Forlorn Fall

October. The post-season. A prosaic name in a poetic game. Playoffs. Similarly boring. World Series. Ah, now that's duly grandiose.

Best of all: the Fall Classic.

I suppose the Yankees will be favored. They're the only team to have won over 100 games, and the only ones with a winning percentage of over .600.

I hate the Yankees. This visceral antipathy found its way to my heart the same just as loyalty and hostility are usually born when it comes to sports: my father was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, thus automatically a Yankee-hater, so I was born into it.

When I was a kid in the 50s, the Dodgers faced the Yankees in the World Series four times, losing all four. It so happens that the pastor of my church had season tickets to Yankee Stadium, so from box seats behind first base, I watched Yogi Berra, Bill Skowron, Bobby Richardson, Gil McDougald Billy Martin, and the great Mickey Mantle. I hated them, and booed them, but it was hard not to admire Mantle, with his picture perfect swing from both sides of the plate . http://www.theswearingens.com/mick/swing.htm Boston RedSox star Carl Yastrzemski once said of "The Mick, "If that guy were healthy, he'd hit 80 home runs."

Then, finally, in 1955, the Dodgers beat the Yankees and became World Champions. On the front page of the Daily News, the cartoon figure of a hobo, headlined: "Who's a Bum!" Exclamation point, not question mark.

They were a remarkable group of men and players, and in one very key respect, they were not like the Yankees: they were not all white.

They were the Boys of Summer: Roy Campanella (c), Gil Hodges (1b), Jim "Junior" Gilliam (2b), Captain PeeWee Reese (ss -- the nickname came from childhood prowess at marbles), Jackie Robinson (3b), Sandy Amoros (lf -- he made the spectacular catch that staved off disaster in the final game for Brooklyn), Carl Furillo (rf), and Edwin "Duke" Snider (who hit more than 40 home runs in five consecutive seasons).

And on the mound: The great Don Newcombe ( W20-L5); Carl Erskine ("Oisk"); Billy Loes, Johnny Podres, Clem Labine.

The heart and soul of this fabled team was #42, Jackie Robinson, although by their championship year, Robinson was 37 years old, and had hit only 256 during the season. But he stole home in the first game of the series http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XY-XshGhMU&feature=related a play as famous for Berra's protest as for the play itself.

I saw Jackie Robinson steal home once. Well, I didn't really see it. I was there, in a seat behind third base at Ebbets Field. When Robinson broke out of his pigeon-toed dance and broke for home, all the grown-ups stood up, leaving me, still a kid, with no view.

In 1957, Walter O'Malley broken my heart and thousands upon thousands of other hearts, when he moved his team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.

Since Horace Stoneham had taken Willie mays and the Giants to San Francisco, the only thing for National Leage fand to do was hate the Yanks. But that's nothing compared to actually rooting for a team.

Five years later, there came a team. The New York Metropolitans. The Mets, first playing in the Polo Grounds, former home of the Giants, and then in Shea Stadium, in Flushing, in the borough of Queens, where I grew up.

In their first year, the Mets lost 120 games, inspiring Jimmy Breslin's book Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

Yet, in a comparatively short while, under the guidance of manager Gil Hodges (who inexplicably has never made it into the Hall of Fame, despite impressive numbers on and off the field), the Mets won the Series in 1969. Unfortunately, however, it was 1986 before they repeated the feat, and have never done it never since.

The Mets have had almost good teams the past few years, losing always to the Atlanata Braves, the way the Brooklyn Dodgers used to lose to the Yanks. In 2006, the Mets won the Eastern Division title. In 2007 and 2008, they blew significant leads by losing to second division teams.

This season, the Mets were plagued by injuries. Key players like Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado, John Maine, Oliver Perez and Johan Santana lost significant amounts of time, to the point that supicions were raised about the training and conditioning staff. The players on the disabled list have contracts worth $90 million. At an end-of-season auction, the Mets decided to sell off their disabled list in lieu of a lineup card. The starting bid was $5000, and Jerry Seinfeld bid 20 grand.

Even with the injuries, the Mets had a bad year, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and believe that all those hamstring injuries were just coincidence.

Meanwhile I try to get enthusiastic about the NBA. My team, the Knicks, haven't been in contention in almost a decade and, this year, most of the talk is about whether LeBron Jones might come to Madison Square Garden NEXT year, when he's a free agent.

The two local football teams are undefeated, so there's some hope in Gotham. And, oh yeah, there's the Damn Yankees.

OMG: Holy Weasel

Read this, from the Guardian of London:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/28/sex-abuse-religion-vatican, picked up by Andrew Sullivan in The Daily Dish:

It's an amazing piece. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's permanent observer to the UN, defends his church, because "only" 1.5- 5% of its clergy were involved in the child sex abuse scandal. He also says, incredibly, that the offense should be labeled as "ephebophilia", a homosexual attraction to adolescent boys, rather than pedophilia. He claims that "of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90 % belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent males."

In fact, ephebophilia refers to attraction to boys and girls in LATE adolescence. Hebephilia is the proper term for earlier adolescence. Of course, molested pre-pubescent children are much less likely to remember and, therefore, report, abuse. About half the known cases are in the age group 11-14. All in all, pedophilia is the best word. In all cases, there is serious abuse, which seems to be precisely what Abp. Tomasi would like to sweep under the altar.

The archbishop says problems with clergy sex abuse are as big or bigger in other churches. "As the Catholic chuch has been busy cleaning its own house," he claims, "it would be good if other institutions and authorities, where the major part of abuses are reported, could do the same and inform the media about it." The good archbishop used statistics from the Christian Scence Monitor to show that most US churches being hit by chid sex abuse allegations were Protestant and that sexual abuse within Jewish communities was common.

In fact the CSM was itself quoting from Christian Ministry Resources, a tax and legal advice publisher. They also pointed out that most of the allegations were directed against church volunteers, and the greater number of allegations against Protestant churches is because there are more of them in the first place. CMR has a vested interest because they are involved in legal and insurance cases.

While it's true that other institutions have this problem, let's be clear what the problem is: forced sex abuse of adults perpetrated on children below the age of consent. Clearly, the Vatican, in an unspeakable and unholy denial of the truth, still wants to cover this up, despite semi-admirable condemnations from the Pope himself when he visited this country. They still want to say: "There aren't many cases, and the other guys do it even more." That's not a Christian attitude. It's weasel behavior on a grand scale.

It's time to end the ambiguity.

Torchbearer

So President Obama has decided to zip over to Copenhagen to make a pitch for Chicago to host the 2016 Olympics.

First off, he should say "CopenHAYgen, not CopenHAHgen. In either case, it's an English word, like Rome. The Danish is Kopenhavn. The Germans say HAH, which is why it's best to say HAY, since the Danes don't like anything about the Germans.

Until today, Obama was going to leave the salesmanship to his wife, Michelle, and to Oprah Winfrey.

The President is already being attacked from the Right and the Left for his decision. Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, says it's a sign that the President "needs to establish some priorities." He seems especially concerned that Mr. Obama will be taking time out from considering Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for more troops in Afghanistan.

Obama is traveling to Europe red-eye on Air Force One. He'll be 5 hours on the ground. Afghanistan is not going to slip as a priority.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley says the Olympics will be a "huge boost" to the

Windy City's economy. But the Nation's Dave Zirin says that "to a greater or lesser degree, the Olympics bring gentrification, graft and police violence wherever they nest."

If you ask me whether I'd rather go to the Olympics in Rio or Chicago, I'd answer Brasil in a heartbeat. Most commentators are presuming Obama wouldn't have decided to go if he hadn't been tipped to a successful bid for Chi. I'm not sure. I'm not betting against Lula, even with Oprah on our side.

The Don's Daughter

There's a short excerpt, the first of four, in today's New York Post, from Victoria Gotti's memoir This Family of Mine. This is the same memoir for which Ms. Gotti once had to return her publisher's advance because she didn't turn it in on time. Gotti appeared on the CBS newsmagazine 48 Hours Mystery over the weekend to publicize the book. On the show, she says of her late father, the capo of the Gambino crime family, "I loved the man .. but I loathed the life, his lifestyle."

In the Post excerpt, Victoria tells of her mother hurling a fork into the Don's shoulder, because their young son reported seeing daddy with another woman, not for the last time. . She says when she was a little girl , she blamed her Mom for all the fights, but later found that her anger was justified.

"I was 7 years old," she says, "when I realized that my father was not like other dads."

In 1992, the Don was convicted of 13 murders, but he was linked to many others.

Victoria, who once had her own unsuccessful TV reality show, "Growing Up Gotti," says she wrote the book with her father's approval. He asked only "don't make me out to be an altar boy because I wasn't."

To which she adds, "When you choose that life, I think you know what you're signing up for. I think he knew going in what was expected of him. I believe he knew that there was no living happily ever after. And I don't think he cared."

At the same time, Gotti describes her father's (and brother's) organization to Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Also, in the book, she never implicates either of them in murders. Talking of tapes of her father where he threatens to saw people's heads off, she said it was just his style. The book skips over the question of who killed his predecessor Paul Castellano. The famous informaant "Sammy the Bull Gravano" testified that Gotti killed Castellano.

When asked by CBS what she wants the Gotti name to stand for, Victoria said, "I want the Gotti name to stand for satrength. In the men and in the women, I want all of the good things that my father had to offer us or taught us to remain. I want them to be passed down to his grandchildren, to his great grandchildren. ... I think the good parts of John Gotti should be remembered." This was a man responsible for multiple murderers.

This Victoria Gotti memoir is not much of a book. But there is plenty of reason to write a mob book. Maybe it'll get made into a mob movie, in a culture that loves Mafia movies. Here's a (partial) list:

-- The Godfather
-- Goodfellas
-- The Godfather, Part II
-- Donnie Brasco
-- A History of Violence
-- The Departed
--On The Waterfront
-- Reservoir Dogs
-- Casino
-- A Bronx Tale
-- The Untouchables
-- Pulp Fiction
-- Heat
--The Sopranos

All of these stories make sure to portray the blood and violence, but many alsso manage to include some Robin Hood as well, or a mixture of both. And Victoria Gotti beleieves her brother is being tried unjustly for murder, drugs and racketeeering, all because he's got Gotti for a last name. Of course that's not true, but the Mafia is very much about loyalty and nostalgia, and Victoria Gotti hasn't gotten that far away from her roots.

La Bardot at 75

Brigitte Bardot turns 75 on Monday. To celebrate, the former screen goddess has asked the Bosnian government to save two endangered bears who have been held in chains outside a restaurant in that Balkan country.

Meanwhile Pete Yorn and Scarlet Johansson have released an album called Break Up, inspired by the late-1960s recordings of Bardot and Serge Gainsbourg.

Sophia Loren also turned 75 last week. Loren has clearly had a nip, a tuck and a nose job, whereas Ms. Bardot has never had any cosmetic surgery.

Brigitte Bardot once said, "It's sad to grow old but nice to ripen." Sadder still, is she's way past ripe.

Bardot was famously discovered at the age of 15 by Roger Vadim, who directed her in And God Created Woman, in which she created the character of the barefoot sex kitten, Juliette.

Bosley Crowther, the film critic of the New York Times, wrote, "In fact, it isn't what Mademoiselle Bardot does in bed, but she might do that drives the three principal male characters into an erotic frenzy."

Vadim and Bardot married when Brigitte was 18.

The director Louis Malle said Bardot was the grandmother of Sexual Liberation.

"BB" starred in 48 films and recorded 80 songs. In 1958, French newspapers reportd she had taken an overdose of sleeping pills, but her PR manager denied any attempt at suicide.

After retiring from the movies, Bardot dedicated herself to animal rights, but she has also pursued anti-Islamic causes, which has earned her five convictions for incitement to racial hatred.

Charles de Gaulle once said that Bardot was "a French export as important as Renault cars."

She said of herself, "I have been very happy, very rich, very beautiful, much adulated, vary famous and very unhappy."

Bonne anniversaire, Brigitte Bardot.

How did he do?

It was a big week for Barack Obama on the world's stage, and he did a bang-up job.

The biggest moment was today, at the end, in the contretemps with Iran over its underground uranium enrichment facility. The most important thing was not the revelation itself, but the fact that Russia and, to some extent, China, joined in condemning the Iranians. So, when Ahmadinejad tried to pooh-pooh the whole thing, he had zero credibility, which is what he will bring with him to Geneva next week. Putting Iran in a box like this was President Obama's big achievement of the week.

His biggest failure was getting no movement on the Middle East, but, really, who could have hoped for anything in that sphere where the antagonists, never open to peace, are now more intractable than ever? Don't look for Obama or Hillary Clinton to make much difference there.

Obama presided over the Security Council, a first for an American president, for the counci's discussion of nuclear disarmament. Here again, the big push was against Iran and, for the first time, Russia seemed open to sanctions, a policy it normally opposes. China continued its opposition to sanctions. The Couuncil unanimously called for the elimination of all nuclear weapons, and the US joined in a call to ratify the Test Ban Treaty, which so far has been blocked by Republicans in Congress.

In Pittsburgh, the Group of 20 agreed that henceforward they will supplant the Group of 8 as the forum for steering the world economy. This means a greater voice for Asian and Latin American countries in a historic shift that recognizes the rising influence of both regions.

US Secretary of the Treasury Geithner singled out China for "a very, very substantial effort to provide financial measures to promote recovery."

The one issue Obama failed to address was Afghanistan, where he gives the impression of not knowing what to do, with the polls telling him it's unpopular, and the generals telling him it's imperative.

I think the Big Win for Obama was not really anything he said or did, but rather that he assumed the mantle of an international statesman, at 48, joining 44 year old Medvedev, 54 year old Sarkozy, 48 year old Gordon Brown, and 51 yeaar old Lula of Brazil as the new generation of Western leaders.

They came out of Pittsburgh with high hopes. Let's hope they're warranted.

God Hates Haters

This afternoon in Brooklyn, a Kansas-based anti-gay Baptist Church held a pathetically small rally outside Brooklyn Technical High School. The Chucrch members -- about five of them -- were greatly outnumbered by students.

It wasn't clear why Westboro chose Brooklyn Tech. On their website, godhatesfags.com, the group claimed the rallies were not anti-Jewish or anti-gay, despite scheduling rallies at two synagogues on Saturday, and announcing, ""Yo what's up god haters? "and acknowledging, "we picked these weekends because these are the high holidays."

On another front, an Iowa congressman, Steve King said yesterday that same-sex marriage is a "purely socialist concept", which is far-fetched. King says the Iowa Supreme Court's decision to legalize same-sex marriage" will make Iowa a "Mecca for same-sex marriage." One commentator reminded Rep. King that Stalin, in his socialist state, punished homosexuality with five years of hard labor.

In California today, the group Love Honor Cherish filed to overturn the State's ban on gay marrieage. Meanwhile, Equality California, a much larger gay rights group, has decided to postpone its push against Prop 8 until 2012.

According to the Census, about 27 percent of the estimated 564,743 gay couples in the US said they were in a relationship akin to "husband" and "wife", which is many more than the number of actual weddings and civil unions. Of course, only a few states permit same-sex marriage. The census fugures show that many many gay couples would marry if they could.

It's so hard to think of any reason to oppose gay marriage. Gay couples are going to take care of each other, keeping health care costs down, housing costs down, food costs down, and quality of life up.

Of course, there is one reason: hate. Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center counted 926 active hate groups in the United States. The Group gathered in Brooklyn today says it is god that does the hating. But it's clear that they are the haters.

Readings: a Miscellany

Social life causes late post. A grab bag.

World military spending in 2008 surpassed $1.4 trillion.

Contrary to Dick Cheney's cl;aims, a 2006 Intelligence Science Board stated that "the scientific community has never established that coercive interrogation methods are an effective means of obtaining reliable intelligence information."

The Washington Post quotes an observer of the situation in Afghanistan: "(Obama) can send more troops and it will be a disaster and he will desstroy the Democratic Party. Or he can send no more troops and it will be a disaster and the Republicans will say he lost the war."

The Times said Ahmadinejad was "less pointedly confrontational' in his address to the UN. Among other things, The paper points out that the Iranian didn't call for the total elimination of Israel. He did, however, condemn any country that supports the Zionist regime and its "barbaric" attacks on Palestine, the only legitimate state in the region. In other words, he called for the elimination of of Israel, but persuaded the New York Times that he was softening his line.

A recent conference in London concludes that even slight changes in weather and climate can rip the planet's crust apart, unleashing the furious might of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and landslides.

A British study says millions of women drink alcohol before having sex because they lack confidence in their bodies. The survey of 3000 women between 18 and 50 found the average woman has slept with eight men, but was drunk with at least five of them. On two of these occasions they couldn't even remember the man's name the next day.

Welcome Fall

Today, the tilt of the Earth's axis was, just after 5pm edt, inclined neither away from nor towards the sun, with the Sun being vertically above a point on the Equator, in the eastern Pacific. Day and night are close to equally long. Deciduous trees will soon take on their annual panoply of color. Here in New York City both football teams are 2-0.

Today is the first day of fall.

In the Southern Hemisphere, of course, it's the first day of Spring. In the Northern Hemisphere, as the sun recedes, we store the harvest. Harvest Moon this year is October 4th.

Spring is the season of hope, but somehow this year autumn feels upbeat. Despite frightful levels of unemployment, despite a Colorado man seized on suspicion of being a terrorist, despite "you liar!", somehow the gentle breeze of early autumn seems to be carrying a brighter light, That even though my Mets were long ago eliminated from the baseball post-season.

Maybe it's just I'm sick of so much bad news for so long. In any event, I find myself in the mood to welcome fall. Please join me.

Climate Change is in the Mind

Heads of state and government from around the world convene at the UN tomorrow to discuss climate change in advance of meetings in Copenhagen at the beginning of December to review the Kyoto Protocol, which sets an international framework for the regulation of greenhouse gases that endanger the atmosphere. The U.S. has not signed the Kyoto agreement, which President Bush opposed.

The goal at Copenhagen will be to fix climate temperature at 2 degrees Fahrenheit above current levels.

It's not clear which country will take the lead tomorrow, but it may well be China, which has increasingly been trading Red for Green. China's plan will be delivered by President Hu Jintao himself. This is the first time a Chinese president has spoken at the UN, and that's a pretty big deal in itself. With the huge level of poverty in his country, Hu is not likely to propose a cut in emissions, but he may introduce a target for bringing down carbon levels.

President Obama will talk green, but probably won't walk green. As with the other policy goals on which he ran for office, Obama has pussyfooted on climate change rather than show any real courage.

It is absolutely incredible the degree to which the president lets himself be pushed around by the Republicans and the media.

Here are some of the ineluctable, incontrovertible, facts about global warming.

-- the glaciers are shrinking

-- ice on rivers and lakes breaks up earler

-- growing seasons are lengthening

-- trees flower earlier

-- carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other so-called greenhouse gases are released from automobiles etc, as well as from the thawing permafrost

-- the level of the seas is rising

--a quarter of the world's coral reefs have died

--heavier rainfall is increasing flooding

-- extreme drought is increasing

-- hurricanes are changing frequency and strength

-- there are more frequent heat waves

It's hard to get exactly how the lunatic fringe sees these facts. Sometimes they seem to suggest they are myths, i.e. not facts. This is, of course, knuckleheaded, since they have no evidence for that view. They just say facts are not facts. Their real agenda, of course, is to defend business.

Business, however, is starting to be won over to green reality, not so much because it's good science as because it's good business.

As UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon put it when addressing the World business Council on Climate Change, "As business leaders, you must make it clear to your (political) leaders that doing the right thing for the climate is also the smart thing for global competitiveness and long-term prosperity."

More and more, corporate leaders laugh at their putative allies Yet Obama, for some reason, ignores the possibility of forming a new coalition, even though climate change is clearly a potential wedge between ideological divisions. On this, on health care reform, and on most of his policy choices, Obama has to stop spinning his wheels and get out front. Tomorrow could be a good satrt

The Obama Road Show

Fashion Week is over, and Obama Week is underway, starting off with White House interviews today with NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and Univision. The interviews were actually taped on Friday and, not unsurprisingly, they all sounded much the same. The President once again disagreed with Jimmy Carter's claim that opposition to the president's views on health care is founded in racism. Obama says the dispute is, in fact, about differing views on the role of government.

Most strongly in his interview with George Stephanopoulos, the president supported his view that any individual mandate the eventual health reform bill might contain would not constitute a new tax. Stephanopoulos looked silly when he pulled out a dictionary to look up the word "tax."

Responding to recent barbs , Obama said to CNN's John King, and in similar words to Univision's Jorge Ramos, that "the things that were said about FDR are pretty similar to the things that were said about me, that he was a communist, he was a socialist; things that were said about Ronald Reagan when he was trying to reverse some of the New Deal programs were pretty vicious as well."

I suspect that this FDR/Reagan comparison will come up again when the President is the only guest booked on tomorrow's nights Letterman show. David may also steal Obama's prediction from Meet the Press that favors the Cardinals and the Yankees to be in the World Series.

Letterman's writers can be expected to pick up on the various articles that have discussed how Obama will avoid shaking hands with Iran President Ahmadinejad. Dave is also certain to get in a Jay Leno joke. But depend on the president to spend most of his time on Letterman reviewing the same health care reform boilerplate he went over on the shows today. Obama's always a good sport with the Top Ten list. It should be fun to see what it is. Ahmadinejad maybe?

Obama moves his act over to the UN on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, with the centerpiece being his first ever address to the General Assembly, where he can be expected to brag on recent economic good news, while acknowledging the long road ahead. He may have to acknowledge differences with Europe on executive pay, and he may even have to mention his tariffs on Chinese tires. Without a doubt he is going to address the world's dissatisfaction with America's foot dragging on climate change.

On Tuesday, Obama meets with Netanyahu of Israel and Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. This meeting is expected to produce nothing, coming just after George Mitchell's fruitless trip to the region. On Thursday, Mr. Obama will preside for the first time over a Security Council meeting -- a summit on nuclear proliferation.

From New York, the Obama traveling road show moves on to Pittsburgh at the end of the week for the G-20 Summit. The leaders who will attend the Pittsburgh Summit represent 85 percent of the world's economy. Their mission, obviously, is to discuss further actions to assure a sound and sustainable recovery from the global financial and economic crisis.

Here at home, the president's popularity has slipped below 50%, but abroad, it's more like 80%. The U.S. media, and the recent rise of the lunatic fringe, has a lot to do with that. Reason doesn't exactly rule the roost within our borders lately. But also, even though the exconomy may be looking a little better, many people are still suffering, and suffering impatiently.

A hearty welcome from his audiences this week may help the president's image. We'll certainly see enough of him.

Good Wives

On CBS Tuesday night, longtime ER stalwart Juliana Margulies premieres in a series drawn from the headlines. Specifically, The Good Wife was written in immediate response to New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's resignation in disgrace after revelations that he had an ongoing relationship with a pricey call girl.

thegoodwife (like that -- one word, lower case -- in all the ad copy) runs a trailer on its website that references not only Eliot and Silda Spitzer but also Hillary and Bill Clinton, Jim and Dina McGreevey, and Elizabeth and John Edwards.

Some of these notorious political malefactors have lately been attempting to emerge from the shadow of shame. The Clintons have, of course, succeeded in spectacular and separate fashion: she by running for President then settling for quite a grand consolation prize at Foggy Bottom; Bill, on the other hand, seems destined to be the greatest roving ambassador since Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. Silda Switzer, who looks stunning in all her recent photographs, is working for a hedge fund. Eliot appeared recently on the CBS Early Show, and he's a teaching adjunct at City College of New York. Ay the same time, a recent poll said that almost 70% of those interviewed do not want the former governor to run again for public office. That included 62% from his own Democratic party.

The John and Elizabeth Edwards is the most poignant. Or the most pathetic, depending how you feel about it.

Edwards once said that, given the length of his relationshipwith Rielle Hunter, it was impossible for him to be the father of her baby. Now that Hunter's daughter is 19 months ago, Edwards is apparently reversing that story and admitting his fatherhood. Elizabeth Edwards has, I suppose understandably, resisted going along with her husband's public assertion of paternity.

Edwards is also being investigated by a Raleigh grand jury looking into whether he spent campaign money to cover up his affair. Rielle Hunter, according to the New York Times, testified in detail about benefits she received from Edwards.

Again according to the Times, prosecutors are considering making the claim that when Edwards paid for his mistress's silence he was in effect making campaign contributions.

Another dagger aimed at Edwards in the Times piece is material from a forthcoming book by Civil Rights pioneer Andrew Young. Young who once was willing to take the rap for Edwards and say he was the father of Hunter's child, now says that contrariwise, he helped set up the affair.

All of these real-life wives, except for Dina matos McGreevey are still married to their sposes.

Whether any of these real-life dramas will help contribute to thegoodwife is completely up in the air. Noth, the Mr. Big of Sex and the City, seems a fairly inspired casting choice, although I find him a rather wooden actor. Margulies is very good, but I feel that holding together the two aspects of her character -- the wronged wife and the crack lawyer -- could wind up with both story lines wearing thin.

Ivy League Murders

Here's one of the dumbest thing I've ever read, published in today's Slate, and written by Jack Shafer:

"If you plan to be murdered and expect decent press coverage, please have the good sense to be a Harvard or Yale student or professor."

I know Mr. Shafer expects us to take that as wise-ass and humorous, but the fact is it remains wise-ass and tasteless, as does the later comment, "likewise, if you kill somebody and want the press to go all Nancy Grace on your ass, make sure your victim attends or works at Harvard or Yale." The "on your ass" phrase is, I think, meant to make Shafer sound hip.

The case alluded to here is, of course, the killing of a 23-year old Yale graduate student, Annie Le, in the lab where she conducted her experiements, and the subsequent arrest and charging of a technician in that lab, Raymond Clark III.

Shafer says coverage of this case demonstrates the media's "abiding interest in Ivy League murders," although he makes it clear he's only after two Ivies, Harvard and Yale, even though Harvard has nothing to do with this case. Also, Shafer calls the New York Times "one of several Ivy League house organs," while failing to observe that New Haven CT is a local story for the Times.

Shafer also says that "defenders of Annie Le coverage will cite special circumstances that make this killing more newsworthy than your garden-variety murder." Let's leave to one side the truly repugnant phrase "garden-variety murder," and point out instead that Ms. Le's dead body was found stuffed behind a wall in the lab on the very day she was to be married. In fact it was that human interest "special circumstance" that gave impetus to this story just as much as the fact that it took place at Yale.

Then, once the suspect was apprehended, a lot of the coverage switched to the tensions between animal technicians and graduate researchers at the lab. This theory was supported by emails from suspect Raymond Clark to Annie Le, chastising her for the way she handled lab mice. Acquaintances said Clark was a "control freak," and the police chief said it was a case of "workplace violence," although he didn't explain what he meant by that, and went on to say we may never know the motive, which is oddly pessimistice since they have a suspect in custodywho may yet talk. And if he was such an obvious control freak, it's interesting that he'd worked in the lab for five years and had lied on his resume in order to get in. Despite which, Yale President Richard Levin stated that nothing in Clark's employment history indicated he might be involved in such a crime. President Levin may wish he hadn't said that as evidence of Mr. Clark's instability continues to emerge.

In any case, these story lines -- the victim's impending marriage and the suspect's alleged pre-crime behavior-- are both intrinsically interesting, without Mr. Shafer's insistence on the Ivy League connection His conclusion, that "all murders are equal; it's just that press (sic) treats Harvard and Yale as more equal," is somewhere between banal and stupid. I'd shade it toward the stupid.

The end of the piece meanders around Shafer's own Harvard/Yale envy, which is probably relevant.

Days of the Bulls

GE common stock hit 17 yesterday. That's still 35% down from this time last year, but it's a lot better than the 6 it hit at low ebb. And even though the stock fell back a little today, it'll probably rebound nicely from now on. The giant conglomerate's main albatross, GE Capital, will do better now that, in the words of Fed Chairman Bernanke, thel recession is "most likely over." And as industry climbs back, so will many of GE's amazing variety of products.

This enables me to feel much less stupid, if not exactly smart, for leaving my 401(k) just about entirely invested in GE, where I worked for 22 years at NBC Universal, which I expect will be jettisoned soon by the parent company.

The prediction is GE will hit 20 by the end of the year. I'm thinking it will be a lot quicker, maybe touching that mark this week.

So I'm happy, or at least happier, but almost 10% of the people who want to work don't have jobs, and many others have disappeared from the job market altogether. Mr. Bernanke admits it will take a couple of more years, maybe more, for unemployment to reach normal ranges.

New jobless claims were down last week, but it's too soom to see if that's really good news. On the other hand, unemployment here in New York City rose to 10.3%, a 16-year high. Most of the losses are on Wall Street, formerly the city's engine of growth.

The House is about to vote on extending unemployment benefits to 13 states.

So, yes, things are looking up this week, and that's good. I'm not convinced, though, that we've learned much as we've struggled through.

Foreign Correspondent

In an interview on TV Newser about her new Sunday show on CNN, Christiane Amanpour made a trenchant remark, ponting out that in the USA, "the world is an afterthought."

If anyone has labored to change that, it's Amanpour herself, who is the epitome of wartime and hotspot field reporter. Amanpour, who was born in London and brought up in Iran under the Shah and in England before attending university in Rhode Island, has been, after a brief stint in Providence, a foreign corespondent for 20 years, having reached major stature during the Gulf War. She has filed many reports from Iraq and Afghanistan and indicates she'll devote a lot of time on her new show to Afghanistan, where she seems to feel the US can play a positive role despite wavering public support.

In that same interview, when asked about the current flood of information on television and the internet, she said that "understanding is a casualty." I certainly admire her determination to change that, although a Sunday morning show on cable may not affect that many minds.

When I started out on television at the BBC more than 35 years ago, we did plenty of foreign news, and I have been continually shocked at how little is done here. But the UK had long-standing relationships with the international community because of its colonial past and then its membership in the EU. We, on the other hand, were colonized, and have maintained a stand-offish attitude toward the UN, even with its headquarters on our soil.

The storiess we do report, like Vietnam, Iraq and Aghanistan, are set in countries we have invaded militarily, and the stories are always told from our side.

Ms. Amanpour will probably try to change that. As she showed in her documentary on Islamic children, she will tell truly foreign strories rather than American stories that happen to be set in foreign countries.

She's a great journalist, and is to be applauded for this new venture.

The Polish Rider

On an otherwise busy day, I took a break today at one of my favorite New York places -- the Frick Collection -- along Fifth Avenue's Museum Mile, which houses the impeccably tasteful collection of turn-of-the-century coke and steel magnate Henry Frick , known in his day as "America's most hated man."

Normally in a museum, I do not take one of those audio guides,that help you around from one numbered work to the other, preferring to roam around on my own. Today, however, I did take the tour and was glad I did.

I learned for the first time, or rather noticed for the first time, that the Frick contains no American art except for Whistler's tremendous full length portraits and seascape and Stuart's portrait of George Washington. The latter was probably purchased mostly for patriotic motive, and Whistler, after all, was an expatriate working in London.

I stopped at one of my favorite Frick pictures, the Polish Rider, only to learn -- no news to real art lovers -- that its attribution has long been debated.

The plummy voice of my curator/guide -- all the voices, whether British or American, are plummy -- told me that the current favored explanation is that the Master painted the most dazzling elements of the painting, like the rider's head and the horse's head, but that his students had finished up some of the other elements to make it ready for sale, and thus help Rembrandt through the bankruptcy that plagued his later years.

Rembrandt painted 600 paintings, etched 300 etchings, drew 2000 drawings. He made almost a hundred self--portraits. His work was always popular and sold briskly.

Yet Rembrandt, as you can see just by looking at him, had a rough life. He lost three children in infancy, one wife hounded him for alimony, and he spent wildly beyond his means, mostly on other artists' work.

He was buried in an unmarked, unknown, grave. having lived until 63, which wasn't bad for the 17th century.

Henry Frick lived until 79, leaving behind him this wonderful collection and his magnificent mansion, which houses it. He also leaves behind his history as the man who almost died from an assassin's bullet in the course of trying to break the Homestead Strike of 1892.

All the human drama that surrounds High Art, witnessed on a Summer's afternoon on Central Park.

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Telephone Calm

Tomorrow is Primary Election Day. Thank God! No more political robocalls. A certain amount of peace will return to my dwelling as these non-stop telemarketing calls are silenced until November.

Political robocolls are illegal in the UK. The government says it's because they're "annoying". Here, on the contrary, automated political calls are exempt from the Do Not Call Registry.

Because I hate these calls so much, I'd like to believe they don't work, but apparently that's not true. In a typical election, the calls are said to account for a 4% swing in the result.

It's a form of carpet bombing. About 65% of voters are contacted by phone; another 70% receive direct mail. Companies promise to place a hundred or two thousand calls per hour. Cost: about a dime a call.

The calls for Manhattan DA, the biggest prize in New York City tomorrow, are all pretty bland. They seem aimed more at name recognition than policy. I didn't hear any negative ads. But then, I never listened to a call all the way through. "Hello, this is..." was usually enough for me to hit the delete button. I did get that Bob Morgenthau, Mario Cuomo and Ed Koch endorse Cy Vance. Vance's adversary Leslie Crocker Snyder seemed to do her own ads, rather than using endorsers.

I'd say I got about 6-10 calls a day, and and I know some peoople get way more.

The only state that bans the automated calls is Minnesota, permitting them only in school elections. Last year, Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Daniel Inouye and Arlen Specter, tried to pass a bill that would have limited the abuse of robocalls, including masking caller ID with "unknown caller".

Don't bet on them going away though, not as long as they seem to give a candidate an advantage.

Just be thankful for the small blessing that your phone is about to calm down for a while.

White Elephant

I spent 35 years producing network television shows, none of them sports or entertainment, all of them news. Now I notice that my old friend Brian Williams is going to be a regular "correspondent" on the new Jay Leno Show. Leno has often invited Brian to be a guest on the Tonight Show -- valuable promotion for the anchorman -- so this is praiseworthy payback, but probably ill-advised, considering how likely it is that Leno's new venture will fail.

Jay Leno has kept the Tonight franchise going for 17 years, which is an admirable feat, and his Common Guy persona has probably helped as much as he says it has. Letterman might not have pulled that off, Conan takes the younger crowd but not the time slot.

That's not the time slot Leno has to worry about anymore, and he sounds like he's making all sorts of dubious programming calls to make it in prime time. Sure, everybody will tune in tomorrow night to see Jerry Seinfeld and I guess they'll come back for Tom Cruise the next night, although I'd hang a caution flag on that one. But thenceforeward the show will live or die with a bunch of no-name comics and outside-the-studio sketch maaterial. I think all of that is going to feel terribly strained and forced, and people won't stay around to squirm

NBC is banking on the show being cheap, but one element won't be cheap at all, and that's Jay's paycheck. One thing NBC doesn't need is a huge White Elephant lurking at the heart of its prime time schedule.. The star can laugh all the way to the bank, but the network itself may wind up limping toward oblivion.

In the Footsteps of the Gladiators

I'm ignoring the fact that 30,000 employees of Goldman Sachs are going to be paid an average of $700,000 this year. I'm also ignoring the fact that eight leading American and European banks will pay their investment bankers about $540,000 in 2011. I'm aghast. Too shocked to speak. So I won't.

Instead, I'll talk about Fashion Week, a subject about which I know very little, except I read that Vogue Editor Anna Wintour was on duty at a Macy's in Queens last night, as part of a big retail event called Fashion's Night Out, which she ran in London and New York.

Here are the names making a Big Splash at Fashion Week in New York. I stole these names directly from New York Magazine, so the judgments are theirs. For which I apologize, but I'm just puttiing these out there by way of an arbitrary grab-bag. There will always be new names, now that designer names sell clothes: Prabal Gurung, Vena Cava, Rosa Cha, United Bamboo, Jenni Kayne, Erin Wasson, Cynthia Rowley (Didn't she write the Harry Potter books?), Jason Wu, Cynthia Steffe, Monique Lhuillier, Jen Kai. Elie Tahari, rag & bone, Luca Luca, Charlotte Ronson, Preen, Ruffian, ,Lacoste, Costello Tagliapietra (What a great name!), Theory (not on their list, but I know somebody really nice who works there).

Fashion and celebrity are joined at the hip (so to speak). Rapper Jay-Z, who, of course, has his own line of apparel, gave a big concert at Madison Square Garden, and I see that P-Diddy, who has long put his name (Sean Jean) on clothes, did a Fashion Week promo. Ironically (I guess it's really not ironic at all), it's hip-hop that's most closely entwined with Style.

There is a difference between fashion and style. Style is unique, as in the proverb, "De gustibus non est disputandum." "There is no accounting for taste." But there is accounting for fashion, which is not unique style, but common style. A fashionable person wears what everybody else is wearing, not so much what he or she likes.

There's also mass fashion, not inlike a uniform. This year, it was designer sandals. You know, the ones with the de rigueur strap in the back and various strap arrangements in the front, all looking like Russell Crowe. (The real galdiators were, of course, barefoot.) I guarantee you that 90% of women under 30 have one or more of these shoes going into the closet any week now, after a spring and summer of pedestrian conformity.

How does this happen? Where does the meeting take place where shoe manufacturers decide to make this look universal?

I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with banks.

Eight Years

All I hear is 9/12, as if "9/11" were taboo.

On 9/11, all one heard was "things will never be the same", or "the world will never be the same." This was the fashionable pessisism, and although it might havebeen aimed at President Bush, it played right into his bullhorn rhetoric of being on bended knee. The peeople who knocked those buiding down never did hear us. The War on Terror justified everthing W. did thereafter.

I didn't buy it. It reminded me of 1968, The Movement, the revolution. The Answer was Blowing in the Wind. Except it wasn't. This time, Wall Street Greed was blowing in the wind, and Iraq.

Obama rode the backlash, but it's not clear if he's up to the job, and the lunatic fringe is putting on muscle. Nothing is blowing in the wind. Afghanistan seems headed to a new quagmire, health reform is being watered down, and the economy's problems are being papered over.

Almost 3,000 people from over 90 countries died eight years ago in the AlQaeda attacks. Over 6500 American servicemen and private contractorshave died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Otherwise, the world is pretty much the same.

Joe Wilson is in the great tradition of Joe the Plumber -- know-nothings who practice a kind of vigilante politics. They have also turned the venerable American institution of Town Halls into the site of focused rabble rousing.

I hope the Queen of the Rabble, Sarah Palin, gets the GOP nomination in 2012. Then we can get vote on the true national debate between the Center Left and the rabid right.

The Republican Party has turned completely irrational. Watching John Boehner last night made my blood boil as only a white male power guy can.

Even though the media is having fun booking right-wingers to attack the President, I suspect Mr. Obama is ultimately playing out a winning hand. I think he's got the cards.