April 27, 2006

• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Tweenage Riot Disney love scene Tweenage Riot How “High School Musical” ruled the charts As Bryan Adams once warned, THE KIDS WANNA ROCK. That’s why High School Musical has become the year’s biggest pop sensation, without meaning jack to anybody born before Tupac died. When the Disney Channel movie debuted in January, it became a kiddie smash, aimed at the six-to-thirteen age group who love “Hollaback Girl” but aren’t allowed to use that kind of language at home. Yet nobody expected the soundtrack to blow up into 2006′s biggest hit, selling twice as much as James Blunt in half the time. They’re already buzzing about a film sequel, a stage tour, a TV series and, no doubt, High School Musical on Ice! Just think: At this moment, Donald Trump’s next wife is strapped in the back of a Suburban practicing the dance routine to “Breaking Free.” High School Musical has your basic kiddie version of teen romance. Troy and Gabriella meet and fall in love singing karaoke over Christmas break. Except they find out they go to the same school — OMG! — and belong to two different cliques — LOL! — and thus their romance is doomed — WTF! — unless they go out for the school musical together. Unfortunately, this is the one school in the galaxy where the popular kids rule the drama club. The head theater queen decides Troy and Gabriella aren’t cool enough, since she’s an “Einsteinette” and he can’t tell “a Tony Award from Tony Hawk.” Aw, snap! Looks like everybody needs to sing some show tunes and learn some important lessons, pronto! Director Kenny Ortega is a veteran of Eighties teen flicks — he was choreographer on Pretty in Pink and Dirty Dancing. He doesn’t miss a trick: My favorite is the skate-punk dude who secretly yearns to play the cello. High School Musical is a kiddie uprising against Britney and Justin, the way Brit and J.T. were a kiddie uprising against Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Disney must have asked, “Hey, where did all our Britneys and Justins go?” You can’t trust those real-life teen stars; they always end up getting tattoos or shaking their Laffy Taffy on the tables at Bungalow 8 with Good Charlotte. You spend years grooming those Mouseketeers, training them to sing and dance, putting up with their stage moms. And what happens? They break your heart and go solo. Why not just create an imaginary high school where Britney and Justin are well-behaved classmates who keep their hands off each other? Why build up little Hilarys and Lindsays, just to let them walk off with the franchise? High School Musical is a franchise Disney can own outright. None of the kids come with any baggage — they’re all unknowns, just happy to be here. Heartthrob Zac Efron’s gushiest public statement: “The fact that we could fuel so many downloads…is just amazing.” And that’s an eighteen-year-old boy talking. By summer vacation, expect a host of knockoffs. I await Hello Kitty: Harajuku Nights and Dance Ten, Looks Three, Bedtime Seven. ROB SHEFFIELD Posted Apr 21, 2006 3:29 PM

  Cunningham Is Suspected Of Asking for Prostitutes Prosecutors May Widen Congressional-Bribe Case Cunningham Is Suspected Of Asking for Prostitutes; Were Others Involved? By SCOT J. PALTROW April 27, 2006; Page A6 Federal prosecutors are investigating whether two contractors implicated in the bribery of former Rep. Randall “Duke” Cunningham supplied him with prostitutes and free use of a limousine and hotel suites, pursuing evidence that could broaden their long-running inquiry. Besides scrutinizing the prostitution scheme for evidence that might implicate contractor Brent Wilkes, investigators are focusing on whether any other members of Congress, or their staffs, may also have used the same free services, though it isn’t clear whether investigators have turned up anything to implicate others. In recent weeks, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents have fanned out across Washington, interviewing women from escort services, potential witnesses and others who may have been involved in the arrangement. In an interview, the assistant general manager of the Watergate Hotel confirmed that federal investigators had requested, and been given, records relating to the investigation and rooms in the hotel. But he declined to disclose what the records show. A spokeswoman for Starwood Inc., Westin’s parent company, said she wasn’t immediately able to get information on whether the Westin Grand had been contacted by investigators. Mr. Cunningham, a Republican from San Diego, was sentenced March 3 to more than eight years in federal prison after he admitted taking $2.4 million in bribes. The bribes were taken in exchange for helping executives obtain large contracts with the Defense Department and other federal agencies. Mr. Cunningham, who resigned from Congress in November, pleaded guilty to two criminal counts, one of tax evasion and one of conspiracy. In documents filed in federal court in San Diego, prosecutors listed four “co-conspirators” in the bribing of Mr. Cunningham. The two who allegedly played the biggest role, listed as co-conspirators No. 1 and No. 2, have been confirmed by Justice Department officials and defense lawyers to be Mr. Wilkes and Mitchell Wade, the founder and former head of MZM Inc., a software and computer-services firm that Mr. Cunningham helped to gain federal contracts. The charges against Mr. Cunningham had alleged that “Co-conspirator #1″ — Mr. Wilkes — had given the congressman more than $600,000 in bribes, including paying off a mortgage on Mr. Cunningham’s house. Mr. Wilkes hasn’t been charged with any crime, and people with knowledge of the investigation say he recently decided he would fight any charges that might be filed rather than plead guilty and cooperate with the investigation. Michael Lipman, Mr. Wilkes’s lawyer, denied his client had been involved in procuring prostitutes. “There was no such conduct. It did not happen,” Mr. Lipman said. The lawyer added that “Mr. Wilkes and ADCS strongly believe that all of their actions have been proper and appropriate. They are confident that the government will come to the same conclusion.” Mr. Wilkes, of Pohway, Calif., founded a series of companies that obtained federal contracts, including ADCS Inc., which won contracts to convert paper military records to computer images. Mr. Wade in February pleaded guilty to giving bribes of more than $1 million to Mr. Cunningham, including cash, antiques and payment for yachts. Mr. Wade, who hasn’t been sentenced yet, is cooperating with prosecutors. According to people with knowledge of the investigation, Mr. Wade told investigators that Mr. Cunningham periodically phoned him to request a prostitute, and that Mr. Wade then helped to arrange for one. A limousine driver then picked up the prostitute as well as Mr. Cunningham, and drove them to one of the hotel suites, originally at the Watergate Hotel, and subsequently at the Westin Grand. Mr. Wade told investigators that all the arrangements for these services had been made by Mr. Wilkes and two employees of Mr. Wilkes’s company, according to people with knowledge of his debriefing. He said Mr. Wilkes had rented the hotel suites and found the limousine driver, who had “relationships” with several escort services. Mr. Wade told prosecutors that sometimes Mr. Cunningham would contact him to request these services, and he would pass on the request to Mr. Wilkes or his employees, who then made the actual arrangement. Mr. Wade said that other times Mr. Cunningham called Mr. Wilkes directly to make the requests. If investigators find that any other members of Congress or their staffs received services at so-called hospitality suites, that could help make a case that they had illegally taken action to benefit Mr. Wilkes in return for favors from him. Mr. Wilkes, his family members and his employees were heavy campaign contributors to several members of Congress. But prosecutors so far apparently haven’t found any evidence that other members of Congress had been bribed. Mr. Wade told investigators that he had knowledge only of the service being provided to Mr. Cunningham, not anyone else, and has said he doesn’t know whether Mr. Wilkes may have provided prostitutes or other free entertainment to anyone besides Mr. Cunningham. K. Lee Blalack II, Mr. Cunningham’s lawyer, said, “I have no comment on that” when asked about his client’s alleged use of prostitutes. Mr. Cunningham, 64 years old, currently is undergoing a routine medical evaluation at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina. People close to the case said prosecutors had hoped that Mr. Wilkes, like Mr. Wade, would plead guilty and turn over information relevant to the investigation. Now that he has indicated he won’t do so, prosecutors are hunting for evidence to bolster any potential case against him. Meanwhile, prosecutors are looking at whether they can make corruption cases against other lawmakers based on Mr. Wilkes’s campaign contributions to them. But lawyers expert in campaign-finance and criminal law say such cases are far more difficult to prove than those involving outright bribery. The government must show a direct “quid pro quo” that a lawmaker has taken action on a particular bill solely because of a campaign contribution. Proof of the prostitution scheme, on the other hand, could provide potentially damaging evidence that Mr. Wilkes had taken illegal steps in exchange for legislative favors, people involved in the investigation said. Write to Scot J. Paltrow at scot.paltrow@wsj.com

  Stuck With Bush Bob Herbert. April 27, 2006 Op-Ed Columnist Stuck With Bush By BOB HERBERT If George W. Bush could have been removed from office for being a bad president, he would have been sent back to his ranch a long time ago. If incompetence were a criminal offense, he’d be behind bars. But that’s just daydreaming. The reality is that there are more than two and a half years left in the long dark night of the Bush presidency nearly as long as the entire time John Kennedy was in office. The nation seems, very belatedly, to be catching on to the tragic failures and monumental ineptitude of its president. Mr. Bush’s poll numbers are abysmal. Republicans up for re-election are running from him as if he were the bogyman. Callers to conservative talk radio programs who were once ecstatic about the president and his policies are now deeply disillusioned. The libertarian Cato Institute is about to release a study titled “Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush.” It says, “Unfortunately, far from defending the Constitution, President Bush has repeatedly sought to strip out the limits the document places on federal power.” While I disagree with parts of the study, I certainly agree with that particular comment. In the current issue of Rolling Stone, Sean Wilentz, a distinguished historian and the director of the American Studies program at Princeton University, takes a serious look at the possibility that Mr. Bush may be the worst president in the nation’s history. What in the world took so long? Some of us have known since the moment he hopped behind the wheel that this reckless president was driving the nation headlong toward a cliff. The worst thing he did, of course, was to employ a massive campaign of deceit to lead the nation into a catastrophic war in Iraq a war with no end in sight that has already claimed tens of thousands of lives and inflicted scores of thousands of crippling injuries. When he was a young man, Mr. Bush used the Air National Guard to hide out from the draft in a time of war. Then, as president, he’s suddenly G. I. George, strutting around in a flight suit, threatening to wage war on all and sundry, and taunting the insurgents in Iraq with a cry of “bring them on.” When the nation needed leadership on the critical problem of global warming, Mr. Bush took his cues from the honchos in the oil and gasoline industry, the very people who were setting the planet on fire. Now he talks about overcoming the nation’s addiction to oil! This is amazing. Here’s the president of the United States scaling the very heights of chutzpah. The Bush people and the oil people are indistinguishable. Condoleezza Rice, a former Chevron director, even had an oil tanker named after her. Among the complaints in the Cato study is that the Bush administration has taken the position that despite validly enacted laws to the contrary, the president cannot be restrained “from pursuing any tactic he believes to be effective in the war on terror.” This view has led to activities that I believe have brought great shame to the nation: the warrantless spying on Americans, the abuses at Abu Ghraib, the creation of the C.I.A.’s network of secret prisons, extraordinary rendition and the barbaric encampment at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in which detainees are held, without regard to guilt or innocence, in a nightmarish no man’s land beyond the reach of any reasonable judicial process. The sins of the Bush administration are so extensive and so egregious, they could never be adequately addressed in a newspaper column. History will be the final judge. But I’ve no doubt about the ultimate verdict. Remember the Clinton budget surplus? It was the largest in American history. President Bush and his cronies went after it like vultures feasting in a field of carcasses. They didn’t invest the surplus. They devoured it. Remember how most of the world responded with an extraordinary outpouring of sympathy and support for America in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11? Mr. Bush had no idea how to seize that golden opportunity to build new alliances and strengthen existing ones. Much of that solidarity with America has morphed into outright hostility. Remember Katrina? The major task of Congress and the voters for the remainder of the Bush presidency is to curtail the destructive impulses of this administration, and to learn the lessons that will prevent similar horrors from ever happening again. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

  Rituals of Grief Go Online Katie Knudson, 24, killed on Feb. 23 in a shooting in Fort Myers, Fla., is memorialized on her Web page at MySpace.com. Steve Dixon for The New York Times Her step-father, Bob Shorkey, monitors postings from friends and acquaintances. April 27, 2006 Rituals of Grief Go Online By WARREN ST. JOHN Like many other 23-year-olds, Deborah Lee Walker loved the beach, discovering bands, making new friends and keeping up with old ones, often through the social networking site MySpace.com, where she listed her heroes as “my family, and anyone serving in the military thank you!” So only hours after she died in an automobile accident near Valdosta, Ga., early on the morning of Feb. 27, her father, John Walker, logged onto her MySpace page with the intention of alerting her many friends to the news. To his surprise, there were already 20 to 30 comments on the page lamenting his daughter’s death. Eight weeks later, the comments are still coming. “Hey Lee! It’s been a LONG time,” a friend named Stacey wrote recently. “I know that you will be able to read this from Heaven, where I’m sure you are in charge of the parties. Please rest in peace and know that it will never be the same here without you!” Just as the Web has changed long-established rituals of romance and socializing, personal Web pages on social networking sites that include MySpace, Xanga.com and Facebook.com are altering the rituals of mourning. Such sites have enrolled millions of users in recent years, especially the young, who use them to expand their personal connections and to tell the wider world about their lives. Inevitably, some of these young people have died prematurely, in accidents, suicides, murders and from medical problems and as a result, many of their personal Web pages have suddenly changed from lighthearted daily dairies about bands or last night’s parties into online shrines where grief is shared in real time. The pages offer often wrenching views of young lives interrupted, and in the process have created a dilemma for bereaved parents, who find themselves torn between the comfort derived from having access to their children’s private lives and staying in contact with their friends, and the unease of grieving in a public forum witnessed by anyone, including the ill-intentioned. “The upside is definitely that we still have some connection with her and her friends,” said Bob Shorkey, a graphic artist in North Carolina whose 24-year-old stepdaughter, Katie Knudson, was killed on Feb. 23 in a drive-by shooting in Fort Myers, Fla. “But because it’s public, your life is opened up to everyone out there, and that’s definitely the downside.” It’s impossible to know how many people with pages on social networking sites have died; 74 million people have registered with MySpace alone, according to the company, which said it does not delete pages for inactivity. But a glib and sometimes macabre site called MyDeathSpace.com has documented at least 116 people with profiles on MySpace who have died. There are additions to the list nearly every day. Last Thursday, for example, a 17-year-old from Vancouver, Wash., named Anna Svidersky was stabbed to death while working at a McDonald’s there. As word of the crime spread among her extended network of friends on MySpace, her page was filled with posts from distraught friends and affected strangers. A separate page set up by Ms. Svidersky’s friends after her death received about 1,200 comments in its first three days. “Anna, you were a great girl and someone very special,” one person wrote. “I enjoyed having you at our shows and running into you at the mall. You will be missed greatly … rest in peace.” Tom Anderson, the president of MySpace, said in an e-mail message that out of concern for privacy, the company did not allow people to assume control of the MySpace accounts of users after their deaths. “MySpace handles each incident on a case-by-case basis when notified, and will work with families to respect their wishes,” Mr. Anderson wrote, adding that at the request of survivors the company would take down pages of deceased users. Friends of MySpace users who have died said they had been comforted by the messages left by others and by the belief or hope that their dead friends might somehow be reading from another realm. And indeed many of the posts are written as though the recipient were still alive. “I still believe that even though she’s not the one on her MySpace page, that’s a way I can reach out to her,” said Jenna Finke, 23, a close friend of Ms. Walker, the young woman who died in Georgia. “Her really close friends go on there every day. It means a lot to know people aren’t forgetting about her.” More formal online obituary services have been available for a number of years. An Illinois company called Legacy.com has deals with many newspapers, including The New York Times, to create online guest books for obituaries the papers publish on the Web, and offers multimedia memorials called Living Tributes starting at $29. But Web pages on social networking sites are more personal, the online equivalent of someone’s room, and maintaining them has its complications. Some are frustratingly mundane. Amanda Presswood, whose 23-year-old friend Michael Olsen was killed in a fire in Galesburg, Ill., on Jan. 23, said none of his friends or family members knew or could guess the password to his MySpace account, which he signed onto the day before he died. That made it impossible to accept some new messages. “There’s a lot of pictures on there that people haven’t seen,” Ms. Presswood said. “His parents have been coming to me for help because they know I know about the Internet. They even asked if I could hack it so I could keep the page going.” The Walkers correctly guessed the password to their daughter’s page, and used it to alert her friends to details of her memorial service. They also used it to access photographs and stories about their daughter they had missed out on. “It’s a little weird to say as a parent, but the site has been a source for us to get to know her better,” Mr. Walker said. “We didn’t understand the breadth and scope of the network she had built as an individual, and we got to see that through MySpace. It helped us to understand the impact she’s had on other people.” At the same time, Ms. Walker’s mother, Julie, wrote in an e-mail message, the family was overwhelmed by unsolicited e-mail messages from strangers offering platitudes and seeking to advise them on how to handle their grief. The family found such offerings unwelcome, however well intentioned. “The grief of our own friends and family is almost more than we can bear on top of our own, and we don’t need anyone else’s on our shoulders,” Mrs. Walker wrote. Mr. Shorkey said he and his wife remained in touch with their daughter’s friends through MySpace. And they visit her Web page daily. “Some days it makes me feel she’s still there,” he said. “And some days it reminds me I can never have that contact again.”   Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

  • 8:32 pm
  • Leave a comment