The Headmaster of Fashion 
Josh Haner/The New York Times Tim Gunn walks the line at open auditions for “Project Runway” in Times Square. 
Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times Tim Gunn juggles two roles these days, as the chief creative officer of Liz Claiborne and as a judge of aspiring designers on TV April 12, 2007 The Headmaster of Fashion A deceptively sweet-looking Daniel Vosovic arched a dark brow beneath his willfully tousled curls, turned to the man seated to his right and cut straight to the bone. “If you ever send an e-mail to me and sign it, ‘Best wishes,’ I’ll know you’re just trying to pacify me,” he said with a mocking tone that had the effect of a match dropped on kindling. Tim Gunn’s face turned as red as Laura Bennett’s hair. This happened on Saturday morning in a Midtown hotel during tryouts for “Project Runway,” the Bravo reality series about dueling designers on which the meticulously unflappable Mr. Gunn serves as mentor, moral guide and cautionary sounding board to a cast of generally flailing contestants, like the fecund Ms. Bennett from the third season. Mr. Vosovic, a second-season runner-up who was helping assess the incoming class of the fourth season, teased Mr. Gunn between his candy-coated send-off of the 20th applicant, a huffy Russian named Vladimir, and his abrupt dismissal of Rebecca, a substitute teacher with unnaturally red hair who described her work as “a combination of Martha Stewart and Tim Burton.” Rejection is an art best crafted by experience. Mr. Gunn is the Michelangelo of the form. Here, a sampling of his words to a series of washouts: “I don’t think you have the depth of experience yet. In fact, I know it.” “This really is not what we’re looking for.” “I appreciate what you’re trying to do. Do I love it? No.” “We’re going to pass. Best wishes.” Viewers of “Project Runway,” not to mention alumni of Parsons the New School for Design, where he was long a faculty member, will have no difficulty summoning up the posh, lilting voice of Mr. Gunn, who has been parodied on late-night television for the softly scolding undertones of intellectual feyness in his delivery of the word “designers.” Ashleigh Verrier, a 2004 Parsons graduate, said that Mr. Gunn’s mannerisms are so ingrained in her mind that “I can still hear him saying, whenever I drape a piece: ‘Well, can she walk in it? Can she hail a taxi?’ ” Former students speak of Mr. Gunn as if he were Miss Jean Brodie or Mark Thackeray in a more expensive suit. “I believe from a historical standpoint, Tim is going to go down as someone who brought fashion to an academic level and culturally put it on the map,” Ms. Verrier said. As an academic whose role was intended to lend an air of dignity to a show about making stars of untested designers, Mr. Gunn, 53, was an unlikely candidate for breakout celebrity on “Project Runway.” Yet he has struck a chord with young people who admire his buttoned-up demeanor and the way he treats designers: as if he were a principal. Mr. Gunn, who until last month was the chairman of the Parsons fashion department, is the foil for all their flamboyance and inexperience. His success has surpassed that of any of the winners of the show. Bravo has announced plans for a spinoff called “Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style,” which is pegged to an actual guide Mr. Gunn wrote with Kate Moloney, an assistant chairwoman of fashion design at Parsons, published by Abrams Image. And last month, Mr. Gunn was lured away from Parsons, where he began working as an admissions director in 1983, to become chief creative officer of Liz Claiborne Inc., one of the nation’s largest apparel companies. At the executive level, Mr. Gunn will serve as a voice for the roughly 350 designers employed by Claiborne’s 45 brands, a role the company has likened to a creative dean. And he will continue to appear on “Project Runway,” which will return late this year. With the show’s popularity, Mr. Gunn changed fashion in an abstract way, making it more appealing as a career to a generation of young people who see design as a ticket to celebrity, reflected in a flood of applications to design schools across the country. Talking to Larry King in August, Mr. Gunn described the show’s appeal: “Fashion is so fully embedded in our culture today that there are mythologies about it. And if anything, this show demystifies much of that and really makes fashion very, very accessible to the public at large.” Now, at Claiborne, Mr. Gunn is attempting a more concrete real-world makeover: to bring a sense of excitement about fashion to a corporate culture known for blandness and to effect a change in the perception of its brands, from outdated to fashionable. Can Mr. Gunn, in his words, make it work? IT’S a huge learning curve for me,” Mr. Gunn said last week at the company’s offices in the garment center, across Seventh Avenue from Parsons. “I’ve been living in a rarefied bubble, really, for a total of 29 years. Because we were dealing with theory, we could write our own scenarios, where nothing ever fails and nothing is ever lost in the shipping process. It’s a very different universe.” His role at Liz Claiborne is a new one for the company, part of a mandate by Bill McComb, the chief executive, to foster an image of “irresistible product,” even if that requires raising some prices. The implication is that the company, which like many large, publicly traded apparel businesses, places a premium on financial performance, also recognizes the value of design. And Liz Claiborne is in need of a face-lift. Profits at the $5 billion company dropped considerably last year, by about 20 percent. Mr. McComb, who joined Claiborne in October, said there was a feeling internally, among designers, that the company had become too numbers-oriented. He thought that Mr. Gunn would inspire them, as he does on the show, to take creative risks. “If dollars and cents drive your design, you risk becoming a commodity line,” Mr. McComb said. “And that’s the death of a fashion business.” Mr. Gunn, in a black pinstripe suit one day and a black turtleneck under a black leather blazer the next, may be well suited for the job. At Parsons, he revitalized a fashion curriculum that had not changed since 1952. He introduced students to critical thinking, fashion history and the realities of commercial business. He made the school’s annual runway show more competitive for seniors by presenting only the best collections, which had an unexpected result of making instant stars of its top graduates: Ms. Verrier, Chris Benz and Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler. On the other hand, Mr. Gunn has faced criticism from some students about changes they perceive as encouraging those who fit an idealized, or commercialized, image of successful designers over independent, freewheeling thinkers. Moreover, “Project Runway” has drawn complaints for trivializing the profession. Stan Herman, the designer, speaking on the industry last month at a panel organized by the Fashion Institute of Technology, said, “It needs to be taken with a grain of salt because there are many kids who don’t know anything else about fashion besides ‘Project Runway.’ “ Mr. Herman later said that the show has had a positive effect on enrollment in design schools and credited Mr. Gunn with presenting a balanced picture of the business. But he was concerned, he said, about the show’s track record of producing more celebrities than successful designers. “We are living in an era of instant gratification, and the show is built on that premise,” he said. “The fact is that fashion is an art form or a form of commercial art that takes years and years of development. I find when they just use personalities, they miss a lot of the hard work that goes into our industry.” Since casting began in Los Angeles last month, Mr. Gunn has been insulted by rejected applicants and questioned about the future of the show after poor turnouts there on some days. Last year he sparred in the press with Jay McCarroll, the first winner, who was irritated by Mr. Gunn’s criticism of his slowness in starting a post-”Runway” career. Other contestants are quick to defend Mr. Gunn as supportive of the development of designers’ careers. “He will be to Liz Claiborne what Anna Wintour is to Bernard Arnault,” said Emmett McCarthy, a second-season contestant, referring to the advisory relationship the Vogue editor has with Mr. Arnault, the chief executive of LVMH. Mr. Gunn seems unfazed by his celebrity or the backbiting that ensued. People might assume that “Project Runway” had a halo effect on his personal fortunes, but he said this was not the case. “I couldn’t be any more single,” he said. At least he was able to afford a new rental apartment in Manhattan, in London Terrace, where he was on a waiting list for nine months. “For the first time in my life I have a grown-up apartment,” he said. “There’s a closet in the bedroom!” Even confidence came to him slowly, as an art student at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington and later as a teacher there. He had been an unhappy child, introverted, a stutterer, spending sunny days in his room reading books, practicing the piano, playing with Legos, idolizing mad King Ludwig II, who spent his spare time designing castles. He was the last one chosen during mandatory team sports — a disappointment to his tight-lipped father, George William Gunn, an assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who served as the ghostwriter of J. Edgar Hoover. (His mother, Nancy, helped establish the library of the Central Intelligence Agency. His great-grandfather Harry Wardman was a builder of row houses and hotels in Washington.) “I was the one they called the horrible slurs that ended up being prophetic,” Mr. Gunn said. “Little did I know.” Between the ages of 12 and 20, he was enrolled in no less than a dozen schools — not for academic reasons, but because he could not handle the social interaction. In college, he discovered his passion for design. The assemblage work of the sculptor Joseph Cornell held a particular sway over Mr. Gunn, who was attracted to the neat boxes of photographs and the surprising juxtapositions. “I thought there must be a way of synthesizing all the different parts of my life in my own way,” Mr. Gunn said. “I really think it was Cornell who caused me to have the confidence to say I’m going to be an artist.” But his epiphany came, oddly enough, at a moment when he was faced with rejection, and what would seem in retrospect to be one of many prophetic moments. An artist looked at his student work at Corcoran and told him, “I’d rather look at the space this work displaces than look at this work.” Best wishes. As we know, Mr. Gunn did not become a great sculptor.
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 | He’s Not My Grandpa. He’s My Dad. 
Josh Haner/The New York Times Sy Coopersmith, 75, a psychotherapist, and Andie, 16, his daughter, at home in Great Neck, N.Y.  Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Tony, Heather and baby Julia Randall in 1997, when he was 78. He died in 2004. April 12, 2007 He’s Not My Grandpa. He’s My Dad. LATE in 1996, while rehearsing for a production of “A Christmas Carol” in New York, Tony Randall was giddily anticipating becoming a father — at the age of 77. “What I look forward to,” he said during a break, “is when the kid is 15 and we go out in the yard to play ball. I’ll only be 90.” But Mr. Randall never made it. He was 84 when he died in 2004, leaving behind not only a 7-year-old daughter, Julia, but also a 6-year-old son, Jefferson. In December 1996, inspired in part by Mr. Randall’s well-publicized late fatherhood (his wife was 26 at the time), I wrote an article for The New York Times about men having children at a stage in life when their peers were usually contemplating a move to Florida or their next cardiogram. One proud papa dubbed them start-over dads, or SODs for short. The news of Mr. Randall’s late fatherhood — and that of other celebrity SODs around the same time — evoked a fair amount of tut-tutting. Some joked that these creaky specimens wouldn’t be able to head off their tykes as they marred the walls with crayon or played in traffic. Others thought SODs inherently selfish, knowing they might die before their new children were grown. “To intentionally deprive a child of a father is an awful sin,” one reader wrote in reaction to my article. Under the circumstances, it seemed natural to check in with some of the same fathers 10 years later to see how they are faring in their eighth or even ninth decade. Mortality is the issue paramount in most of their minds, although whether it is more so compared with other men their age is difficult to say. A decade ago, Sy Coopersmith, a psychotherapist who lives in Great Neck, N.Y., told me that his young daughter, Andie, “wants to know if I’m going to live, and I say, ‘I hope so — until you’re a grown woman.’ ” So far, so good. Andie is 16, and Mr. Coopersmith is 75. That he could die before his daughter reaches adulthood “is a reality that I live with,” he said. “When we got married, my wife had me promise that I’d give her at least 10 years.” Mr. Coopersmith could be reasonably confident about keeping that promise: when Andie was born, he was just shy of 60. At that age, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the average American man can expect to live 20.5 years longer. Many well-known figures have lately joined the SOD ranks. Among them are Rod Stewart, who had a son when he was 60; Paul McCartney (a daughter at 61); and Kenny Rogers (identical twin boys at 65). In 2004, at 63, the actor George Lazenby had a son; a twin boy and girl followed in 2005. Julio Iglesias, 63, is expecting his wife to give birth shortly. SODs remain a pretty consistent bunch. Generally they are affluent professionals, who can afford new children during their golden years. They usually want to oblige the maternal instincts of a younger wife, or they hope that new children will help give them new life. They also remain a determinedly tiny minority. Among registered United States births in 2004, in only 2,127 cases were the fathers 60 or older, according to the Center for Health Statistics. In 1994 the figure was 2,534. In each year, that was barely 0.1 percent of the total. “It’s such a new phenomenon that there’s a dearth of studies about it,” said Andrew J. Cherlin, a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins and the author of books about the American family. “We’ve never had men living so long and having new families. I know many men who become fathers at age 40, 45 or 50 because they met their wives in midlife and decided to have children. Graying at the temples is not new among fathers. But a head of white hair is.” There are growing indications that SODhood may entail risks for children. In recent years studies have suggested that older fathers are more likely to have children with autism, schizophrenia, dwarfism and other serious problems. “There’s certainly evidence of damaged sperm in older men, and for a long time there’s been a tendency to blame women for these congenital defects,” said Dr. Robert N. Butler, the president of the International Longevity Center. But David Popenoe, a director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, noted a biological trade-off. “This may surprise you, but in many cases these older fathers’ testosterone levels have dropped, so they tend to be more nurturing,” he said. “There are some real hormonal changes here.” Certainly many SODs grow more relaxed as they grow older. “I must say the feeling is good,” said Saul Cohen, 69, the chairman of Maxim Securities Group in Manhattan and the father of Lily, 10. “I don’t think I react like I used to. I’m not as quick off the trigger. I’m more laid-back.” Andie Coopersmith said that her father is both mellow and involved: “He knows everything that’s going on with me. But just because he’s older, he’s not more strict. Most kids think that he has me on a leash, but he doesn’t.” A major benefit of being a start-over dad is that the men no longer need to scramble up the professional ladder. “It’s so pleasant,” said Dr. J. Allan Hobson, 73, a former Harvard Medical School professor of psychiatry and the father of twin 10-year-olds, Andrew and Matthew. “My success as a scientist depended on my neglecting my first set of children. Now that I’m retired, we have a lot more time together.” As they have matured, the children of many SODs have grown to appreciate their status. Pamela Lowe of Manhattan used to get teased because her father, Morton, was 69 when she was born. “I was so embarrassed when the little girls came up to me,” said Pamela, who will be 18 in May. “Now I’m so proud that he’s different.” As time passes, the children of late-life fathers find themselves in an unusual position, with step-siblings who are old enough to be their parents. In extreme cases, different sets of children of the same father can find themselves competing for love and inheritances. “Issues of divorce still affect children in their 20s, 30s, even 40s,” said Dan Hogan, the executive director of Fathers & Families, a Boston-based group that encourages men to stay involved with their families after divorce. “They often have very strong feelings, sometimes surprisingly so.” That is true for the adult daughter of one start-over dad. She bears her father’s second wife and daughter no ill will. But she prefers not to be in touch with them. “My father was a self-involved narcissistic guy,” said the woman, who is quoted anonymously to respect her family’s privacy. “I spent my life trying to get his attention. But I could only get it for a millisecond. So my relationship with his second wife was greatly complicated. I feel that my father replaced not only my mother, but me, when he married again.” Indeed, she said that her father once told friends, “I wish you could hear from my daughter, but she hasn’t been born yet.” If emotional problems for SOD families are difficult, physical problems are inescapable. In 2001, Dr. Hobson, the retired psychiatry professor, had a stroke that left him in poor health. Moe Belin of Manhattan, the 84-year-old father of Mollie, 17, suffered a heart attack three years ago. He passed out in the bathroom and came to in the hospital. “The only thing I thought when I woke up was, ‘Mollie, Mollie, I went and got sick on her,’ ” he recalled. “It bothers me that I put this little girl through all that.” Mr. Belin recovered. He still hits the gym at 6:30 a.m. Each night, Mollie stops at his bedside to ask, “How do you feel, 1 to 10?” Usually he gives her a reassuring number, and then she goes off to sleep. Sometimes no amount of reassurance can help. The writer George Plimpton died at 76 in 2003, leaving behind 9-year-old twin girls. His widow, Sarah, had very much wanted them. Now she is reconsidering what being a SOD entails. “It’s a wonderful idea that these men are having these children,” Mrs. Plimpton said. “But at the first sign of trouble with the father’s health, things often go rapidly downhill. It’s not for the faint of heart.” MR. Randall’s widow, Heather, wonders if she did the right thing for her children by her decision. “I suppose I have some strains of guilt over that,” she told the talk-show host Larry King. (Mr. King is a start-over dad himself, having had two children in his 60s.) Lori Cohen Ransohoff also has regrets. She was married to Dr. Joseph Ransohoff, a neurosurgeon 41 years her senior. When he died in 2001, their children — Jake, then 11, and Jade, 5 — were hit hard. “I don’t ever really remember preparing the kids,” Mrs. Ransohoff said. “He was so healthy I just took it for granted. I never thought that far ahead. Looking back, I realize that was foolish. Now I tell my daughter, ‘Maybe you shouldn’t marry an older man.’ “ She laughed a bit. “Here I am, giving her advice I didn’t follow.” Jade Ransohoff, now 11, doesn’t know what to think. “A lot of my friends think they have the worst life when their parents are divorced,” she said. “But they get to see both of them. Having your dad dead is different. You don’t get to see him.” In some sense, to be a start-over dad is to live in semi-denial, acknowledging the inevitable while not being incapacitated by it. Echoing Mr. Randall, Morton Lowe, now 87, speaks of his future with Pamela. “When I make the 90th, I’ll be very happy,” Mr. Lowe said. “If she can make it through college, and I can be there, then maybe I can walk her down the aisle.” |
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Tuesday, April 10, 2007 | Bush Seeks Overseer For Iraq, Afghanistan 3 Generals Spurn the Position of War ‘Czar’
Bush Seeks Overseer For Iraq, Afghanistan
By Peter Baker and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 11, 2007; A01
The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job, according to people close to the situation. At least three retired four-star generals approached by the White House in recent weeks have declined to be considered for the position, the sources said, underscoring the administration’s difficulty in enlisting its top recruits to join the team after five years of warfare that have taxed the United States and its military. “The very fundamental issue is, they don’t know where the hell they’re going,” said retired Marine Gen. John J. “Jack” Sheehan, a former top NATO commander who was among those rejecting the job. Sheehan said he believes that Vice President Cheney and his hawkish allies remain more powerful within the administration than pragmatists looking for a way out of Iraq. “So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, ‘No, thanks,’ ” he said. The White House has not publicly disclosed its interest in creating the position, hoping to find someone President Bush can anoint and announce for the post all at once. Officials said they are still considering options for how to reorganize the White House’s management of the two conflicts. If they cannot find a person suited for the sort of specially empowered office they envision, they said, they may have to retain the current structure. The administration’s interest in the idea stems from long-standing concern over the coordination of civilian and military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan by different parts of the U.S. government. The Defense and State departments have long struggled over their roles and responsibilities in Iraq, with the White House often forced to referee. The highest-ranking White House official responsible exclusively for the wars is deputy national security adviser Meghan O’Sullivan, who reports to national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and does not have power to issue orders to agencies. O’Sullivan plans to step down soon, giving the White House the opportunity to rethink how it organizes the war effort. Unlike O’Sullivan, the new czar would report directly to Bush and to Hadley and would have the title of assistant to the president, just as Hadley and the other highest-ranking White House officials have, the sources said. The new czar would also have “tasking authority,” or the power to issue directions, over other agencies, they said. To fill such a role, the White House is searching for someone with enough stature and confidence to deal directly with heavyweight administration figures such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. Besides Sheehan, sources said, the White House or intermediaries have sounded out retired Army Gen. Jack Keane and retired Air Force Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, who also said they are not interested. Ralston declined to comment; Keane confirmed he declined the offer, adding: “It was discussed weeks ago.” Kurt Campbell, a Clinton administration Pentagon official who heads the Center for a New American Security, said the difficulty in finding someone to take the job shows that Bush has exhausted his ability to sign up top people to help salvage a disastrous war. “Who’s sitting on the bench?” he asked. “Who is there to turn to? And who would want to take the job?” All three generals who declined the job have been to varying degrees administration insiders. Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff, was one of the primary proponents of sending more troops to Iraq and presented Bush with his plan for a major force increase during an Oval Office meeting in December. The president adopted the concept in January, although he did not dispatch as many troops as Keane proposed. Ralston, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was named by Rice last August to serve as her special envoy for countering the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a group designated a terrorist organization by the United States. Sheehan, a 35-year Marine, served on the Defense Policy Board advising the Pentagon early in the Bush administration and at one point was reportedly considered by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He now works as an executive at Bechtel Corp. developing oil projects in the Middle East. In an interview yesterday, Sheehan said that Hadley contacted him and they discussed the job for two weeks but that he was dubious from the start. “I’ve never agreed on the basis of the war, and I’m still skeptical,” Sheehan said. “Not only did we not plan properly for the war, we grossly underestimated the effect of sanctions and Saddam Hussein on the Iraqi people.” In the course of the discussions, Sheehan said, he called around to get a better feel for the administration landscape. “There’s the residue of the Cheney view — ‘We’re going to win, al-Qaeda’s there’ — that justifies anything we did,” he said. “And then there’s the pragmatist view — how the hell do we get out of Dodge and survive? Unfortunately, the people with the former view are still in the positions of most influence.” Sheehan said he wrote a note March 27 declining interest. Gordon Johndroe, a National Security Council spokesman, would not discuss contacts with candidates but confirmed that officials are considering a newly empowered czar. “The White House is looking at a number of options on how to structure the Iraq and Afghanistan office in light of Meghan O’Sullivan’s departure and the completion of both the Iraq and Afghanistan strategic reviews,” he said. He added that “No decisions have been made” and “a list of candidates has not been narrowed down.” The idea of someone overseeing the wars has been promoted to the White House by several outside advisers. “It would be definitely a good idea,” said Frederick W. Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “Hope they do it, and hope they do it soon. And I hope they pick the right guy. It’s a real problem that we don’t have a single individual back here who is really capable of coordinating the effort.” Other variations are under consideration. House Democrats have put a provision in their version of a war spending bill that would designate a coordinator to oversee all assistance to Iraq. That person, who would report directly to the president, would require Senate confirmation; the White House said it opposes the proposal because Rice already has an aid coordinator. Some administration critics said the ideas miss the point. “An individual can’t fix a failed policy,” said Carlos Pascual, former State Department coordinator of Iraq reconstruction, who is now a vice president at the Brookings Institution. “So the key thing is to figure out where the policy is wrong.” |
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| Today’s Blogs IgnorImus
By Christopher Beam
Posted Tuesday, April 10, 2007, at 6:04 A.M. E.T. Bloggers discuss two major slap-downs: radio jock Don Imus’ two-week hiatus and Titans cornerback Pacman Jones’ yearlong suspension. IgnorImus: Radio host Don Imus was suspended Monday by MSNBC and CBS Radio amid growing anger over his description of the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.” Imus has since issued two apologies and will soon meet privately with the Rutgers team. Bloggers debate the shock jock’s fate. Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice predicts Imus isn’t going anywhere: “Aside from his role in radio and TV, he has received good (and justifiably so) publicity for his work with sick children. His show has also been a favorite among Washington and media elites, but not usually a favorite with whoever occupied the White House.” Conservative Tony Iovino at A Red Mind in a Blue State doesn’t defend Imus but is baffled by the “blanket coverage”: “It’s ridiculous. We have to listen to Rev. Al (Tawana Brawley) and Jesse (Hymie Town) Jackson lecture us on racism? Please. Imus’ show is a comedy show. Live. A live comedy show is always going to generate jokes, good and bad, that stretch, push and sometimes break the envelope.” At Mirror on America, African-American blogger “Angry Independent” similarly criticizes the “selective amnesia” of black leaders like Sharpton: “They want to scalp this man for saying ‘Nappy Headed Ho’s'? … [W]ithin the so-called ‘Black Community’ this kind of language, often from Black rappers, is par for the course. … No one has degraded people of color (particularly Black women) more effectively than other Black folks from the Rap/R&B/Entertainment world.” Also on Monday, Imus went on Al Sharpton’s radio show, where he told the host and the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, “I just can’t win with you people.” “Come on, Imus!” writes former MSNBC employee Robert Zeliger at Suburbarazzi. “I think the real problem is not that ‘those people’ won’t cut you some slack, but that you keep using the slack to hang yourself.” The conservative author of Blue Star Chronicle compares Imus’ comments to Rosie O’Donnell’s various outbursts and cries double standard: “Why is no one demanding she be taken off the air or punished for her hate-filled rants? She insults everybody, picks fights with whoever she doesn’t like, makes viscous fun of Asians and is in general disgusting. She is held up as an example of tolerance and free speech.” At Tenured Radical, Wesleyan professor Claire B. Potter chides the media for paying attention to the comment’s racism while ignoring its sexism: “Sexism is an important point of entry for critiquing athletics as an industry that promises respectability to the poor, as is race. Although high-profile male athletes are subject to similar sorts of racist depictions … only female athletes seem to be fair game for attacks on them as a sex. If they are not lesbians, they are ‘ho’s,’ as Imus put it.” Gawker‘s Alex Balk predicts that “there’ll be a continued hemming and hawing over the whole thing for a few more days and then it will be forgotten, as it always is, because, you know, he may be a bigot, but an appearance on his show does help to sell your book, and, really, isn’t that what matters?” Read more about Don Imus. Media Bistro’s FishBowl NY catalogs a recent sampling of Imus “hate-talk.” Hot Air has part of the Sharpton radio clip. Pacman sacked: The NFL has suspended Titans cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones and the Bengals’ Chris Henry for multiple violations of the league’s personal conduct policy. Jones, allegedly involved in a shooting at a Las Vegas strip club, will be suspended for a year. Commissioner Roger Goodell wrote to the players: “Your conduct has brought embarrassment and ridicule upon yourself, your club, and the NFL, and has damaged the reputation of players throughout the league.” Bloggers wonder what this means for Jones, the Titans, and the NFL. Aaron Schatz at FOX’s Football Outsiders argues the Titans are nothing without Jones: “Say what you will about his personality, but Jones is an exceptionally talented football player. Very few starting cornerbacks reach this level of performance in their second year. He was only going to get better in 2007. Now he’s gone, and a lot of Tennessee’s playoff hopes are gone with him.” Matt at NFL Gridiron Gab thinks the league “did the right thing here”: “[U]nless you want a league of criminals running around, these are the measures that you must take in order to protect the league.” Cheryl Thompson at AOL’s Casually Obsessed isn’t so sure: “So you make it rain a little, have a knack for being in the middle of gunfire, and may have had about 10 or so run-ins with the law, and all of a sudden you’re an ‘embarrassment’ to the NFL. Oh, wait, those are actually some shady things. My bad.” Dimmy Karras notes that not even Jones’ recent “whitewash” interview with Deion Sanders could save him from suspension: “He admits to ‘horrible decisions’ but the first example he cites is letting friends drive his expensive cars — not spitting in a woman’s face (was this charge dropped recently? I can’t remember) or instigating a nightclub fight that left a bouncer paralyzed (probably didn’t bring that one up on advice of his lawyers).” Will Leitch at Deadspin gets all teary: “So, Pac Man is out a year’s worth of rain, and Henry will miss a game for each arrest (or close to it). We ask them both, even though they’re going to miss a significant period of time, to not change, you beautiful bastards. Don’t ever change.” Read more about Jones’ suspension. Or play Pac-Man instead. Christopher Beam is a Slate editorial assistant.
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| Photography Collection: Corbis 
Lisa Kyle for The New York Times Corbis, started by Bill Gates in 1989, owns millions of images, some of them kept underground in a former limestone mine in rural Pennsylvania. April 10, 2007 A Photo Trove, a Mounting Challenge Correction Appended In some sense, the iconic photograph of Rosa Parks recreating her quiet act of rebellion on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., belongs to every American. But as a practical matter, it belongs to Bill Gates. Anyone wanting to use that image in a book or on a Web site must first license it from Corbis, a corporation founded and owned by Mr. Gates, who is better known for starting Microsoft. The photo is among the 11 million prints and negatives in the legendary Bettmann archive, which Corbis bought in 1995. Since that first purchase, Corbis has spent tens of millions of dollars acquiring image collections and other companies, hired more than 1,000 people and set up two dozen offices worldwide. Although Corbis says it brings in some $250 million a year in sales, it has yet to turn a profit. Now the company is shuffling its top executives as it takes on new challenges, building up a business in rights management and plotting its response to the rise of low-cost online photo services that threaten to undermine its lucrative stock photo sales. The company plans to announce Tuesday that Gary Shenk, the president, is being made chief executive as well. Mr. Shenk, 36, is an expert in rights licensing who has risen rapidly through the Corbis ranks since he was hired in 2003 from Universal Studios, where he started a small licensing unit. Steve Davis, 49, the departing chief executive, will continue as a senior adviser after 10 years of running the company. The move into rights clearance, which involves sorting out the questions of who owns what material and how much they should be paid for its use, is a departure from the original vision for the company. Mr. Gates started Corbis in 1989 with the idea that people would someday decorate their homes with a revolving display of digital artwork — interspersing, say, Stanley Tretick’s shot of John F. Kennedy Jr. playing under the desk in the Oval Office with photos of their own families at play. That is not how things have worked out. But meanwhile Corbis has built up a formidable stash of historical photos, including those in the Bettmann Archive. In 1999, Corbis acquired the licensing rights to the Sygma collection in France, and two years ago it did the same with a German stock image company called Zefa. It licenses those images for an average of about $250 apiece. Corbis also owns digital reproduction rights for art from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery in London. In all, Corbis represents or owns the rights to more than 100 million images, including some of the most famous photographs ever — Arthur Sasse’s photo of Einstein sticking his tongue out and Marilyn Monroe on the subway grate. And Corbis handles the licensing of millions of other images on behalf of thousands of photographers. The archival photos bring in about half of Corbis’s sales, but the company also has a stable of professional photographers who generate stock photos for advertising and media clients — images of children on playgrounds, people sitting in business meetings and men in khakis swinging golf clubs. Over the past few years, Corbis has moved beyond newspaper and magazine clients to pursue advertising and graphic design agencies, as well as corporate marketing departments, which are turning increasingly to high-quality stock photography rather than doing their own expensive photo shoots. Those customers are also buying from Corbis’s growing library of 30,000 short video clips — mostly generic scenes of, say, people shopping or running down the beach. What Corbis did not foresee was the rise of so-called microstock agencies like Fotolia and iStockPhoto. These sites take advantage of the phenomenon known as crowdsourcing, or turning to the online masses for free or low-cost submissions. Thousands of amateur and semiprofessional photographers armed with high-quality digital cameras and a copy of Photoshop contribute photographs to microstock sites, which often charge $1 to $5 an image. Although the microstock business still represents a small fraction of the $2 billion market for stock photos, analysts say it is possible that low micropayment prices could take business away from the higher-priced images Corbis relies on for the bulk of its revenues. “Think about how visual the world is,” said Barbara Coffey, a senior research analyst at Kaufman Brothers in New York who follows the stock photography market. “We have pictures on our cellphones. If I can get a reasonably clear picture and the rights are cleared and I pay $2 for it, then why would I pay Corbis $200?” The rise of the microstock companies has been of particular concern to Corbis. For all its new lines of business, the company still gets some 88 percent of its revenues from image licenses, yet commands only about 11 percent of that market. Getty Images dominates the market with a 40 percent share. Getty, which has grown quickly since its start in 1995 with the backing of its wealthy co-founder, Mark Getty, has a foothold in microstock thanks to iStockPhoto, which it bought last year for $50 million. Mr. Shenk said Corbis would announce its plans for the microstock business sometime this quarter. As for the question of how a high-end company enters that business without cannibalizing its more expensive products, Mr. Shenk said the idea was to find a new kind of customer, people who would never envision buying pictures from a Corbis or Getty. In that vein, Mr. Shenk said Corbis would make its service as easy to use as the iTunes store of Apple and hinted that Corbis would also be following the crowdsourcing model. “More interesting and innovative things are happening on the pages of Flickr these days than on Corbis and Getty,” said Mr. Shenk, referring to the photo-sharing site owned by Yahoo. “If we can use this type of opportunity to find the next great group of Corbis photographers, that also makes it a great opportunity for us.” Corbis is also betting heavily on its Creative Resources division, which includes rights services and recorded 44 percent growth in revenue last year, to $30.1 million. Mr. Shenk, who will take over from Mr. Davis at the end of June, is most likely the biggest reason for that growth. When Mr. Shenk left Universal for Corbis in 2003, he took five people and an impressive Rolodex with him. Now nearly 30 Corbis employees work in rights clearance, in offices in Los Angeles, New York, Europe and Asia. Mr. Shenk, a Hollywood veteran who is an expert in what he calls “new ways to sell media,” said he believed Corbis was offering something unique in building a worldwide network of rights experts. The business of rights clearance, he said, is often a matter of knowing whom to call, and the idea is to make Corbis the first place that comes to mind when, say, an advertising agency is trying to clear the rights to use an image, video clip, or song. Such was the case when the band U2 made its most recent video, for “Window in the Skies,” which braided together some 100 clips of old stars like Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, synched to the new song’s music and lyrics. Corbis helped the band’s production company negotiate a thicket of publicity rights. Roughly one-third of Corbis’s 1,100 employees are in downtown Seattle, in an old bank building well suited to the company’s hip self-image. The vast, open, two-story space has retained several enormous vaults that once held gold bars and now serve as photocopy and office supply rooms. Conference rooms are named after famous photographers, and copies of their work cover many of the walls. The Corbis photographs themselves are not stored in Seattle, except digitally on the computers there. And those digital images constitute only a small fraction of Corbis’s holdings. Of the 50 million items in the Sygma collection, just 800,000 have been digitized. The prints and negatives from Otto L. Bettmann’s archive, as well as those from a few smaller collections, are kept 220 feet underground in a former limestone mine in rural Pennsylvania. In February, Corbis announced that it would be storing the Sygma collection in a preservation facility near Paris. As ventures go, Corbis represents a small investment for Mr. Gates. He pays for large expenditures, and the company uses its revenues to cover smaller projects within the firm. Mr. Gates’s involvement in the company is minimal. He spends only two to three hours each month meeting with Corbis management. Yet it is clear that he makes the big decisions. He has no interest, for example, in treating the undigitized portions of the image collections like one of his charities by, say, donating them to a public entity. Despite the hands-off approach, Mr. Gates is apparently never far from the minds of Corbis employees. Mr. Shenk is in the process of relocating to Seattle from Los Angeles, and his sparsely decorated office in Seattle is evidence of the commuter life he has been leading. The only work of art in evidence one recent afternoon was on Mr. Shenk’s whiteboard, where a colleague had drawn the unmistakable likeness of Mr. Gates, peering out from behind his glasses. “Keep up the good work, Shenk,” Mr. Gates says. “Or I’ll kill you.” Correction: April 11, 2007 An article in Business Day yesterday about the photography licensing company Corbis misidentified the photographer who took a well-known photo of John F. Kennedy Jr. playing under his father’s desk in the Oval Office. It was Stanley Tretick — not Cecil Stoughton, who also shot pictures in the Kennedy White House.
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| Romantic Revulsion 
John Hersey April 10, 2007 Findings Romantic Revulsion in the New Century: Flaw-O-Matic 2.0 ABSTRACT.
In this meta-analysis of online dating and speed dating, we propose a corollary to the Flaw-O-Matic theory of romantic revulsion. Current research reveals that the Flaw-O-Matic, a mechanism in the brain that instantly finds fault with any potential mate, can be reoriented positively in certain conditions through a newly identified process, the Sally Field Effect. When I first identified the Flaw-O-Matic, in a 1995 column, it seemed primarily a mechanism to kill romance. After studying picky daters — like a guy who couldn’t tolerate dirty elbows, and a woman who insisted on men who were at least 5-foot-10 and played polo — I predicted that they would remain permanently single. Today I’m more hopeful. Thanks to a revolution in dating research over the past decade, the Flaw-O-Matic now looks like a more versatile mechanism than we theoretical pioneers imagined. My early work was done using personal ads, a crude tool (although state of the art in 1995). I found that people looking for love in New York magazine listed far more prerequisites (like polo skills) for a partner than did people advertising in other cities. Based on these numbers, and many dinners with friends who could never find anyone good enough, I concluded that the high percentage of single-person households in New York was due to New Yorkers’ hyperactive Flaw-O-Matics. This new theory of a neural mechanism did not immediately gain wide acceptance in the social-science literature. By my count, it has been cited a total of one time (in a psychotherapist’s treatise on the “avoidant lover”). But the study of romantic revulsion has expanded because of the rise of online dating services and speed-dating events — gold mines of data. Instead of asking people about their mate preferences, scientists can now watch mating rituals in real time. They’ve tracked who asks out whom — and who says yes — at online dating services by watching the customers’ clicks and scanning their messages to look for telephone numbers and phrases like “let’s meet.” They’ve analyzed the courtship choices of more than 10,000 customers of a commercial speed-dating service. On campuses, they’ve even organized their own speed-dating events, at which you talk for several minutes apiece with perhaps a dozen people, sometimes two dozen. You discreetly mark on your scorecard which partners you’d like to see again, and the organizers match you afterward with any of them who reciprocated your interest. Just as Darwin could have predicted, the researchers have found that women are pickier than men. While men concentrate mainly on looks and will ask out a lot of women as long as they’re above a certain threshold of attractiveness, women focus on fewer prospects. They’re less willing to date someone of another race. When using online services, they pay more attention than men do to a potential partner’s education, profession and income. They prefer taller men, but they’re willing to relax their standards for the Ron Perelmans of the world, as revealed in a study of more than 20,000 online daters by Gunter Hitsch and Ali Hortacsu of the University of Chicago and Dan Ariely of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They found that a 5-foot-8 man was just as successful in getting dates as a 6-footer if he made more money — precisely $146,000 a year more. For a 5-foot-2 man, the number was $277,000. [For more of these trade-offs, see nytimes.com/tierneylab.] Online dating reveals the most exquisite calibrations of the Flaw-O-Matic because the daters fill out questionnaires listing more attributes than could ever fit in a personal ad. They can spend all day finding minute faults in hundreds of potential partners. But that’s also why so many people never make a lasting match. “When you have all these criteria to consider, and so many people to choose from, you start striving for perfection,” Dr. Ariely says. “You don’t want to settle for someone who’s not ideal in height, age, religion and 45 other dimensions.” It’s the same problem afflicting New Yorkers: with so many prospects in the big city, they refuse to stop searching. Customers of online dating services typically end up going out with fewer than 1 percent of the people whose profiles they study online. But something very different happens at a speed-dating event. The average participant makes a match with at least 1 in 10 of the people they meet; some studies have found the average is 2 or 3 out of 10. Women are still pickier than men, and in some speed-dating experiments they still prefer affluent, well-educated men, but the preference is less strong — and in some other studies they don’t discriminate at all by income or social status. What happens to speed daters’ Flaw-O-Matics? The people at these events realize that there aren’t an infinite number of possibilities. If they want to get anything out of the evening, they have to settle for less than perfection. They also can’t help noticing that they have competition, and that their ideal partner just might prefer someone else. But these speed daters don’t simply shut down their Flaw-O-Matics. They still have their standards, as demonstrated in speed-dating sessions organized by Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkel at Northwestern University. The researchers, working with Daniel Mochon and Dr. Ariely of M.I.T., analyzed the preferences of more than 150 students at the sessions. The students were particularly turned off by prospects who exhibited what the researchers call “unselective romantic desire.” Another way to put it would be “desperate.” The speed daters were very good at guessing which of their partners were indiscriminately friendly — willing to go out with lots of the other people — and which dates had eyes only for them. They much preferred the ones with “selective desire.” Being able to make this distinction in a four-minute speed date, the researchers write in the April issue of Psychological Science, “suggests that humans possess an impressive, highly attuned ability to assess such subtleties of romantic attraction. In fact, the need to feel special or unique could be a broad motivation that stretches across people’s social lives.” The scientists don’t propose a name for this phenomenon; nor, as usual, do they deign to mention the Flaw-O-Matic when discussing this “impressive, highly attuned ability” to make snap romantic judgments. But to me this clearly looks like a redirection of the Flaw-O-Matic’s power, because of what I call the Sally Field Effect. These speed daters were looking for someone who shared their distaste for the others in the room: someone who was just as picky as they were. When they found that person, and neither one of them sneered or bolted, that hectoring little voice in the brain was suddenly transformed into a purring engine of love. They gazed dreamily into each other’s eyes, channeled a certain actress on Oscar night, and thought: “Your Flaw-O-Matic likes me! It really likes me!” That may not be enough to sustain the relationship through the trials of dirty elbows and long, polo-less weekends. But it’s a start.
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| DNA Tests Hope or Despair 
Michael Nagle for The New York Times Sandra and Balfour Francis of Brooklyn, with a photograph of Nickiesha, who is in Jamaica. Last year, DNA tests showed she is not his daughter. 
. C. Worley for The New York Times Letters from boys in Ghana whom Isaac Owusu considers his. He will petition as a stepfather since tests showed three are not related to him April 10, 2007 DNA Tests Offer Immigrants Hope or Despair MINNEAPOLIS — For 14 years, Isaac Owusu’s faraway boys have tugged at his heart. They sent report cards from his hometown in Ghana and painstaking letters in fledgling English while he scrimped and saved to bring them here one day. So when he became an American citizen and officials suggested taking a DNA test to prove his relationship to his four sons, he embraced the notion. Imagine, he marveled as a lab technician rubbed the inside of his cheek, a tiny swab of cotton would reunite his family. But modern-day science often unearths secrets long buried. When the DNA results landed on Isaac Owusu’s dinner table here last year, they showed that only one of the four boys — the oldest — was his biological child. Federal officials are increasingly turning to genetic testing to verify the biological bonds between new citizens and the overseas relatives they hope to bring here, particularly those from war-torn or developing countries where identity documents can be scarce or doctored. But while the tests often lead to joyful reunions among immigrant families, they are forcing others to confront unexpected and sometimes unbearable truths. For Isaac Owusu, a widower, the revelation has forced him to rethink nearly everything he had taken for granted about his life and his family. It has left him struggling to accept what was once unthinkable: that his deceased wife had long been unfaithful; that the children he loves are not his own; and that his long efforts to reunite his family in this country may have been in vain. The State Department let his oldest son, now 23, come to the United States last fall, but said the others — a 19-year-old and 17-year-old twins — could not come because they are not biologically related to him. Isaac Owusu, who asked that only his first and middle names be published because he would like to keep his family’s pain private, is still hoping the government will allow the teenagers to join him, arguing that he has been a devoted stepfather, if not a biological parent. But in recent months, he says, he has simply unraveled. “Sometime when I get in bed, I don’t sleep,” said Isaac Owusu, 51, who works for an electrical equipment distributor and an auto supply shop. “I say to myself, ‘Why this one happen to me?’ ” he asked, his eyes wet with tears. “Oh, mighty God, why this one happen to me?” A similar sense of shock is reverberating through other families across the country as genetic testing becomes more common. State Department and Homeland Security Department officials do not keep statistics on the number of DNA tests taken by new citizens or permanent residents, who are allowed to bring some close relatives to the United States if they can document their family ties. But Mary K. Mount, a DNA testing expert for the A.A.B.B. — formerly known as the American Association of Blood Banks — estimates that about 75,000 of the 390,000 DNA cases that involved families in 2004 were immigration cases. Of those, she estimates, 15 percent to 20 percent do not produce a match. Negative results can suggest an effort to bring in illegal immigrants or distant relatives, officials say, though they note that requests for DNA tests deter illicit activities. An official, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to discuss the cases, found no indication of wrongdoing by the families interviewed for this article. Such genuinely unexpected results hit immigrant families particularly hard because DNA testing sometimes provides the best chance of reuniting with loved ones abroad. “Sometimes these are complicated families,” said Tony Edson, a deputy assistant secretary of state. “People are learning things that they never knew about themselves.” In California, for example, a Mexican-American family splintered after a DNA test showed that a young woman, a new citizen, was not related to the man she considered her father. The man, who was living in the United States, was ordered back to Mexico because his visitor’s visa had expired. In Maryland, a man from Sierra Leone discovered that his baby back home was the product of a hidden trauma. His wife, who was separated from him during their country’s civil war, had been raped by rebels. In her shame, she had never revealed the truth. New citizens and permanent residents are asked — not required — to take the tests if they lack documentation of ties to relatives overseas. Physicians designated by the State Department typically collect samples from relatives abroad and send them to this country for testing. A negative result does not eliminate the possibility of reunification. New citizens can adopt children under 16 and bring them to the United States, officials say. They can also petition for stepchildren or stepparents in certain circumstances. But immigrants say officials rarely notify them of such alternatives. Meanwhile, lawyers say the government’s growing reliance on DNA testing burdens immigrants who often pay $450 or more to test parent and child. Officials counter that the process helps reunify families who might otherwise remain divided because they lack adequate documents. But they acknowledge that genetic testing can carry an emotional toll. Tamara Gonzalez, a new citizen from Jamaica, said her test result has forced her to question her very identity. She and her father, who lives in Jamaica, took the tests last year after she applied to bring him to the United States. When she learned they were not related, she confronted her mother, who said the result must be a mistake. Mrs. Gonzalez, who works at a day care center in Brooklyn, said she would like to believe her mother. But she said her faith in her family bonds had been shaken. “It changes my sense of who I am,” said Mrs. Gonzalez, who is 31. “And it has changed things between me and my mother.” “I wonder now if there’s something she’s hiding or not saying,” she said. “I start to wonder: Who is my father? Am I ever going to know?” Clevy Muir, the man she knows as her father, says he is still trying to sort out their options. “I’m not going to give up my daughter, you understand?” he said. “But where can I turn?” Balfour Francis, a 44-year-old Jamaican-born welder in Brooklyn, had even set aside a bedroom for the teenager he considers his daughter. She was born to a woman he had never married, but he had never doubted that she was his baby girl. Then came last year’s DNA results. Now, he said, the bedroom is used for storage while he struggles to get immigration officials to tell him what he can do next. “I will not let anybody dictate who is my child,” said Mr. Francis, who is a permanent resident and has a wife and children in New York. “I try to assure her I am who I will always be.” Meanwhile, Isaac Owusu cannot keep the faces of his boys in Ghana out of his mind. They call him collect on weekends, begging him to explain why he left them behind. At night, he sees them in his dreams with those big brown eyes that everyone used to say resembled his own. “They ask me, ‘Why? Why? Why?’ ” he said. ” ‘You come and pick up our senior brother. What about us?’ “ He blames the bureaucracy for the delay because he cannot bear to tell the truth. They are already motherless, he said. How can he tell them they are fatherless now, too? Over the years, while his sister cared for the boys, he has sent money for tuition and uniforms, doctors and food. He has saved their letters. (“Father, in Ghana we are in the rainy season so I need two thing,” one son wrote, “rain coat and rain boot.”) He has pored over their report cards (“Obedient and respectful,” one teacher wrote), urging them to study harder so they could succeed here. He moved, with a new wife, from an apartment to a house to make room for them all, and became a citizen in 2002. But last year’s DNA tests dashed his hopes for a speedy reunion. After months of inquiries, Elizabeth M. Streefland, his immigration lawyer, finally determined that he could petition for the teenagers as their stepfather. He must prove that the boys are the children of his deceased wife. Isaac Owusu hopes that a DNA test of one of his wife’s siblings, which could be compared with that of the teenagers, would provide that proof. That will cost more money. But he says he simply cannot give up on his boys. “I tell them, ‘Daddy still loves you,’ ” he said. ” ‘Anything it takes, I will do to get you over here.’ “
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company |
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