Old School
An unusual amount of interesting reading redeemed the dreary weather this morning. James Surowiecki explains the gasoline refinery business in the latest of his lucid, one-page primers. Elizabeth Drew makes some noise about President Bush's sneaky "signing statements" - gestures of autocracy that frighten even Grover Norquist, and David Leonhardt reveals the long-tail nature of rental distribution at Netflix. Mr Leonhardt's piece ends with a quote from Reed Hastings, chief of Netflix:
"At the heart of any good investment, I tell investors, is a contrarian thesis that they and the company believe very deeply," Mr. Hastings said, "and that the rest of the world thinks is crazy."
But what tickled me the most was a curious, one might almost say, delicious, juxtaposition on page A3. This is where the Times publishes international stories that (a) don't involve gunfire and (b) reach back into cultural history of one kind or another. (Tomorrow's story will undoubtedly refute this off-the-cuff generalization.) Today, Scott Shane picks up a briefing by Elizabeth Holtzman, currently a member of the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group, at the National Archive. The Group, which is tasked with declassifying government documents, has learned that the CIA knew that Adolf Eichmann, head of the Gestapo's Jewish affairs office, was hiding in Argentina as early as 1958, but said nothing to the Israelis, who were on the point of abandoning their search for him. (They would find him two years later, abduct him, and try him and execute him in Jerusalem in 1962.) There is nothing surprising about this news. The West German government was afraid that Eichmann might throw some mud at one of Chancellor Adenauer's top aides and make it stick. But the CIA's callous protection of Eichmann - its inaction constitutes no less - reminds us yet again that the elitissimo Agency has always been far more concerned about accommodation than about justice.
That's Old School Part I. For Part II -
That's my old school. Now featured on a designer T-shirt, available from Saks Fifth Avenue for $68. The University protects its brands robustly, none more, I fear, than the ghastly leprechaun, just about the worst mascot for an institution of higher learning that might be conceived. I wonder if the shirt is a counterfeit? That would be amusing. The styling of this ad is so deeply wrong that I can't take my eyes off of it. Notre Dame is at least a hundred miles from a barber shop that could help a man to have such a head of hair. By contextual implication, moreover, Saks is pushing the shirt for Father's Day, but the model's expression of confused anguish is anything but paternal. Some creative types were in over their heads on this project.
The effing jeans cost $214! Has the world gone mad?
