Daily Dartmouth Anti-Defamation League

A fellow VRWC type from Dartmouth e-mails me this link to a Dartmouth Review blog post and asks, "Having more experience than I on the "grown-up" side ofthe D's operations, what say you?" Since he's perhaps not the only one who's interested to read my response, I thought he'd forgive me for being rude and responding here. To recap the content of the link: the Dartmouth undergrads' daily paper, The Dartmouth (the "D), has recently "obtained" French court documents indicating petition trustee candidate Joe Asch's company was indicted in France for fiscal or tax fraud. Not surprisingly, their conservative rivals at the Review take them to task for this work of dirty "journalism."

Of course the D should have investigated the story. The Review insinuates that the D likely got the French court documents from an opposition researcher hired by the Repogle campaign and that this might have been just a bit underhanded of Repogle. Fine; so be it; I'm willing to accept that this might well be true. But I'm not convinced it makes sense for the D to tell the opposition researcher to just go away.

This is an important story. There's a lot at stake in trustee elections; these elections have generated a flood of national media coverage in the last few years, including from the New York Times. Of course alumni voters care about whether trustee candidates manage their firms ethically and legally. Of course it reflects poorly on the fitness of trustee candidates if they don't. What is the D writer supposed to say in this circumstance? "Please take your documents and go away. We don't think that this story is important enough for us to cover." Indeed, trying to claim that this story isn't interesting enough for the D is especially silly. Hanover's a sleepy little town, and D writers are often known to fall back on filling column inches with minutiae about long cafeteria lines and the pretty fall leaves.

Besides, what does Mr. Dameron think would have happened to the story if the D had refused to publish something? Does he not think that the oppo researchers would not have turned around and contacted the left-leaning Free Press? Does he think that the Freepers would have hesitated to lash out the crypto-right-wing crypto-conservatives at The Dartmouth for hushing up a potentially damning story about Joe Asch? Precisely whose interest does he think that would serve?

(Yes, of course, most D writers are...uh... very, very crypto about their right-wing conservatism. They're so much in the closet that they daren't admit their alleged right-wing conservatism to themselves. Yes, I know this, and I'm sure Mr. Dameron does too. But there are plenty of loons who are convinced that the D is insufficiently left-wing, who would not hesitate to write scathing things about an attempt to cover up a negative Asch story.)

A sensible person might point out that the D could have declined to print the story on the grounds that it refuses to deal with anonymous sources. It's true that when I was there, we generally declined to print quotes attributed to anonymous sources in extreme circumstances. Five years out, I don't know what their rules are now. Note, though, that this isn't a true anonymous sources case. The story only quotes an apparently verifiable government document which was leaked by an anonymous source.

In any case, the story itself is mostly reasonable. The student reporter called Asch and got his side of the story. Contra the Review blog post, this is not the usual practice of propagandists.

Dameron raises the reasonable point that the D ought to have reached out to outside legal experts to get a sense of just how bad Asch's wrongdoing was. I agree that a few such quotes would have made the story stronger. But this is much easier said than done. First, real experts in the law of cross-border tax transactions are insanely busy. They're partners at the kind of firms where they can charge over a thousand dollars per hour for their services. They barely have time to see their kids and wives, much less chat with undergrad reporters. Dameron throws out a reference to alumni connections. Of course many such people are Dartmouth grads, but to think that they bleed sufficiently green to leave aside paying clients to talk to twenty year olds suggests a rather... rosy... view of the importance of alumni ties.

Dameron may also underestimate how risk averse the average big firm lawyer is. If a D writer were so lucky as to get one of these guys on the phone, I can just imagine how the conversation would go. The law firm lawyer would have lots of caveats along the lines of "Based on the facts that you have provided..." and "On the other hand..." These guys don't like to get things wrong. They're afraid to do something that would get them in trouble with their paying clients, and so they tend not to speak in the kind of sound bites that would work in a story like this.

Similarly, I can only speculate about why the D waited so long to publish the story. It may have been so that it could occupy the front page for weeks during break. Or... it could have been that the staff recognized that this article had more moving parts than the typical summary of a speech story, and they may have waited until the last day of term to make sure that they'd ironed out as many wrinkles as possible.

Finally, I don't think that this episode raises any really serious questions about Asch's ethics or business judgment. By the account given in the D article, the tax dispute was settled amicably. These issues are complicated. Honest, ethical businessmen make mistakes in good faith.

Baking question

Again, I'm posting the same content here as to Facebook. Sorry! But can anyone recommend a recipe for a baked good that a)can travel eight hours in the car comfortably, in March weather, without spoiling and b)is not terribly sweet?

Thanks in advance!

Uncharacteristic bursts of optimism and non-misanthropy

1. I had no idea until today that it is possible for opthamologists to use special cameras to take retinal photographs IN LIEU OF ADMINISTERING EYEDROPS. This is approximately the most excellent thing ever, as I cannot stand drops and am bad at putting things in my eyes.

Some of you gentle readers will point out that I wear contact lenses. Yes, well, I had to visit my opthamologist's office about six or seven different times in high school while I struggled to learn how to get the things in. I am nothing if not vain.

2. Oyamel is awesome. The guacamole and scallops in pumpkin sauce are especially heavenly, but really, it seems hard to go wrong.

"The history of the modern Republican Party in one sentence: Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller got into an argument and George Wallace won."

Quoth Jonathan Rauch in National Journal.

I like Rauch a lot. He's good at channeling the raging id that I have deep down inside which loves to lash out at conservative anti-intellectualism. At the same time, I recognize the problems with giving my id too much free vein.

Let's start with acknowledging that okay, much of the tea partiers' belief system is intellectually incoherent. Fine. Most popular political movements are incoherent at some level. The bleeding heart types are as bad in their own way. Of course, that doesn't make it right when the bleeding hearts do it either. Rauch's right to acknowledge the problem. But sometimes he veers too far off into the direction of suggesting that this is a world historically bad time for the libertarian right. Whereas in my estimation, to paraphrase Churchill, our own historical moment is the worst time for the libertarian right except for all of the others.

I'm also put off by the choice of George Wallace as archetypal bad populist because of Wallace's famous racism. To his credit, Rauch acknowledges up front that the modern populist GOP is admirably non-racist. While I appreciate the concession, the whole exercise is a bit like a writing a column about Hitler's vegetarianism and gently asking the reader to set aside the whole Holocaust thing for a few minutes. Theoretically possible to put aside intellectually, yes; in practice, however, nearly impossible to accomplish because the emotional connotations are just too strong.

On a different note: why have populists picked out Brie as their favored symbol of elitist opprobrium? One, it's delicious. Two, a wedge of it typically costs about $5 ($3 for a small wedge and $7 for a really large one.) As far as luxuries go, this is a pretty affordable one.

Explanation for today's fit of vexation and dyspepsia

I read this piece by Ross Douthat and immediately remembered why I should never be anywhere near any position of power:

"Perhaps the most fundamental problem, however, is that INTJs really want people to make sense. :-) This sometimes results in a peculiar naivete', paralleling that of many Fs -- only instead of expecting inexhaustible affection and empathy from a... relationship, the INTJ will expect inexhaustible reasonability and directness."

Things other people are writing about the Akaka bill

I am normally delicate about keeping my work life away from this forum. I recognize all too well that I'm prone to sticking my foot in my mouth. But I see little harm in linking to things that other people have said about my work projects. In that spirit, do go see see this editorial and Ilya's fine posts on same.

In that spirit, if I'm reticent in comments, it isn't from lack of devotion. It's because of, well, said well-documented tendency to stick foot in mouth.

Straw poll

Apologies to people who read both this and my Facebook page; I recognize that there is significant overlap between the two. Bt what do people think of the concept of giving wedding guests the alternative of giving gifts to charity rather than items from the registry?

To anticipate some possible comments: 1)Yes, I've done some perfunctory Googling and looked at what etiquette columnists have to say. I'm more interested in what people's off the cuff reactions are. 2)No, I would not actually include such a request in a wedding invitation.