Jeff Potash

Apple Bank Building Going Condo

When they power wash the Apple Bank building at Amsterdam and 73rd, a gray slurry rushes from behind the scaffolding and netting covering all but the ground floor. It cascades down the limestone, across the sidewalk, over the curb and down the gutter to a nearby sewer grate.  The building will soon be luxury condos. 

Every morning a man sits cross-legged under the scaffolding.  It's too early for power washing so the sidewalk is still dry.  When people approach, the man raises a paper cup with both hands and smiles a sweet, hopeful smile.  He wears fingerless wool gloves and black boots.  His blond hair is combed.  When I mouth "sorry" he looks down at a Bible on the ground next to him.

This morning I was surprised to see him standing, his gloved right fist pressed under his chin.  The Thinker, but upright.  As I got closer I could see two undercover cops kneeling below him, looking through his bags. 

New MSN article - How to Get Along with Your Girlfriend's Dad

He fills his annual housework quota by carving the Thanksgiving turkey and occasionally lowering the toilet seat.  He's never washed a dish, made a bed or changed a diaper - and he's proud of it.

How to get along with your girlfriend's Dad.

And no, "sweetie" and "honey" do not belong in a self-respecting man's vocabulary. Here's proof that they aren't in mine: a fascinating behind the scenes look at the editing process.

Colbert and Bush

Sad or funny?

1. Watching Bush give a State of the Union address. 
2. Watching Bush hold a press conference. 
3. Watching Stephen Colbert speak about Bush at the White House Correspondent's Association's annual dinner.

While they all fall into the general category of "this would be funnier if it wasn't so painfully sad", at least Colbert is trying to be funny (and sad).

The full transcript and video of Stephen Colbert at the dinner.

Nothing New to Say About March Madness

So here's last year's article.

Israel Kamakawiwo'ole - Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Step 1: Dial down cynicism (don't worry, you can turn it back up in a minute).

Step 2: Read bio of Israel Kamakawiwo'ole.

Step 3: Listen to Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World" here.

I've been to enough "Mommy and Me" classes to recognize that as the official end of class theme song for when they blow bubbles for the kids to chase and poke.  Warning: either don't listen to the words or don't think about Mr. Kamakawiwo'ole or don't look at your kid (or come up with your own precautionary measure) unless you want to blubber like half-a-man in front of the Mommies.  And you don't.  Trust me.

Happiness (algebra required)

From a New Yorker review of Jonathan Haidt's "The Happiness Hypothesis" and Darrin McMahon's "Happiness, A History":

"Looking at the data from all over the world, it is clear that, instead of getting happier as they become better off, people get stuck on a 'hedonic treadmill': their expectations rise at the same pace as their incomes, and the happiness they seek remains constantly just out of reach."

I spend years saving up for one of those Sharper Image Hedonic Treadmills and now you're telling me they don't work?  As if the ionic breeze air purifier news wasn't bad enough.

More from the review:

"Positive psychology has even devised a formula for how to be happy, where H is your level of happiness, S is your set point, C is the conditions of your life, and V is the voluntary activities you do... H = S + C + V ."

What's that Johnny? You want to know when you'll use algebra in real life?  Hmmm, let's see. Not so  often.  Oh yeah, maybe when it's time to figure out a way to be happy, but that's about it.

John Lanchester's New Yorker review of "The Happiness Hypothesis" by Jonathan Haidt and "Happiness, A History" by Darrin McMahon.

In Oregon, Physician Assisted Suicide Lives to See Another Day

Is physician-assisted suicide right or wrong?

In Gonzales v. Oregon, the Supreme Court faced that question.  Well, the Court actually faced this question: If a doctor prescribes a drug intended to hasten a patient's death, is the doctor serving a "legitimate medical purpose"?  But that's just Supreme Court-speak for "Is physician-assisted suicide right or wrong"? 

The Court's answer? Hmmmm. (A few pages of hmmmm, as a matter of fact.)  Then: Physician-assisted suicide might be right.  On the other hand, it might be wrong. It's not for us to decide.  Yet.  But as things stand now, it's certainly not up to the Executive branch.  And contrary to what the Attorney General thinks, Congress hasn't deputized him to decide this one.  So until Congress says otherwise, states can decide for themselves whether to allow physician-assisted suicide.

Here's the Supreme Court opinion issued on Tuesday.  Of course, the Court didn't tell us whether a federal law banning physician-assisted suicide nationwide would be Constitutional. In 1997, the Court told us in Washington v. Glucksberg that we don't have a Constitutional right to a doctor's assistance in taking our own lives, which means states can ban physician assisted suicide (49 have - only Oregon allows it). 

This from Scalia's Gonzales v. Oregon dissent, joined by Thomas and Roberts (nope, it didn't take long for the new guy to settle in): "If the term 'legitimate medical purpose' has any meaning it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death." 

Translation: Even if Congress didn't come out and say it, we just know that Congress knows that physician-assisted suicide is wrong.  Surely Congress wouldn't mind the AG taking some initiative on this one.  And don't even get us started on whether a federal ban on physician-assisted suicide would be Constitutional. Right Kennedy?  Stevens?  Souter?  Hey, look alive over there. Get it? Look alive over...It's a physician assisted... Oh, forget it.  Do we have a start-date yet for that Alito guy?

For those of you who can't get enough of this kind of thing, here's Professor Bainbridge on Scalia's (and Roberts's) approach to interpreting the Constitution.

Is it Just Me, Or Is Fox's "Trading Spouses" Really Good? (Part 2)

Couldn't resist watching the follow-up episode to last week's "Trading Spouses" and then looking around the web for some more info on the exasperating Ann Marie Burgess.  Of course, Fox (and the Burgess's) had manipulated us: Rob and Ann Marie were all but divorced when they did the show.  It was all in a letter on Rob's website.  (The letter has vanished.  Someone must have bought the movie rights.  Surreal.) 

Over the 2 episodes Ann Marie was amusing (she's kidding us, right?), baffling (could she really be that detached?), frustrating (stop it, Ann Marie, just stop it), sad (can't she see she's torturing everyone around her?) and tragic (the thought of her two sensitive daughters facing another decade with this troubled, troubling mother).

We've all met Ann Maries but never see them portrayed in movies or on TV. Maybe nothing but a reality show can capture such subtle insanity. 

 

Is it Just Me, Or Is Fox's "Trading Spouses" Really Good?

On last week's Trading Spouses, big-hearted rural Wisconsin mom Raegan Dexter trades families with insufferable Fort Lauderdale mom Ann Marie Burgess.  After only a couple of days living with Ann Marie's shy husband Rob and their sweet daughters, Raegan senses something deeply sad about Rob and the Dexter marriage.  And Raegan hasn't even met Ann Marie, who has been a self-centered fool up on the Dexter farm. (Ann Marie is so awful that we begin to wonder if she's been treated unfairly in the editing process.)

The most touching moment I've seen on TV in a long, long time comes near the end of the episode when Raegan, alone with the camera, cries for Rob. 

It's a Fox reality show, so maybe I'll skip the follow-up episode (this Friday), which will inevitably throw in a twist that will make me feel manipulated.  Like Ann Marie is terminally ill or Rob clubs baby seals on weekends.

Electronic Hamster

On the promenade in Central Park, my son Nick (who’s almost 2) and I came across three hamsters - two real and one mechanical.  The hamsters were watched over by an older man playing the flute. The two real hamsters, both with tan and white fur, barely moved. The third, black and mechanical, whirred and bobbed.

The man wore white pants, a white dress shirt and a white macramé kufi cap. He lowered his flute as we approached.

“Pet this one here,” he said. “It’s electronic.”

“Will the real ones nip him?” I asked, although Nick was already petting the hamsters.

“No, but this black one don’t have no teeth, so I know he ain’t gonna bite your boy. I made him myself with electronics.” With his foot he nudged the mechanical hamster closer to Nick.

"Everyone’s afraid of the big black guy. No one wants to touch him.” I looked up at him and he used his flute to direct my attention back to the hamsters.

The rest of the story

(Every so often I post a short parenthood essay, adding a link to it in the far left column of this site's main page.  Most are adapted from a series of longer essays I'm working on.)

Celebrity Hygiene Dilemma: Fan Comes First for Pat O'Brien

Last night in the men's room at Shun Lee West (Upper West Side, Manhattan), a grey-haired man in a white wool sweater finishes at a urinal and goes to the sinks. A slightly younger man in a black suit leaves a stall and joins him at the sinks.  The grey haired man seems to recognize the slightly younger man.

"Bill, I just want to shake your hand," says the grey haired man.

The slightly younger man - "Bill" - extends his arm and they shake. Bill definitely hasn't washed yet.  Not sure about older man.  Is he a friend of Bill's?  Is this just some unwashed-hands-in-the-bathroom humor between old friends?

"I want to tell you how much I like your work," the grey haired man says. 

"Thanks," says Bill, and washes his hands. 

"I want to thank you for all your great work over the years," says the grey haired man.  "I’ve enjoyed it."  He waits for something more from Bill.    

"That’s why we do it," says Bill.  "We do it for people like you." 

Bill's voice is familiar.  Very.  Light thinning hair combed straight back.

The older guy finally leaves.  I clear my throat to let Bill know he's blocking both sinks. 

Host of a news program.  Bill?  Not Beutel.  The voice - very familiar.

Back at the table I describe Bill to my wife.  Voice definitely from a TV news show.  Wait - maybe from porn and coke messages I heard on Howard Stern?  She suggests Entertainment Tonight  and "Pat O'Reilly".  I agree.  "Bill" must have been a slip of the older man's tongue - Bill O'Reilly's the guy on Fox.

Later, back at home, a minute or two on Google clears things up.  Pat O'Brien. 

A few points:

• Pat sounded absolutely sincere. Not a trace of sarcasm in the “we do it for people like you” line.
• Maybe such encounters are just a small price to pay for the benefits of celebrity. Or maybe, little by little, they lead a person (without their realizing it) to porno-ish phone messages and a tour in rehab.
• Can't fault O'Brien for not washing before shaking.  It all happened so fast.  Not sure I'd have done it differently. 
• The hot and sour soup at Shun Lee is OK, but not as good as at Grand Sichuan on 51st and 9th.  Menu at Grand Sichuan includes delicious "freshly killed chicken" dishes.  In same situation at Grand Sichuan, I might intercede (avian flu concerns).

Julian Barnes' England, England: Are Magical Moments the Meaning of Life?

"A sense of falling, falling, falling, which we have every day of our lives, and then the awareness that the fall was being made gentler, was being arrested, by an unseen current whose existence no-one suspected.  A short eternal moment that was absurd, improbable, unbelievable, true.  Eggs cracked from the slight concussion of landing, but nothing more.  The richness of all subsequent life after that moment."

Julian Barnes' England, England is a fractured novel, with a heart-tugging opening, a long funny middle and a short wistful ending.  Together (and maybe seperately) these parts provide plenty, but Barnes is best in "what's it all about?" land.

The book made the shortlist for the 1998 Man Booker Prize (for the best novel of the year by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland).  With 36 winners, 180 or so shortlisters and three or four times that many longlisters since 1969, the Booker Prize lists are a reader's Everest.  Or at least Ben Nevis.  I'm on track to summit a few days after never.   

Kurt Vonnegut: Form a Gang

DAVID BRANCACCIO: ... You write "what can be said to our young people now that psychopathic personalities — which is to say persons without consciences, without senses of pity or shame — have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations and made it their own?" What can we say to younger people who have their whole lives ahead of them?

KURT VONNEGUT: Well, you are human beings. Resourceful. Form a little society of your own. And, hang out with them. Get a gang.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: You're preaching getting into gangs?

KURT VONNEGUT: Yes. Well, look, it's--

DAVID BRANCACCIO: A good gang.

KURT VONNEGUT: Look, I don't mean to intimidate you, but I have a master's degree in anthropology.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: I'm intimidated.

KURT VONNEGUT: From the University of Chicago-- as did Saul Bellow, incidentally. But anyway, one thing I found out was that we need extended families. We need gangs. And, of course, if they're tribes and clans and so forth have been dispersed by the industrial revolution by people looking for work wherever they can find it. And a nuclear family, a man, a woman and kids and a dog and cat is no survival scheme at all. Horribly vulnerable. So yes, I tell people to formulate a little gang. And, you know, you love each other.

The entire interview.

This site's home page.

Tom Friedman Decides to Wake Up His Audience: Bush the Worst President Ever?

In yesterday's Tom Friedman NY Times OpEd:

If Bush doesn't rise to the challenges he faces then "the resources he will have squandered and the size of the problems he will have ignored will put him in the running for one of our worst presidents ever."

Friedman finally realized that his seemingly endless stream of World is Flat articles will never generate the excitement of a "worst president ever" contest. 

Back to this site's home page.

It's Veterans Day

Thank a veteran.

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.  Vietnam Veterans.   Korean War Veterans.   World War II Veterans.    Gulf War Veterans.   Desert Storm Veterans.

Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking

Read The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion and be reminded that you're still not absolutely certain what you really think about a few things.  Like love.  And life.  And Joan Didion. 

Didion writes about her life with, and the year following the death of, her husband John Gregory Dunne.  We might expect page after page of idealized intimacy but this book is too real to be concerned with our expectations. 

Intimacy approaches and fades, ebbs and flows, sentence by sentence, even phrase by phrase:

"I began.  I cleared the shelf on which John had stacked sweatshirts, T-shirts, the clothes he wore when we walked in Central Park in the early morning.  We walked every morning.  We did not always walk together because we liked different routes but we would keep the other's route in mind and intersect before we left the park.  The clothes on this shelf were as familiar to me as my own." (page 36)

There's something very true in all this, regardless of what we end up thinking of Joan Didion.

Back to this site's home page.

Is Maureen Dowd a fox?

With her new book out, it's all-Maureen Dowd, all the time, at least in the NY press.

In Sunday's book-teaser NY Times Magazine cover story , Dowd says high IQ, "critical faculties," independence and success make it hard for a woman to find a mate.  No doubt.  Not a day goes by when I don't wish my wife was dumber, duller, needier and less successful.

Ariel Levy calls Dowd a "fox" in his recent New York Magazine cover story.  Shouldn't foxiness compensate for horrible handicaps like brains, wits and success?  But wait a second: take a look at the pictures, especially the one on the cover.

Dowd seems interested in the unvarnished truth, so here it is: Levy snuck one by the fact checkers.  (My license to point this out? My own age-related unfoxiness.) 

Here's a more thoughtful response to all this: Katie Roiphe's Is Maureen Dowd Necessary?

Back to home page.

A Day Out With Thomas the Tank Engine

I’d classify my son Nick’s Thomas the Tank Engine enthusiasm as Stage III. 

Stage I’s get a kick out of Thomas and James and Henry and the other engines from Sodor, but they are just as happy with Elmo or Dora or some other character. 

Stage II’s know engine numbers and colors and can distinguish trains based on small differences like wheel configuration or tender size. 

Stage III’s casually toss around words like “wheel arch” and “lamp rod” and “sidings”. 

I realized Nick had entered Stage III while reading a Thomas story to him.  I turned a page to a picture of a stone bridge with arches spanning a steep ravine.

“Do you know what that’s called?” I asked. Nick nodded.  I paused, giving him a chance to answer.

“It’s called a bridge,” I said.  “Bridge,” I repeated, pausing again to make sure he got it.

“Dad, I don’t think it’s a bridge,” he said.

“No? Then what is it?” I asked, patiently playing along, wondering how he’d forgotten the word “bridge,” a word he has used for years.

“It’s a viaduct,” he said.

I’m sure there must be a Stage IV but I’m happy to know nothing about it.

Click here to read the rest

(Every so often I post a short parenthood essay, adding a link to it in the far left column of this site's main page.  Most are adapted from a series of longer essays I'm working on.) 

Lithwick, Greenhouse, Miers, Roberts, O'Connor, Biskupic and Breyer walk into a bar...

Dahlia (not Dalia) Lithwick's work for Slate and her summer guest column for the NY Times suggest she'd like to be The Next Linda Greenhouse (or maybe"LG Lite").  It doesn't hurt that people respond to her writing with passion.  Here's some love.  Here's something less than love. And for what it's worth, she's funny.

So what went wrong in her OpEd in Friday's Times? 

Lithwick gets tangled around a clever hook instead of making her case for judicial activism, the real issue. 

Lithwick's hook: How did Bush, who "got it so right with John Roberts get it so wrong with Ms. Miers?"  He didn't, says Lithwick.  He got it wrong with both.  Behind the book smarts and highfalutin judicial philosophy, Roberts, like Miers, is a pawn in Bush's quest to make the court irrelevant.  Roberts and Miers "may have more in common than you think."

How's that?

Lithwick recoils at Roberts's view that "the court exists not to act - not even to react - but chiefly to interpret passively," which means "if Congress wants to protect the weak, it must write crystal-clear legislation."  Then Lithwick takes a huge leap, suggesting that something about Roberts's "interpret passively" approach makes him unduly deferential to the executive branch. 

Yes, Roberts's approach and some of his D.C. Court of Appeals rulings might have unpleasant, unfair, even enenlightened practical implications (no individual rights for enemy combatants, for example), but what's the alternative?  Judicial activism, of course.  If Lithwick's OpEd is to carry any weight then she must make a case for it, no matter how abbreviated.  Instead she's busy figuring out how to play out the nifty "Roberts = Miers" hook. 

It's not as if Lithwick would need to form her own arguments for judicial activism. Plenty of professors and judges have done it.  Justice Breyer did it in his book Active Liberty.

The omission is all the more glaring after reading Judge Morris B. Hoffman's OpEd directly beneath Lithwick's.  Hoffman: "A week doesn't go by when I am not forced by the law to do something that I would rather not do if I were, say, a philosopher-king unencumbered by the legislation of mere mortals."

Would Lithwick tell Hoffman to spare himself the agony and just go ahead and do what he thinks fair?  What, exactly, is her position on judicial activism?  More importantly, why? 

According to Lithwick, Bush's nomination of the underqualified Miers is like flipping the bird at the Supreme Court.  You don't matter anymore so it doesn't matter who I send over.

Miers isn't just any bird. She's a bird primed to rule in Bush's favor because she's his crony.  No one expects her to apply a principled judicial philosophy (which definitely isn't the expectation for Roberts). What happens when Bush leaves office?  Will Miers lose her bearings? Will her heart and mind be up for grabs?

I'm lost too.  How is it again that Roberts and Miers "have more in common than you think?" 

Last month I watched part of a William & Mary panel on Justice O'Connor on CSPAN. Lithwick took a beating from Joan Biskupic, USA Today's Legal Correspondent. Lithwick went on for a while about O'Connor never setting out to be a swing vote - it always kind of ended up that way.  (Another clever hook.)  Then Biskupic, whose O'Connor biography is due out next week, politely explained why Lithwick couldn't be more wrong about O'Connor and her swing votes.  O'Connor, said Biskupic, left nothing to chance.  Lithwick took it gracefully (silently).

Maybe Lithwick should lay off the clever hooks for a while. 

(By the way, the Times, with its Times Select, must think they're doing a service by cutting links quickly.  To loosely paraphrase Justice Holmes's "three generations of imbeciles are enough" from the infamous Buck v. Bell, maybe the TImes thinks three days of blog links to a Times OpEd are enough.)

Philip Greenspun's read on Harvard's new investment chief; Higher learning or hedge fund?

Philip Greenspun reads into Harvard's hiring an "emerging markets bond specialist" to manage its $26 billion:  U.S. public equities will suck wind for years to come and looting by management will continue.  Both might happen (and the sarcasm is warranted), but U.S. public equities will be an important part of Harvard's investment strategy no matter how much management loots and, barring a total meltdown, no matter how the market performs overall. 

Management loots because institutional investors generally look the other way.  Why rock the boat? Public equity markets are where sophisticated, well-informed investors get to trade stocks with everyone else, not to mention the first place they look when they want to dump their private equity.  Harvard's new investment chief might be an "emerging markets bond specialist" but he's not a knucklehead.  Even if U.S. public equities perform poorly overall for the next few years, he'll find a way to make the market work for Harvard.

With its impressive investment record and $26 billion head start, maybe Harvard should just get out of the education thing altogether.  Harvard, follow your passion.  Get with the times. Become a hedge fund.