. (A guy gets tired of banging his head against a wall. Even this guy. If nobody subscribes to post-racialism, so be it.) Besides, you'll also note that on January 19, I said I planned to make it my final post on race. Plans change. (Wink.)

So, while we're on the subject of things I don't quite know how to feel about, we might as well include this.

Though you know how un-fond I am of the whole "first black Senator" or "second woman astronaut" or "third Eskimo centerfielder" thing, I suppose there's not much chance of getting away from such talk in this, the Year of Obama. And, there are always those who argue that we can only draw inspiration from people who look like us. (Which of course explains why my idols, growing up, were Trane, Sonny, Herbie, Horace, Miles, Shaw* and McCoy, shown left, and my favorite author for a time was James Baldwin, below. My favorite ballplayer was Teddy Ballgame, but right after that came the "Say Hey Kid" and Hammerin' Hank.)

Anyway, looking at the situation through that lens, it's nice that the GOP has appointed Michael Steele its chairman. And he can't really be regarded as a "token figure," either, since the ranks of black Republicans notably include not only Condi but also Shelby Steele (no relation), Ward Connerly and Larry Elder, among a fair number of others. There's even, yes, Colin Powell, who continues to self-identify as Republican despite his outspoken support for Obama in this election; I heard him make the point rather forcefully during an interview just this past week. (Remember the heat Limbaugh took for alleging that Powell's support for Obama was racially motivated? Hmm.)

But is it really "nice" that the GOP is doing this? Is the party taking this step for the right reasons? Or is Steele the Republican "answer" to Obama? ("See? We've got one, too! And he's almost as eloquent!") It's like, I had to laugh—and forgive me, please, because I'm sure I'm not the first to mention this, but I haven't had much time to randomly peruse other blogs and pop-culture sites—I had to laugh at the way George Bush, in his farewell speech, made such a point of showcasing an entire unbroken row of black luminaries, one after another. The act seemed so transparent that I found it uncomfortable. Kathy too. We both looked at each other without a word as our eyes went wide.

And yet...to switch back the other way again...isn't it a bit cynical to think like that? After all, what would we prefer? That the GOP just go on appointing, in essence, the same guys year after year? Middle-aged WASPy types who look, speak and think just like all the other middle-aged WASPy types? Shouldn't we at least try to believe that it's all in good faith? Give them the benefit of the doubt?

I'm honestly having trouble getting my mind around this one.

* I'm thinking of Woody here, but admittedly, I liked Artie, too.

Recession? What recession? And where's my bonus?

"I know you're out there. I can hear you reloading."
—Billy Crystal's character, insult-comic Buddy Young Jr., in the mah-velous (and often overlooked) 1992 comedy-with-a-point, Mr. Saturday Night.

It seemed appropriate for the tenor of some of the recent comments on SHAMblog. But as I've always said, I'm just glad people keep coming back.

=================================

This whole controversy over the lavish bonuses with which Wall Street bigwigs (and other top executives) commonly reward themselves leaves me with mixed emotions. On the one hand, I would agree that given the condition of the U.S. economy, with layoffs and plant closings left and right, and almost 4.8 million of us now collecting unemployment benefits—the highest number since the U.S. Dept. of Labor began formally tracking the figure in 1967—it seems in poor taste indeed, if not "shameful" (to use Obama's word), for CEOs to be voting themselves seven-figure bonuses. The aggregate number for Wall Street as a whole in 2008 has been quoted as $18 billion. If you're going to come to Washington pleading for a bailout, claiming TBTF* status, you probably shouldn't take the proceeds and use them to buy yourself a brand-new Brooklands (shown) for the drive home.

The sticking point for me is that the question of executive bonuses has been melded into that whole discussion of the American caste system, and how there's simply too much of a skew between the folks at the top and the folks at the bottom. It's one thing to argue that it's unconscionable for already highly paid executives to convert public monies—i.e. bailout funds—into their private Christmas bonuses, especially when those companies had lousy years. I think very few of us would disagree with that. But if we're broadening the argument—if we're saying as general doctrine that no one should be allowed to make that much more than almost everyone else... Well, that strikes me as a dangerous sea in which to wade. All the more so if such edicts are going to be handed down from Washington.

I see this as being distinct from discussions of taxation (though I can understand where staunch free-market types might beg to differ). To me, it's one thing to say that seven- and eight-figure earners should pay taxes at the highest established rate. Even if the tax rate on ordinary income over $1 million rises to, say, 60 percent, that still leaves the $10 million earner with $4 mill for his trouble. That is a very different matter from saying that no one should be permitted to make the $10 million in the first place, that there should be some kind of cap on earnings. And yet I wonder if we're edging close to that mentality. I even wonder (based on some of the man-in-the-street comments I heard around the time of the inauguration) if people actually feel that they've given their new president a mandate to put such a policy into effect.

I do think we have to figure out ways to encourage a more voluntary "redistribution of wealth," to invoke the phrase that was used as a political jackhammer towards the end of the last election cycle. The key word being voluntary. No?

* "Too big to fail." The theory here is that certain industries or even major companies are simply too integral to the economy to be allowed to go under; the ripple effect would be disastrous. This, of course, was the logic used in bailing out GM and Chrysler, as well as AIG.

The harder we fell them?

Spent some time on the phone yesterday with Bernie Kerik, once Rudy Giuliani's hand-picked NYC police commissioner and later George Bush's nominee for Homeland Security chief. (That didn't work out, for reasons we'll get to.) In the days following 9/11, Kerik was as recognizable a face as there was on TV after only Giuliani himself; he stood beside his mayor (and friend) during press conferences, and gave no small number of them in his own right, always projecting stoicism and purpose. Around that time he also wrote a best-selling book, Lost Son, in which he recounted his personal journey to pin down the facts behind the long-ago killing of his mother—a prostitute who abandoned the family when Bernie was a small boy and, he ultimately theorized, was likely bludgeoned to death by her pimp.

Kerik is old-school, tough-minded, with little patience for airy talk and a particularly low tolerance for b.s. (as you'd expect of a guy who once ran the devil's den known as Rikers Island). There is no missing the New York in his voice and manner—he grew up in an unforgiving area of Paterson, New Jersey, just across the Hudson—and he has a tendency to speak as if he's throwing punches. Even over a connection that paired his speakerphone with my echoing VOIP set-up, a certain Gordon Liddyesque, this-is-not-somebody-you-f**k-with quality came through loud and clear. When he gets really animated, the profanities tumble out of him like bursts of fire from the automatic weapon that dangled from his waistband as he walked the streets of Iraq back in 2003, when he served as interim Minister of the Interior. Iraq is still no garden party, but those, you'll recall, were the early days, the savage days; the days of grainy video involving orange jumpsuits and machetes.

A lot of profanities tumbled out of Kerik yesterday during a discussion of the legal travails that have put him on the other side of the law he's worked to uphold for the past quarter-century. Though officially he cited "nanny problems" when he withdrew himself from consideration for the Homeland Security post, the storm was clearly on the horizon. You'll have no trouble Googling the various state and (current) federal allegations against Bernie Kerik, or discovering that a few years ago he was ordered to pay a $221,000 fine for a suspected quid-pro-quo situation* he shouldn't have been in. People find it disturbing and demoralizing when a person who's pledged to stand for justice is found to have skeletons in his own closet. That's understandable.

But what struck me about all this was that during my background research, as I prepared to interview Kerik, I'd come across any number of articles that introduced him as "disgraced former police commissioner" or "disgraced this-or-that," almost as if those damning phrases were part of Bernard Kerik's actual name. In almost every case, those descriptions set the tone for the article as a whole. And I sat back a minute and thought: How quickly we turn on people. We reconceptualize them and we turn on them. Some of us in media seem to delight in the job. I guess it makes us feel important. Relevant.

We can build 'em up...and we can tear 'em down.

Whatever this man did or didn't do, he gave many years of his life to public service, helping to keep the rest of us safe from harm. And he was good at it; he got results. From what I can tell, the issues now are between him and the government—which is to say, they involve private areas of Kerik's financial circumstances, and the accounting of same, that one might construe as "victimless." This isn't Enron or AIG. This isn't Bernie Madoff. I'm not apologizing for Kerik here. Laws are laws—he'd tell you that himself; he told me that—and if he broke the law, he'll have to answer for it. To my mind, this does not wipe out the person he was between birth and 2005, and the service he gave as cop, commissioner, and reassuring presence in the days after 9/11.

I'm also reminded of something I was told by another one of my sources for my Skeptic assignment on crime and punishment—this, mind you, is a former state attorney general with a reputation as a hard-liner: "I am absolutely struck almost every day by how many young people find themselves in some situation that involves the legal system, where it could have some impact on their life, and you say, 'I could've done that. I could've been there and I just didn't get caught.' " The man was speaking of juveniles**, and Bernie Kerik is no juvenile. That said, we've all done things that could've blown up in our faces. And I don't think any of us would like to be judged—to have our lives summarized—based on our worst moments.

* involving renovations on his house by someone with alleged ties to organized crime. You will recall that Rudy Giuliani came to prominence as a Mob-buster.
** I should mention that Kerik, too, despite my characterization of him above, showed tremendous compassion for juvenile offenders and their plight.

'Rule 414: All men are presumed guilty as charged...'

I've been doing a lot of reading about sex crimes and the adjudication of same. I'm doing this not because I get off on reading about sex crimes, but because the undertaking is germane to the long article I'm now preparing for Skeptic. A lot of the piece, at least as I envision it, will focus on logical inconsistencies in the law, unequal enforcement, and the myriad assumptions—my (in)famous "givens"—stitched into the fabric of American jurisprudence, many of which, to my mind, stymie the pursuit of true justice before we even begin.

In perusing the Federal Rules of Evidence for sex crimes (the current understanding of what constitutes "evidence" being another of my pet peeves), I came across this intriguing example of, to me, a clear disparity in the way men and women* are treated under the law. Since the logic behind this disparity seems shaky at best, I presume the difference exists for political (which is really to say, politically correct) reasons. Though the links above and below will provide you with the full text, I have omitted much of the section here in order to focus on the salient provisions [all italics are added, but the bold-face is present in original]:

Rule 412. Sex Offense Cases; Relevance of Alleged Victim's Past Sexual Behavior or Alleged Sexual Predisposition

(a) Evidence generally inadmissible.**

The following evidence is not admissible in any civil or criminal proceeding involving alleged sexual misconduct...

(1) Evidence offered to prove that any alleged victim engaged in other sexual behavior.

(2) Evidence offered to prove any alleged victim's sexual predisposition.

In contrast, we have:

Rule 413. Evidence of Similar Crimes in Sexual Assault Cases

(a) In a criminal case in which the defendant is accused of an offense of sexual assault, evidence of the defendant's commission of another offense or offenses of sexual assault is admissible...

So...the victim's sexual history (including, say, whether she may like rough sex, or have fabricated allegations in the past) is irrelevant. But the defendant's sexual history is relevant.

Question: Why not just make everything relevant (and public) and let the jury decide? After all, it won't damage the victim's reputation to have her past trotted out in court any more than it damages the defendant's reputation to have his name linked to rape, sodomy or whatever else he's accused of. Right?

Interesting, anyway.

* Technically the law does not identify anyone by gender, so in theory a victim could be a man and a defendant could be a woman. In practice, of course, the overwhelming majority of adult-on-adult sexual assaults are perpetrated by men against women. Thus the intent of this section of law seems clear.
** And as you'll see if you read the full text, the exceptions are quite specific and relate only to the victim's prior interactions with the defendant himself.

A prayer for Bobby. And the rest of us, too.

Apropos of several recent comments on religion, plus the Lifetime movie that's been getting a lot of buzz, Prayers for Bobby—which I saw the other night—I've been thinking about the Afterlife, whether or not true believers are supposed to interpret the Bible* and its promises literally, etc.

Those who take a more secular view of religion and its purpose—as well as those with agendas that don't fit neatly under a strict-constructionist interpretation of the Bible—are wont to argue that the Good Book is meant to be read more as allegory, or even an epic poem, whose bottom-line instruction for mankind reduces to the following:

Just be nice. 'K?

They'll tell you that Jesus and religion are really about the Golden Rule, and sell a vision of the Afterlife that's all about rejoicing and reward. In this schema, there is no penance or punishment, let alone eternal damnation.
That is not, of course, what you get if you interpret the Bible literally. Indeed, according to a key exchange that takes place in the film between the boy's mother (Sigourney Weaver, who delivers a powerful performance when she keeps her legs closed) and a priest who runs a church for gays and their loved ones,** the standard Catholic Bible, taken at its Word, isn't just tough on gays (i.e. the infamous abomination passage); you'll find sections, variously, where all of the following categories of people are subject to being stoned to death: adulterers, disobedient children, wives who weren't virgins when they married. (We'd have to tap the output of several large quarries just to work our way through one typical college campus.) There are a host of other thou-shalt-nots as well.

And we won't even get into the Qu'ran.

Sure, the more dogmatic views of biblical scholarship seem terribly quaint and irrelevant today. But then, what's the point of having a religion that has no rules and no penalties? Seriously. If the fundamental liturgical precept of your religion is, basically, "it's all good, folks!", then what is its point and purpose? How's that a religion at all?

Let's face it: Here in the U.S. especially, we have made "faith" into a big garden party where—much as with the self-esteem movement—there are no losers. Everyone is welcome. Everyone is allowed his own reality and his own way of life. That mindset is even visible in formal initiatives designed to make religion "more relevant" (of which the so-called felt needs movement is one major wing), in Joel Osteen and his "Church of Ralph Lauren," and so forth.

I have to think that all of this must cause some cognitive dissonance among some of us (particularly those who regard themselves as socially enlightened and want to "be nice to all," yet grew up with the Bible and its more pedantic teachings). It must, for example, be very strange to be pro-gay rights and yet also wonder: How does God really feel about gay sex? Divorce? Abortion? Will I end up going to Hell for promoting this? In a wider sense: Are we all going to Hell—as Americans—if the real God turns out to be Allah? (Or even if he just turns out to be plain old God. Some would argue that there isn't much separating Santa Monica Boulevard from Soddom.)

We can have opinions about this and debate it left and right, but the fact remains that if there is a God, and if He or She has standards (and what God wouldn't?), they are going to be God's standards, not subject to rationalization, not appealable to a higher authority, not get-off-the-hook-able via ruses like "if it doesn't fit, you must acquit." We're going to have to deal with having perverted those standards to our own aims and having breached them. We can nod smugly at someone like O.J. Simpson and muse about how "there's one judge he won't be able to escape," as Oprah famously put it...but that same judge may have a word or two for us, while He's at it. (Lest we forget, gluttony is a sin, too.)

==========================

Not unrelated: In my paper this morning is an account of the plight of 36-year-0ld Christopher Jester, pedophile and registered sex offender, who was rearrested the other day for having child porn around the house and on his computer. Though I shouldn't have to repeat this by now, I'm going to offer my usual disclaimer: I'm not saying what follows just to be difficult or outrageous. I'm honestly asking. So here goes: What is our friend Mr. Jester, who apparently gets off only on kids, supposed to do with the rest of his statistical 40 years on earth? Why can't the guy look at kiddie porn if he wants to? (There's enough of it already out there that no new kids need to be recruited into "that life.") After all, the major thrust (NPI) of the argument for gay acceptance was that "they can't help what they are; they're born gay." I don't know if pedophiles are necessarily "born that way," or if maybe something traumatic happens to them en route, but it seems clear that their sexual interest in children is deeply ingrained by adulthood, and that they can't help but be that way. In our society, who do you think would be that way if he could help it?

Now, we certainly don't want pedophiles hurting our kids and grandkids (of which I have four, officially)—but why can't we be a bit more understanding of their predicament? If you or I, as "sexually normal" people, had to go through the rest of life unable to indulge any of our natural appetites, even via private fantasy in the comfort of our living rooms, how would we feel? Just wondering.

* Of course, to say "the Bible," as if it represents a single, universally understood thing, oversimplifies and misstates the case. There are any number of Bibles, even in the Catholic church, and the various versions translate key passages differently. Which I suppose is part of the problem.
** I haven't looked this up, but I have no reason to think they would've made this up for the purposes of the film. Maybe some religious scholar can enlighten us?

Somewhere, Bill Maher is smiling,* and Oprah is fat.

If you've been following the incessant coverage of the new administration, you know that a certain segment of the population has got its historically tight shorts all bunched up over a single word (or a single hyphenate, depending on whether you're a fan of AP style) in Obama's inaugural speech. The word is nonbelievers, and it appeared, in context, like so:

We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus—and nonbelievers...

Seems the Christians among us—especially some leaders in the Christian black church, according to media reporting on the controversy—think Obama's use of the word may signal a plot to take the U.S. in a more secular direction.

Wow. You mean we're actually going to consider governing this nation based on things like, say, science? Or simple pragmatics?

==================================

Your not-always-so-gracious host is quoted extensively in this piece, today, about Oprah, her chronic battle of the bulge, and what it all means. The New York Post is not normally known for its intellectual heft, and during the Murdoch era has been tainted by a distinct partisan air, but I think writer Maureen Callahan did a masterful job of sketching the fundamental paradox of hope—that paradox explaining why mainstream inspirational efforts are so often self-defeating. Worth a read.

* Maher has long chafed at the way our Judeo-Christian culture marginalizes atheists, of which he is one.

How to gauge your odds of being cheated on. Lesson 2.

To follow up on the other day's discussion—or to "get down to cases," as I put it then—I could probably list a hundred things here, especially if I drilled down into nuances and sub-categories. In the interest of brevity on a busy day, I'm going to confine myself to Four Routine Female Behaviors That Do Not Bode Well for Male Fidelity.

Women: Are you always spending money (yes, even if it's your own money, that you personally earned) in ways that you know would upset your man, especially if he grasped the full extent of it? When you go out to dinner together, for example, do you find it necessary to squeeze in a little clothes/accessory/cosmetics shopping along the way, maybe afterwards? If so, you're pushing the needle five degrees farther along the "my man will be more tempted to cheat" scale. (Yes, I know, you came home just last week in those great new shoes with the red soles, and modeled them for him, and he smiled and professed his admiration. He even said, "Wow, looks great, baby." Doesn't matter. That's not how he was feeling inside.*) And no, he does not consider his new two-seater or home-theater system in the same category; those are "necessary and proper expenditures." Again, I'm not saying any of this is fair, or right. I'm just saying that I think this is how a good number of men look at the marital partnership: "Why is she always wasting money on 'stupid stuff'? That's disrespectful of my feelings." He wouldn't put it in those terms, exactly, because men, still today, do not generally express hurt as hurt. Half the time they don't even recognize it as hurt. Which is part of the problem. A man feels obliged to deal with any malaise he's feeling in a stereotypically male way: by hitting something or screwing something.

Women: Do you indulge in those "fun" little girl-talk sessions wherein everyone gets such a kick out of making jokes about how dumb and generally incompetent their man is? No, he probably won't hear about it (except maybe from one of your "friends," who's "just goofing around" when she "hints at" what you said "in confidence"). But if you act that way around your GFs, chances are you're projecting/communicating some of the same contempt around him. Speaking of contempt:

Women: Do you actually manifest that contempt by talking about his ineptitude at [fill in the blank] in public, when he's right there to hear it? Let's hope you know enough never to fill in the blank with "sex." It can be anything, though: plumbing, household chores, burning the food when he barbecues, etc. This is a biggie; high odds of retaliation-by-vagina.

And—drum roll please!—the biggest transgression of all:

Women: Do you act more like his mother than his wife/lover? This is actually an umbrella category rather than a specific transgression, and as such, it's a place where I could list dozens of examples, if I had time. But the real point is, do you have any idea how many women would have to answer a resounding YES! Especially in relationships that have gone on for more than a few years? Think of the women depicted in sitcoms. The wife on King of Queens? Mother complex, majorly infantilizing; likely would be cheated on, if, that is, her overweight, mall-cop-playing hubby could find (a) his testicles, and (b) someone to cheat with him. Debra on Everybody Loves Raymond? Mother complex, condescending and belittling (despite her obvious love for him), likely would be cheated on. All of the wives depicted in TV commercials—were these marriages real—would run a super-high risk of having husbands who always had to work overtime or were suddenly being summoned to mysterious meetings. And by the way, if you're a woman and your gut response to this question was an unapologetic, "Well, lord knows he needs a mother!", feel free to disregard everything else said here (or anywhere else) about building a solid marriage and push the needle all the way over to "he'll definitely cheat." In fact, he's probably with someone else right now, as you're reading this.

The real takeaway here is that unlike men, who, when they screw up, tend to do it in colossal, monstrously hurtful fashion, a woman is more apt to kill her man's spirit with a thousand small cuts—at least as he sees it. None of these sins, examined in isolation, amounts to much, certainly not in the mind of the woman. (Confronted, later, she might even profess to have no idea what he's talking about.) And as noted, what guy is going to run around saying things like, "Yeah, my baby really hurt my feelings last night, boo-hoo...."? But it adds up, each little wound eroding his sense of duty to his wife and the marriage.

To be continued...?

* The one obvious exception to this rule: lingerie.

I'm feeling quite determined today.

As noted in a previous post, I'm working on a complex piece for Skeptic about the American criminal-justice system. In connection with the assignment I recently interviewed celebrated trial lawyer Gerry Spence, long one of the more flamboyant members of a very flamboyant breed. Spence has had a remarkable career. (Remarkable is an overused word, but his career lives up to the intended meaning.) Just turned 80, he has not lost at trial since 1969—and this is mostly in a realm, criminal law, where the conviction rate in serious felonies hovers above 90 percent. Spence first made national headlines when he won a $10.5 million judgment* against the late Karen Silkwood's former employer, nuclear plant operator Kerr-McGee. He then famously won acquittal for Randy Weaver in the Ruby Ridge gun-battle, and defended Imelda Marcos against racketeering charges.

Here's a quote from my interview of Spence that really leaped up at me as I went over the transcript:

"What I try to teach trial lawyers is that my decisions, and your decisions, and judge Scalia's decisions, and everybody's decisions are made in the gut first, and then the brain is called upon to produce something called reason or logic to support it."**

To me, that sounds like still more evidence for determinism—this notion that what we call decisions are really made deep inside, below the threshold of awareness, then the mind kicks into gear in an effort to justify/validate what we've already "decided." If that's the case, then where does the "choice" enter the picture?

Just thought it was worth mentioning.

* Appeals and significant post-trial wrangling eventually produced a settlement of $1.3 million.
** Spence created and presides over the Trial Lawyers College. He will not accept into the program lawyers who hail from the corporate realm.

How to gauge your odds of being cheated on. Lesson 1.

First off, a personal fashion take. Before that, a disclaimer, one of two today. What follows is going to strike some people as mean-spirited. It is not my intention to be mean-spirited—and that is certainly not how I approach life. (People who know me will tell you I'm a teddy bear. Then again, I never get out of the basement, so there aren't many people who know me.) But sometimes in order to make a point, especially when the point is that people are only looking at a situation in one narrow way, you have to be a bit jarring. That's what I'm doing here.

So: Is it really necessary, as part of the ongoing Obama-fest, to rhapsodize about how "stunning" Michelle O. looked in her various get-ups yesterday? She is a middling-looking woman at best*, and that white number she showed up in at the Neighborhood Ball in particular reminded me of something my sisters and I might've made out of Mom's old bedspreads. Nevertheless, the media this morning are uniformly agog at her "fashion sense." (No one felt that she looked unattractive, even silly at times, yesterday? No one? Everyone thought she was a knockout?) Barack, on the other hand, looked classy and sexy (can I say that without having my Guy License revoked?); and as he and the Missus danced tentatively to Beyonce's exquisite serenade (God, can the girl sing!), I kept thinking what a winning couple he and the songstress would have made, physically. (Or what a winning couple he would have made with just about anybody else who was there, including Sting or Bono.) This is not taking anything away from the First Lady as a person; she's as impressive in her own way as Barack is in his—and that's far more important than looks. But then why must our media friends go on and on about the looks? I see this as a minor (but excellent) example of what I mean by "the Givens." You're not going to hear a Mr. Blackwell** on any of the shows today (or anytime soon) ripping Michelle O's appearance to shreds. It's impolitic, and impermissible. Just won't happen.

P.S. Speaking of the Obama-fest and its apparent dictates: Musically, Aretha Franklin's rendition of My Country Tis of Thee sucked. Over-long, overdone, and very "pitchy," as American Idol's Randy Jackson might've put it. No Beyonce or Whitney Houston, she. At least not yesterday. Bet you won't hear that anywhere, either.

==============================

To return to Ashley Madison, or more broadly the overall topic of adultery and related, um, affairs...

I have long believed that women don't understand the subtle psychodynamics of adultery, and the proof of the pudding is that they tend to look at the problem in simple quid pro quo fashion: I don't cheat on you, so don't you cheat on me. When I hear a woman propose that even-Stephen equivalence—and it always comes from a woman—I am somewhat reminded of the pseudo-Catholics I know who give up something for Lent that they never eat anyway.

For the remainder of this post—this will constitute my second disclaimer—please bear in mind that it's just me, one guy, talking, as he reflects on what he regards as the lessons of his life. I don't have an overwhelming cache of evidence to back me up, save for what I accumulated anecdotally as a result of my own admitted missteps (which don't even necessarily fit the pattern described herein), my informal conversations with other guys, and the somewhat-more-formal research we did at Men's Health in connection with projects like The Book of Sex. I've devoted a lot of thought to all that, and what you're now reading is the result. So take it for what it's worth: if nothing else, a springboard for further conversation, perhaps.

Today's crazy hook-up culture notwithstanding, promiscuity isn't nearly as much a part of a woman's programming as it is a man's. Not once she settles down, anyway. Single women may be every bit as piggish and libidinous nowadays as the average single guy and then some (making up for lost time?). Still, I'm not convinced that the basic nature of the beast has changed that much. And I'm fairly certain that once a woman goes through the pageantry of selecting her bridal gown, deciding on a type-face for the invitations and focusing her energies on a committed relationship, she's, well, committed. She has sowed all those wild oats, got it out of her system, and now she's ready to nest, to do The Family Thing. Not so, we males. Family thing or no family thing, in some corner of our reptilian brain, we're still single. The only difference is that we got married (or, increasingly today, moved in with someone). At least in spirit, the store is always open for business. And gals, for my money, any man who denies it is just telling you what you want to hear.

To be clear: I'm not saying that all men actually cheat. I think it's a mistake to draw literal inferences from comedy routines like those Eddie Murphy classics or, these days, the work of the surreally raunchy Jim Norton: routines that assume that every guy "knocks off a quick piece whenever he can." Those routines may be funny as hell, but they are comedy, in the end, and I'm 96% sure that they overstate the case. In doing so, they also create fertile ground for lots of arguments on the way home from the club.

Having said all this, cheating itself—which is to say, going through with it—is not, I'm conivinced, for most men, a crime of passion. The urge is sexual, no doubt about it. A man has a fleeting impulse to mate with just about every sweet young thang who swishes through his field of vision in her scandalous Juicy jeans. What stops him, when he's in a loving, committed relationship, is guilt; conscience.* A sense of loyalty to his woman. Respect for his woman. It follows that anything that erodes those feelings also markedly ups the odds that a man will stray. (This does not apply in the case of celebrities, who probably do it just because it's there to be done, and because their egos are such that they feel above consequences and judgment.)

If a man feels that he's being mistreated—disrespected, ignored, overlooked, criticized, even in ways that have nothing to do with sex—then the conscience and, hence, the guilt become less of a factor. They lose their power to rein him in. So when he feels the urge, there's less holding him back. (Question: When, historically, is one of those times when a man is most susceptible to an affair? Answer: Soon after his wife has a baby. Now, lots of people would think, My God, how could he do that, with his beloved woman and the beautiful blossom of their love waiting at home? Simple. Because his wife is giving all of her attention to the love-blossom. He feels, suddenly, like a non-entity.) I see adultery, then, as a passive-aggressive form of retaliation. The man is getting even for something. The normal controls slip away, because he starts to feel (rightly or wrongly) as if he was victimized, first. She fired the first shot in this battle of the sexes. (OK, here comes a third disclaimer: I'm not defending it. Just explaining it.)

We'll get down to cases next time.

UPDATE, 11:30 a.m. The View polled its studio audience, overwhelmingly female, and Barbara Walters announced diplomatically that "they didn't love" the dress (shown above).

* Barack's extravagant and unself-conscious compliment, if sincere, proves that beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder.
** You wouldn't see him anyway, because he's dead. But you get my drift.

Sacrilege!

I am proud to report that SHAM is listed as No. 4 on the "10 Essential Books for the Skeptic," according to the International Society of Heathens. Yeah, I know; the name gives one pause. And the "society" appears to be, basically, a blog.

But I figure, any list that has Carl Sagan's book as No. 1 ain't a bad list to be on.

Where are the maps that show where the little kids live? Or, Steve's final post on race.

I believe it is time we stopped identifying individuals' accomplishments by the color of their skin.... The news media keep alive the prejudices. Let's identify [Obama] as the next President of the United States, period!

—From a letter in my local paper this morning.

I do indeed plan to make this my last column on race (and I can hear the hosannahs going up wherever SHAMblog is read, which isn't that large a universe, but still...). After this post I'm giving up, giving in, however you want to phrase it. You have my word. I'm merely claiming a point of privilege in taking a few parting shots.

Scene 1. As much as anything, Big Media's run-up to tomorrow's Obama Inaugural, with its unapologetically gleeful intonation (and not the merest pretense of anything resembling journalistic detachment), symbolizes my gripe with the news business and its Givens. Clearly there is one and only one permissible story line for the occasion: We are witnessing a cultural milestone, the culmination of a great and noble social crusade; the nation now rejoices that a "black man," Barack Obama, has ascended to the highest position in American government, as well as the most powerful leadership position in the world, even despite the nation's recent travails. In short, America has grown up. We've arrived!

The media uncritically accept Obama's curious self-definition on its face: He is universally reported to be the first African-American president, not the 44th white one (which he is, of course, equally. The sheer absurdity of that whole confusing and artificial dichotomy is why we need to get rid of the concept of race. Its scientific validity is highly suspect to begin with, and it's way too arbitrary and subject to perversion for sociopolitical reasons). His inauguration ceremony, which has taken on the flavor of a coronation, is considered an unambiguously joyful moment, even though there are, surely among us, separatists (yes, from Obama's "own race," too) who'd prefer to see the man just about anywhere but in the Rose Garden. You do not hear reporters introduce their reporting on the event with phrases like "the man who describes himself as black" or "the man who still clings to racial concepts even though science increasingly repudiates the concept of race" or "the man who, by labeling himself a person of color, perpetuates the very racial stereotypes that Martin Luther King Jr. was trying to eradicate." I don't necessarily want to see such phrases used; they're a form of editorializing, too, and probably have no place in honest journalism. But neither do the congratulatory and uplifting phrases you're going to hear all day today and certainly tomorrow, during the event* itself. You'll hear commentators on every news channel remark at the inspirational majesty of it all. You will not hear editorialists wonder if Obama and many of his sympathizers are practicing a form of racism themselves, and may ultimately do more harm than good to the nation's halting progress towards true integration. (Rush Limbaugh talked around the edges of this type of commentary and was widely denounced for it.)

I say again: Journalism should never takes sides. In anything. This is why it vaguely bothers me whenever I see local media run stories in which they show maps indicating where the sexual predators live. My title for this post is meant facetiously, but it has a serious point to make: The media should not be cheerleading for causes, even seemingly unassailable ones. For the record, there was and is another side to Megan's Law and the flurry of ensuing legislation; it's not up to the media to decide that such opposition lacks merit. That is a political position, rooted in a respect for law and order and "decency" that the media should not, inherently, have. Thirty years ago in New York City, a group called the BLA expressed its outrage at centuries of oppression by ambushing and executing cops. Those acts of murder were also acts of political protest: rebellion against a legal orthodoxy that, these self-styled revolutionaries felt, did not speak for the black race and only sought to persecute blacks. At least in concept, the thinking was not that dissimilar to the logic that launched America. (One might also say it was a modern-day extension of the Civil War.) It was not the media's place to decide that those cop murders were wrong, and to cover them through that lens. By all means report it. Just don't demonize it.

Getting back to tomorrow's events, the media should not be trying to inspire and uplift us. The news should not celebrate anything—especially not the election of a president. Some folks might say, "Well, Steve, there's a time and place for everything. Let them celebrate today. They can go back to being objective journalists tomorrow." Does that really make sense? If you were the defendant in a serious criminal trial, would you want there to be certain days when, say, the jury goes over to the prosecution table and back-slaps with the D.A. and the victim's family?

Might that not create certain doubts in you about the panel's overall impartiality when they return to the jury box?

Scene 2. Sunday in my local paper there was a piece by syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts. Pitts, who is a black** man, talks about how, despite all this "post-racial" talk, Barack in his heart is "one of us" and will sometimes even give himself away. (One of us is my phrase. I am summarizing the point of the piece, though Pitts doesn't actually use those words.) Pitts says that this in fact happened once when Pitts and Barack ran into each other and Obama mentioned something about a recent Pitts column; the columnist expressed surprise that Obama was familiar with his work, to which Obama replied, smiling, "Oh yeah, brother, I read you." From which we are to deduce, now, that Barack Obama is not only black, but also a "brother," in the sense of that special bond between members of the black race. (This assumes the truth of the anecdote of which Pitts writes. And I doubt he'd write it if it hadn't happened.)

You know, whenever I need a reality check I tend to turn to my youngest son, who is very much a realist—as unromantic in his take on life as you're apt to find—and something of a student of human nature as well. Graig tells me: "Just look at the guy. He's black, dude. End of story." So I guess I'm willing to accept the superficial definitions rooted in appearance, "the way Obama carries himself" (whatever the hell that means), and his "Negroid features," even though I find such labeling brackish, divisive and anachronistic.

It's just that I did not vote for a man who sees other dark-skinned people as his ideological (or, God help us, literal) "brothers."

I don't mean to freight an offhand, jocular remark with too much meaning. But we need to be clear here: In voting for Barack Obama, I voted for a person, a collection of attributes; a spectacular person whom I adjudged extraordinarily qualified to lead the nation. And I voted for post-racialism. (Yes, I'd read his books, in which he made his natural sympathies clear. I just assumed he was beyond that now.) Had Hillary been the candidate, though I find her to be icy and fake, I would've bitten my lip and voted for her, because she would've been, in my view, the best person for the job. Not the best white person or the best person with a vagina.

I don't care how you slice or parse it or explain it away, to say "I am your brother" to a black man is saying "I am not your brother" to a white man. That's bad enough when it occurs between two men of "pure" black bloodlines, but in a man who's 50 percent white, 50 percent black—who has just been elected president, and who accepts the validity of race—that represents a pointed rejection of half of his heritage. A slap in the face to the rest of us whom he does not regard as "brothers."

Well, I sure hope the guy can govern, anyway.

* The coverage of the inauguration will flow seamlessly into coverage of the various celebratory balls, etc.
** Here as elsewhere in this post, I'm using the standard definitions of race.

'Now baby, you know I read everything Steve writes.'

If you're an SGWP* and you're looking for a plausible reason to bring Playboy into the home, my long piece on NFL officials appears in the new (February '09) issue, now on the stands. It walks readers through the Manning-Tyree play from last season's Super Bowl, from the vantage point of all seven on-field officials. As it happens, Playboy released the Feb. issue with three different covers and the piece gets a cover line on just two of 'em. But it's in all three versions.

Give it a try.

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I've gotten another email or two from people who seem to think my conspiracy theories re Amazon's unfair treatment of SHAM are not only paranoid but juvenile. (See the second half of my post of January 10.) So let's look at this a bit more scientifically.

As it stands today, January 16, 2009, my book has received a total of 83 customer reviews. The breakdown is as follows:

5-stars: 33
4-stars: 13
3-stars: 8
2-stars: 10
1-stars: 19

Add the number of bad reviews together, the 1-stars and 2-stars, and you have a grand total of 29...or less than the number of 5-star reviews alone. So what does Amazon do? It showcases a 1-star review and a pair of 2-star reviews that it leaves up on permanent display.

You're telling me that's "representative"?

* straight guy with partner

Hit parade. Super ball. And toys in her attic?

I wanted to take a moment to thank all those who visited/commented over the past seven days for contributing to by far the best single week in SHAMblog history, hits-wise. Even without today's numbers, we've already shattered longstanding high-water marks for unique visitors and total page loads for a Saturday-through-Friday (which is how my stat counter organizes its week); the previous benchmarks date all the way back to July 7-13, 2007, a period that came on the heels of my "self-help horror stories," which I then deemed it necessary to suspend due to certain concerns.

One thing that continues to fascinate me is that stats on total blog utilization appear to have no relationship whatever to number of comments or, for that matter, incremental sales of SHAM. There are days/weeks when a relatively small visitor base will generate an extraordinary number of comments. And there are weeks (like this one, in fact) when an extraordinary number of people will just "poke their head in the door" without pausing to engage. One hates to sound like a poor-man's Camus, but I wonder what it all means?

Anyway, thanks to all. Hope I can keep you interested in the days and weeks ahead.

================================

By now you've probably heard the flap about the proposed Super Bowl commercial that the NFL wound up flagging for illegal procedure. (If you don't really follow football, that's my clever, insider's way of saying that the NFL nixed the spot.) The ad is for a company called Ashley Madison, and the best way to describe what Ashley Madison does is...well, it's like a Match.com for philanderers who want to be above-board (if you will) about it. Which is to say, it's for people who don't want to have to sign up for a dating service under an assumed identity and/or spend hours before a date using sunless tanner in a determined effort to hide that pesky and incriminating pale area on the ring finger of their left hand.

Ashley's ballsy, unflinching slogan says it all:

LIFE IS SHORT. HAVE AN AFFAIR.

With a viewership approaching 100 million, the Super Bowl, of course, has long represented the literal and figurative kick-off for dozens of major advertisers' hot new campaigns for the new year. SB advertising has taken on a life of its own, becoming an event, a happening, in its own right. Clearly the NFL doesn't want to soil its marquee property with the mention of something as squalid and unappealing as casual sex. The league would rather rake in its $186 million in ad revenues* (in 30-second increments, at around $3 million per) by promoting alcohol (that a lot of its viewers already drink in excess) and snappy cars (that viewers can't really afford to buy, then go out and drive way too fast), and other responsible adult behaviors. The funny part is, the spots for both the alcohol and the cars will entice male viewers (many of whom are married) with the lure of beautiful women offering anonymous sex.

There are a number of things I could say here, editorially, but I think first I'd encourage you to put aside any knee-jerk outrage you may be feeling, read this column by Los Angeles Times writer Meghan Daum, and tell me if she doesn't make some points that, at the very least, are food for thought.

More on all this next week.

================================

Finally, apropos of our gurus and the bona fides we assume them to have, there is this.

* Both figures in this graph, viewership and ad revenues, are for 2008's Super Bowl.

Their American dreams are stuck on Idol.

First off, short but interesting piece in Forbes today, in which your host is (rather provocatively) quoted. I don't recall saying exactly that, but I can't really argue the point, either.
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American Idol has begun again, and with it comes another instructive clinic in what happens when blind Empowerment ("It's always been my dream to be a singer!") crashes up against a medium where talent* rules and—unlike what we've been conditioned to expect by the anti-competitive gospel preached in today's grade schools—not everyone can win. (In their manic desire to leach all games of their competitive aspect while also downplaying any concomitant sense of aggression, some schools have followed the national PTA's offhand recommendation by renaming tug-o'-war...tug-o'-peace! I guess that would make those grumpy Afghanis who, for centuries now, have run around killing each other while vying for control of a given patch of earth...peacelords.) Show after show at this early, weeding-out juncture, you have AI contestants tromping off stage, post-rejection, screaming/crying into the camera, more or less, "There's something wrong with this show! Simon and the rest of them are crazy! They don't know what to look for! I am the next American Idol...!"

We've talked about this before, in connection with an insightful New York Observer piece by Alexandra Wolfe about the dangers of something she labels TMPR, for "too much positive reinforcement." I won't belabor it here, except to say that until such time as we reconfigure life itself to fulfill everyone's wildest dreams—something I don't think we can realistically do (notwithstanding the frenzied efforts of today's "helicopter parents")—there's little sense in raising kids in an antiseptic environment that artificially shields them from failure and disappointment. Especially since, as I've documented in SHAM and elsewhere on this blog, the sort of nurturing, perpetually uplifting environment created in schools does not produce the sort of dogged commitment to success that early self-esteem theorists hoped for. On the contrary, it tends to produce indolence and narcissism, and may even, at its outer limits—as the work of academic psychologist Roy Baumeister and others suggests—cause the very violence that schools seek to thwart. In fact, self-esteem-based thinking has shown itself to produce the worst possible combination of traits: a sense of destiny and delusional entitlement in an individual who isn't willing to work for it and appears to resent the fact that it doesn't just fall into his lap.

Incidentally, if you watch the YouTube vid, above, listen carefully for this young woman's in-passing hypothesis, at the 3:25 mark, as to why one of the show's female producers might've rejected her during her most recent Idol tryout.

* That's not to say that I think it takes musical talent—in the specific sense of having a good voice, per se—to succeed in today's music world. To be honest, it never really did, as I think is clear from the careers of Bob Dylan, Phil Collins and even, dare I say, Mick Jagger, none of whom can sing a lick, if we're making such assessments based on criteria that are purely musical in nature. There's something intangible going on—some certain performance aspect in which the whole becomes exponentially more than the sum of its musical parts—that decides whether a performer will enjoy commercial success. In any case, talent or no talent, it is a highly Darwinistic medium and only a very, very small percentage of those who truly believe that they're "destined for greatness" will get a chance to live out their dreams.

What we should expect from our news.

From time to time since February 2008, when my long article on journalism and the news media first appeared in the online version of Skeptic*, people have asked me for more specifics on what I regard as the building blocks of valid, serious-minded news coverage. This is going to be a lengthy post, so I'll dive right in without further preamble.

The News must be apolitical.
This line of thought reached critical mass in 2001 with the controversy over Bernie Goldberg and his muck-raking book, Bias**, which savaged the mainstream media for its strong (and unapologetic) leftward tilt. It's a familiar argument by now and there's no need to go into it at any great length. I think we'd get a fairly universal buy-in—at least in principle—on the idea that the News should never have a specific political agenda, Left or Right. That consensus is likely to crumble a bit when you get to a more pointed discussion of implementation. For example, we'd have no trouble finding a large group of people who think The New York Times reports the news "straight," as well as another large group who think FOX News really is "fair and balanced" in its reportage. In truth, neither the Times nor FOX comes anywhere close to objectivity; and if there are large groups of partisans who think they do, it's only because the tenor of the respective reporting coincides with their own, well, biases.

The News should not have a nationality.
Agreement here would be less widespread and/or vigorous, especially from conservatives, self-described "patriots," and others who, for example, still chafe at the multinational*** tone of Peter Arnett's coverage during Desert Storm. A "borderless" approach to news delivery has profound and far-reaching implications. It means, most conspicuously, that even an epochal event like 9/11 should not be reported as an absolute and inarguable tragedy, because it would not be received as such everywhere. After all, upon hearing of the terror attacks, citizens partied in the streets of Damascus, Tripoli and Tehran—just as Americans might party in the streets if we popped all of Al Qaeda leadership in one big whack-out. To paraphrase and extend Eugene O'Neill's savvy observation about the (deterministic) continuum of life, no event takes place solely in the present moment, but rather is a composite of all that has gone before. As in the case of a revenge killing over an ancient grievance, there is always a history that has shaped what is happening today, even if that history is generally unknown (or even unknowable). Which means that 9/11 did not begin or end on 9/11. Nor is it the journalist's job to report that history; that would be contextualizing, which journalists should never attempt unless they can be sure of doing a comprehensive job. And because that's impossible—even Mike Wallace wasn't around when the earth cooled, ineluctably setting in motion next week's playoff between the Eagles and Cards—it should never be attempted.

It is simply bad journalism to cover an explosion that kills 10 American GIs outside Tikrit differently from a raid on an Afghanistan cave that results in the death of 10 of the world's most fearsome anti-U.S. terrorists. Besides—as a practical matter—even if journalism upholds "Americanism"...whose would it be? The Left's? The Right's? Should journalism revere what America is now? What America aspires to be? According to whom? The problems are evident.

Just report what happened and where.

The News cannot and should not use existing law as the basis for its take on a story, because laws are transient, malleable and often arbitrary.
Journalism should never cover man's law as if it were eternal law (assuming any such thing exists), framing illegal activities as if they're objectively wrong or framing legal activities as if they're objectively right. (Lest we forget, Rosa Parks broke the law when she refused to give up her seat.) Historically, in fact, many might argue that journalism has proved to be most valuable when its reporting took a contrarian bent, opposing existing laws and policies. (I don't favor that, either, because journalism isn't supposed to take an active side in things, pro or con. Any changes that occur should occur "by accident," as a result of the public's response to what it hears and sees in the News. Journalists are simply conduits, providing information to a citizenry that will do what it believes needs doing with that information.)

The very foundation of American democracy, the U.S. Constitution, is itself elastic, open to interpretation and subject to amendment. And even the loftiest of ideals embedded in the Constitution and other founding documents are unproven. "All men are created equal"? It's a nice thought, and an uplifting premise for a culture...but its scientific validity remains moot.

Which brings us, finally, to:

The News should be amoral.
If by now our consensus on the aims of journalism has become somewhat fragile, this is where it really fractures. A lot of people have trouble with the proposition that journalism should not stand for good or evil, right or wrong. (Which, of course, means that journalism should not have causes.) Realize, for starters, that most political agendas are premised on notions of right or wrong; thus, morally tinged reporting too easily lends itself to political purposes. But it goes beyond that. To filter the news through a moral lens is to presume to know unerringly what the "correct" moral values are in the first place. Perhaps worse, in practical terms, news rooted in "social norms" inevitably tends to promote the notion that majority means validity. A news organization that builds its ethos around the values embraced by "most right-thinking people" is doomed from the start.

"Well wait just a damned second now!" you exclaim. [Hence the exclamation point.] "At the very least, journalism can safely uphold life over death! 'Thou shalt not kill' and all!" To which I would reply: You're kidding, right? We can't even agree as a society on whether "life" is the ultimate value. Think: abortion, capital punishment, right-to-die issues, wars. (We view the wars that we decide to wage as "just" and the loss of life that results as a "necessary evil" or "collateral damage." We forget that bin Laden felt similarly justified in attacking the World Trade Center.)

Clearly all loss of life is not equally tragic to all journalists, all everyday Americans, all Afghani warlords, all practicing physicians (who must make so-called "end life decisions") or anyone else. Thus we are left with the problem of deciding which deaths are "objectively" tragic and which aren't. Those are value judgments, and the media have no business making them. As soon as the journalist starts rationalizing, qualifying, parsing, hair-splitting or performing other ethical gymnastics in order to force-fit some types of death into this moral framework (but not others), he has abandoned objectivity and devolved into the realm of partisan politics and/or religion.

The objective newsperson must start from the premise that there is no absolute right or wrong, at least that we can all know and agree on. In the journalist's world, there is no such justice or injustice. There are only events. From my point of view, it is never the media's job to tell us how to think or feel about a story, and it certainly isn't the media's job to "reflect traditional values." Slavery once was a traditional value. So was homophobia. So was the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II. And on and on. And I'm not saying those things should be recognized as objectively wrong now. I'm saying that it's not the media's job to weigh in. In the end, the only workable approach is for the news media to project no values at all.

Nor can we turn to "God" for answers here, because the existence and nature of God are controversies unto themselves. Besides…whose God? Osama's? Jerry Falwell's? Joel Osteen's?

In the end, the media must learn to embrace, in practice, the catchy ethic that FOX news disingenuously preaches: We report, you decide. That's all there is to it.

* The piece was then republished in the print version, with slight alterations.
** Interestingly, or maybe sadly, enough, Goldberg then took a job as a FOX analyst and forswore any further pretense to objectivity. That doesn't necessarily taint his book, which was an outgrowth of a highly courageous column he wrote for The Wall Street Journal while still employed at network (CBS), and which I think stands on its merits. It just depresses me to see him trumpeting the party line night after night on O'Reilly or wherever. How does he not feel hypocritical?
*** Some prefer the word traitorous, and have never let Arnett (or his bosses) forget it. Here's a typical example.