June 18, 2007

• Mount Everest,Autism,YouTube,Vietnam generation

   

  An ‘advance obituary’ for the Vietnam generation By Richard Bernstein Sunday, June 17, 2007 NEW YORK: Paul Simon was there to sing one of the emblematic songs of his generation, “Mrs. Robinson.” Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary (who sang “If I Had a Hammer” just before Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech at the landmark 1963 civil rights march on Washington) sang, too. The memorial service for David Halberstam, author of “The Best and the Brightest” and many other books, took place last week in the cavernous Riverside Church, and it was an elegant farewell to one of the most famous journalists of our time, and it was something else as well. Halberstam died in April in a traffic collision in California, where he was, characteristically, doing research for a new book. The something else of the Riverside Church memorial had to do with the sense it gave of a generation slowly ambling off one of the more prominent stages of recent history, a stage where a good deal of the collective consciousness was forged. In recent months, the novelists Kurt Vonnegut and William Styron have died; so have the historian Arthur Schlesinger and R.W. Apple Jr., a mainstay of political analysis for The New York Times for as long as most people can remember. Newspapers have a stock of what editors call advance obituaries, so they will have articles ready if an actuarially probable demise of some prominent person occurs close to deadline. Halberstam’s memorial was in its way a chance for members of a special generation to read aloud its own advance obit. “It was like a wake for the consciousness of the Vietnam period,” said Jonathan Segal, a senior editor at the publisher Alfred A. Knopf, who edited the books of some of the members of the exclusive Halberstam club. “Young people today may be concerned about Iraq and worried about the Middle East, but for them Vietnam and all that came with it are ancient history.” Kati Marton said, “There was a poignancy in all those gray heads and stooped backs.” The journalist and writer – who was at the memorial with her husband, Richard Holbrooke, a possible candidate for secretary of state if the next president is a Democrat – met Halberstam in Vietnam in the early 1960s, when one was a young journalist and the other a fledgling diplomat. Over the years, many of that small band who shared the unforgettable, disheartening and also illuminating spectacle of America failing in war for the first time in its history have remained friends. There were only a couple dozen of them in that time in the early 1960s before the Vietnam War became their story of the century. They discovered a historic truth, which the U.S. military and government chose willfully to reject – namely that the other side was winning the war because the South Vietnamese government was corrupt and incompetent. And so was born the adversarial relationship between the press and the government that endures: the suspicion that generals and secretaries of defense might actually have little idea of what they are doing. No doubt that is why so many braved heavy afternoon showers to be at the Halberstam memorial service. He was a great reporter, a devourer of worlds. But he was mostly celebrated at Riverside Church because he brought so powerful a moral urgency to his writing. “I don’t think David was so much a symbol of the generation as he was an unusual person in our generation,” said Leslie Gelb, a former diplomat and journalist who also first knew Halberstam in Vietnam in the early 1960s. “Namely, he was a warrior.” “He was a guy who saw right and wrong and had rather strong feelings about it,” Gelb continued, “and once he determined who was right and who was wrong and who was good and who was bad, he picked up the sword.” The best anecdote of the day in this sense came from Neil Sheehan, a member of the early Vietnam War band of brothers who spoke at the memorial. In Sheehan’s account, Halberstam called the American commanding general at home to complain about a lack of access to the action, and the next day was publicly reprimanded by a brigadier general for having done so. Halberstam became visibly angry, Sheehan recalled, and he declared in a loud voice: “We will disturb the commanding general at home any time we have to do so in order to get our job done. The American public has a right to know what’s going on here.” Sheehan paused a minute for dramatic effect and then delivered Halberstam’s last line, full of the audacious, cocksure idealism of a 28-year-old who happened to be right. “Is that clear?” Halberstam said. Sheehan himself subsequently wrote one of the best of the Vietnam books, “A Bright Shining Lie,” which tells the story of John Paul Vann, a brilliant American officer who did see how the war was going wrong and strived, unsuccessfully, to inform his superiors. It is a book that has the power of a Greek tragedy in its depiction of politicians and generals stubbornly persisting in a policy that others know is doomed. And, of course, the fact that Halberstam died as the country’s leaders seem to be doing that in Iraq was not lost on the mourners. Another speaker at the memorial was Dexter Filkins, who spent four years covering the Iraq war for The New York Times. As he took the podium it was almost as if one generation had passed the baton to another. The reporters in Iraq think about Halberstam in Vietnam, Filkins said. “When the official version didn’t match what we were seeing on the streets of Baghdad, all we had to do – and we did it a lot – was ask ourselves, What would Halberstam have done? And then the way was clear.”

   

  Monday June 18, 2007

  The YouTube Election

  

  Images of Hillary Clinton from a spoof based on a 1984 Apple TV ad, uploaded to YouTube.com by a Barack Obama supporter.

  The “Vote Different” anti-Hillary ad, Newt Gingrich’s Spanish apology, Mitt Romney’s trail of flip-flops—this is the mouse-click mayhem of the 2008 campaign, in which anyone can join. It’s the end of the old-fashioned, literary presidential epic, and the dawn of YouTube politics.

  by James Wolcott June 2007

  The presidential epic is poised to become a quaint relic, like the concept album and the comic operetta. Those who love words and lots of them will miss its dramatic heaves and reverses, mourn the loss of its grandiose scale. The presidential epic dramatizes the race for the White House as a cattle drive, with all the cunning intrigue, betrayal, coloratura, tainted ambition, and bluster of a Shakespearean saga. Consider the gargantuan gulp of What It Takes, Richard Ben Cramer’s thousand-plus-paged, tunnel-visioned account of the 1988 campaign, a rollicking Tom Wolfe–ish probe of the political right stuff with a cast of characters (Richard Gephardt, Joe Biden, Michael Dukakis, Robert Dole) that in lesser hands might have come across as painted dummies; the spewing, drug-lashed delirium of Hunter S. Thompson’s influential Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72; Norman Mailer’s Miami and the Siege of Chicago, with its high-definition portraits of Richard Nixon as a jerky robot out of rhythm with himself, Eugene McCarthy’s Jesuitical face (“hard as the cold stone floor of a monastery at five in the morning”), and the brute force of Mayor Richard Daley’s jowly constituency; and the one that started it all, the granddaddy of the tarmac chronicles, Theodore H. White’s The Making of the President: 1960. Consider, too, those classic tributaries to the presidential epic, instructive treats such as Timothy Crouse’s The Boys on the Bus, Joe McGinniss’s The Selling of the President: 1968, and Joe Klein’s bacon-flavored roman à clef, Primary Colors. If the old-fashioned, bookish presidential epic depended upon intimate access or hovering proximity to the candidates as they work an endless series of rooms and stages, the newfangled campaign narrative is a peep-show collage—a weedy pastiche of slick ads, outtakes, bloopers, prankster spoofs, unguarded moments captured on amateur video, C-span excerpts, grainy flashbacks retrieved from the vaults, and choice baroque passages of Chris Matthews venting. YouTube, the free video-sharing bulletin board founded in 2005 by three former PayPal employees, is where it all happens. Mouse clicks and video clips, they go together like a nervous twitch. Where the presidential epic entails reams of psychological interpretation, novelistic scene setting, and historical placement, YouTube puts politics literally at one’s fingertips in the active present, making it a narrative any mutant can join.

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  The 2008 presidential campaign had barely cracked its first yawn when a mischievous imp created a sensation with an update of the famous 1984 Apple TV commercial showing a buff, blonde Über-babe shattering a giant screen with a sledgehammer, liberating the slave drones from their indoctrinated trance. Only, in this revised version it was Hillary Clinton hobgoblinized as the looming commandant in the Orwellian nightmare, her bossy specter hectoring the flour faces of the bedraggled inmates. I didn’t find the “Vote Different” ad particularly inspired or persuasive as anti-propaganda in its invocation of Fascism, but the whoosh it caused in the media fed off the Hillary fatigue felt by many, that calcified, sanctified aura of lockstep inevitability. After a speculative tizzy in the political chatsphere as to the secret identity of the “Vote Different” auteur, Phil de Vellis surfaced at the Huffington Post to take credit and have his personal say. A supporter of Barack Obama’s and a staffer at Blue State Digital (a pro-Democratic technology firm, from which he departed after the ad was sprung), de Vellis laid out his rationale for the mashup, insisting that he intended Hillary Clinton no disrespect. With a Nixonian clearing of the throat, he wrote, “Let me be clear: I am a proud Democrat, and I always have been. I support Senator Obama. I hope he wins the primary. (I recognize that this ad is not his style of politics.) I also believe that Senator Clinton is a great public servant, and if she should win the nomination, I would support her and wish her all the best.” What’s less clear is how you can portray Clinton as totalitarianism’s dour answer to Miss Jean Brodie, plugging into the right wing’s witchiest caricature of her, and insist there’s no ill will. It’d be like depicting Rudy Giuliani as Mussolini on the balcony, a malevolent bullfrog exhorting the masses, then disavowing it by saying, “Hey, don’t get me wrong, I dig the guy.” The most salient point in de Vellis’s fess-up was not why he did what he did but how easily it was done: “I made the ad on a Sunday afternoon in my apartment using my personal equipment (a Mac and some software), uploaded it to YouTube, and sent links around to blogs.” No muss, no fuss, no brainstorming sessions with the creative team, no sending out for coffee and Danish, just a little quality time on the computer and voilà. Given the editing tools available to even a modest laptop and the ultra-low point of entry into the YouTube marina, de Vellis is no doubt correct when he signs off, “This ad was not the first citizen ad, and it will not be the last. The game has changed.”

  I have just been sent a link to an Internet site that shows me delivering a speech some years ago. This is my quite unsolicited introduction to the now-inescapable phenomenon of YouTube. It comes with another link, enabling me to see other movies of myself all over the place. What’s “You” about this? It’s a MeTube, for me. —Christopher Hitchens, Slate, April 9, 2007.

  More creative involvement in the democratic process—how can this not be healthy? “Citizen journalists” and “citizen ad-makers,” united in idealistic purpose—what’s not to like? Yet inwardly I groan. Speaking for Me-self, the last thing I need is more crap to watch, no matter how ingenious or buzz-worthy it may be. I spend enough zombie time staring at screens without access to a supplemental pair of eyeballs. Between cable-news chat shows, regular news shows, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent reruns, I already clock so many hours watching TV on my TV that watching even more TV on my laptop is like giving myself extra homework. We’re reaching the saturation point of what the social critic Paul Goodman called “spectatoritis.” Not only do we (especially Me) face the dismal prospect of being bombarded by professional spot ads every time we turn on the radio or TV until the ’08 election, but now, for fear of not being in the loop, we’re compelled to keep up with an inundation of personal commentaries, fake ads, newsclips set to music, and homemade amateur guerrilla sorties from the Tarantinos of tomorrow.

  To avoid brain-logged fatigue, I limit my intake to a single Web depot, tuning in daily to YouTube’s You Choose ’08 channel, where each presidential candidate has his or her own peep-show booth. Click on GoHunterGo, for example, the official page for congressman and presidential aspirant Duncan Hunter (a choleric Republican who looks as if he could moonlight as a billy-clubbing guard in The Shawshank Redemption). Then select the clip of Dunc fondling a football in a wholesome, manly way as he draws an analogy between China’s trade policy and the gridiron: “Americans start a football game with a clean scoreboard. But China starts a game against our businesses with a 74-point advantage.” Those scheming Chinese bastards! We might as well not even show up for the coin toss. As this is being written, Duncan Hunter has a measly six videos up. Mitt Romney has 81. That may be more Mitt than anyone needs, even if his videos carry racy titles such as “I Like Vetoes” and “Romney on the Need to Restrain Spending.” Instead, my ever curious cursor moseys over to Democrat Dennis Kucinich’s booth, where his lustrous, British-accented wife, Elizabeth, is discussing Iraq-war appropriations, the fiscal numbers she rattles off from a cue card upstaged by the silken wonder of her windswept hair. In another video, the Kuciniches unite to wish viewers a happy Easter, the infectious couple grinning as if about to break into giggles. His presidential candidacy may be a distant long shot, but I look forward to each video from this populist scamp.

  Though not yet officially a candidate (he intends to parade himself up and down the boardwalk until he drives uncommitted voters mad with desire), former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has set up his own YouTube channel. It’s a repository—a living library—for his reflections on the daunting challenges facing the Republic, and what he proposes to do to make things worse. Advocating the abolition of “bi-lingual education,” Gingrich argued that such programs perpetuated “the language of living in a ghetto.” In any debate over bi-lingual ed, it’s implicit that Spanish is considered the chief culprit, and Hispanics were understandably peeved over their mother tongue’s being denigrated as ghetto dialect. Nobody bought Gingrich’s subsequent jive explanation on Fox News’s Hannity & Colmes that he was actually alluding to the shtetls of the Old World. None too coherently, he tried to explain, “Now, I’ll let you pick—frankly, ‘ghetto’ historically had referred as a Jewish reference originally.” (Veteran Gingrich observers know that whenever he prefaces a statement with the word “frankly,” it signals a big fat lie coming down the pike.) Unable to contain the furor over his remarks and recognizing that alienating millions of Hispanic voters wouldn’t be the wisest move should he declare his candidacy, Gingrich taped an apology in Spanish that became must viewing on YouTube; the marriage of his stilted delivery—he didn’t exactly caress the consonants or make sweet music with the vowels—and the English subtitles (“I have never believed that Spanish is a language of people of low income”) made for one irresistible mea culpa.

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  Swiveling his attention to international affairs, Newt addressed the capture of British sailors by Iran in remarks made before a live audience. His solution for bringing home the hostages was bold and ballsy, appealing to the armchair commando in every arrested adolescent. “They have one refinery that produces gasoline in Iran,” he said. “And I think our strategy should be very direct. There should be a covert operation to sabotage the one refinery. [Audience applause.] We should say to the Iranian dictatorship: ‘We’re prepared to withhold gasoline for as long as you’re prepared to be stupid.’” I’m not sure how covert an operation can be if you announce it in advance, or why the U.S. should have risked escalating a crisis by dispatching a Mission: Impossible team while negotiations were ongoing between Iran and our plucky ally Great Britain, but the professorial Newt made it plain that the Iranians needed to be taught a harsh lesson—to have their privileges revoked. Without gas, they’d have to walk. “The morning they want to be reasonable, they get to drive a car again.” Unfortunately for Newt (and veteran neoconservative agitators such as Michael Ledeen, who rhetorically targeted the gas refinery as well), Iran, unprepared to be stupid, pre-empted Newt’s bold stratagem by freeing the captives shortly thereafter and sending the laddies and lass home with lovely parting gifts. It’s hard to blow up the gas refinery of a country that doles out goody bags to its departing guests. Overtaken by events, that Newt clip was destined for the discard pile.

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  Yet nothing on the Internet is ever truly discarded. Everything’s recyclable, dormant, ready to be summoned from the murky bottom of the fishbowl. Yesteryear’s embarrassment is almost certain to resurface someday and bite one on the tender behind. One of the most valuable roles YouTube plays is as a preservation society for gaffes, flip-flops, surreal tableaux (such as the picture of Dick Cheney planted in the bushes like the world’s scariest garden gnome during President Bush’s press conference), acts of contrition, career-ending hara-kiri, and barefaced moments of burlesque. (A Belgian socialist budget minister—it doesn’t get more beige than that—became a fluke YouTube celebrity after excerpts of him appearing merrily sloshed during a televised interview widely circulated.) A video on PoliticsTV’s all-time Hall of Shame list is George Allen’s “Macaca” outburst, a smirking, finger-pointing moment of intemperance on the campaign trail that dashed whatever presidential fantasies the senator from Virginia once had and set into motion his mortifying re-election defeat. Hubris has seldom been served so neatly on a plate. YouTube is also a pestilential nuisance for politicians attempting to talk out of both sides of their yap. It’s one thing to leave a paper trail, but a video trail is even more incriminating, especially in the Digital Age. Brave New Films, the documentary house co-founded by documentarian Robert Greenwald (who directed Outfoxed and Uncovered), has posted a clip on YouTube devoted entirely to John McCain’s “Double Talk Express,” its catalogue of contradictory sound bites filed under titles such as “John McCain Flip Flops on Gay Marriage,” “John McCain Flip Flops on the Religious Right,” and “John McCain Flip Flops on the Confederate Flag.” Couple these with the footage of McCain in a bulletproof vest making his way through a Baghdad market with a military escort and what you have is a composite portrait of a candidate crumbling.

  As a former prisoner of war who has comported himself with pained dignity and incurred his party’s wrath in the past (if only he hadn’t made the fatal mistake of suturing himself to the Bush doctrine), McCain retains a stoic residue of respect. Not so Mitt Romney, everyone’s new figure of fun. For viral entertainment, even Rudy Giuliani’s drag routines on YouTube can’t compete. Romney’s supple acrobatics on the issues could earn him a pair of spangled leotards in Cirque du Soleil; he’s reversed himself on so many issues—abortion, stem-cell research, gay rights, tax cuts, illegal immigration—that he’s like a butterfly trying to revert to the pupa stage. If drastic de-evolution is what it takes to appeal to the Republican base, Mitt’s the right mannequin for the job. He might have slicked by with his policy do-overs if he hadn’t made himself ridiculous by pandering to the gun lobby, claiming he was a lifelong hunter. “To hear Mitt Romney talk on the campaign trail, you might think the Republican presidential candidate had a gun rack in the back of his pickup truck,” Glen Johnson reported for the Associated Press. “Yet the former Massachusetts governor’s hunting experience is limited to two trips at the bookends of his 60 years: as a 15-year-old, when he hunted rabbits with his cousins on a ranch in Idaho, and last year, when he shot quail on a fenced game preserve in Georgia.” Those rabbits are now haunting Romney as surely as Jimmy Carter’s killer rabbit. Tune in to YouTube and there’s Mitt Romney, clarifying his record as a noble backwoodsman with the shaky assertion “I’ve always been, if you will, a rodent- and rabbit-hunter, all right—small varmints, if you will. And I began when I was, oh, 15 or so, and have hunted those kinds of varmints since then.” First Dick Cheney perforating a hunting-mate and now Mitt Romney chasing varmints—who knew Elmer Fudd would displace John Wayne as the Republican Party’s masculine ideal?

  It may appear that I am singling out Republicans as ripe specimens of YouTube boobery. It’s true. I am. I wish them all heartwarming unsuccess. But I believe that an impartial observer would second my impression that so far this extended political season Republicans are several caveman steps behind Democrats in understanding and exploiting the outreach of YouTube and in avoiding its sand traps. When Rudy Giuliani is represented on YouTube by a five-minute video of the former mayor ringing the opening bell at nasdaq, it hardly seems like the most imaginative grasp of this new medium. Liberal blogs and blue-state challengers out-mobilized Republicans in online fund-raising and organizing in 2006 and have maintained their advantage, tapping into the bottom-up energy, and fine-tuning a potent, interlocking, activist-oriented machine; meanwhile, Republicans cling to their top-down, one-way-message, corporate model as once militant conservative bloggers retire their Jedi-warrior robes to take up their new hobby, whining. Those carefree days when they had Al Gore’s bark to gnaw on are gone. The cheap fun has flown. Apart from a parody video of John Edwards being dolled up for a TV appearance to the mocking strains of “I Feel Pretty” (a spoof that exploits the rap on Edwards as just a pretty face—a Breck girl), leading Democrats haven’t provided the comic fodder that has made Gingrich, Romney, and presidential adviser Karl Rove (doing his dorky white-guy “MC Rove” rap routine at the Radio & Television Correspondents’ Association dinner) so downloadable. Even Democratic hopeful Joe Biden, whose mouth churns up huge yardage every time he answers a question the long way around, hasn’t “beclowned” himself, to borrow a word much beloved in the conservative blogosphere. Someone with a worried mind might wonder if Democrats were in danger of being so resolutely on-message—so perpetually in-character, conscientiously tucked-in, mistake-averse, and overscripted—that the internal pressure of reining in every stray, errant impulse could produce an implosion later down the line, closer to the primaries, when it counts. Another worry would be if Fred Thompson lumbered into the race. After five seasons of ponderously digesting his dialogue as the southern-fried district attorney on Law & Order, this actor-politician knows what it’s like to live his life before the camera and drop bits of nourishment down viewers’ beaks. Being on the tube is second nature for him—this big lug couldn’t be more tubular. But Thompson also behaves as if he’s grumpily used to having his own way and isn’t about to change, and with the rise of YouTube, nobody gets to have his own, exclusive way. When everyone in the audience is a potential auteurist, prepare to kiss your autonomy good-bye. So bring him on. Now pardon me while I log on to YouTube to see what those two crazy lovebirds Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich are up to.

  James Wolcott is a Vanity Fair contributing editor.

  
  

   

  Monday June 18, 2007

  Ron Paul Is Huge on the Web

  Rep. Ron Paul, one of the most obscure GOP presidential hopefuls on the old-media landscape, has drawn more views of his YouTube videos (which include clips from the June 5 New Hampshire debate, above) than any of his GOP rivals Photo Credit: By Elise Amendola — Associated Press Photo An Also-Ran in the GOP Polls, Ron Paul Is Huge on the Web By Jose Antonio Vargas Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, June 16, 2007; A01 On Technorati, which offers a real-time glimpse of the blogosphere, the most frequently searched term this week was “YouTube.” Then comes “Ron Paul.” The presence of the obscure Republican congressman from Texas on a list that includes terms such as “Sopranos,” “Paris Hilton” and “iPhone” is a sign of the online buzz building around the long-shot Republican presidential hopeful — even as mainstream political pundits have written him off. Rep. Ron Paul is more popular on Facebook than Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He’s got more friends on MySpace than former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. His MeetUp groups, with 11,924 members in 279 cities, are the biggest in the Republican field. And his official YouTube videos, including clips of his three debate appearances, have been viewed nearly 1.1 million times — more than those of any other candidate, Republican or Democrat, except Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). No one’s more surprised at this robust Web presence than Paul himself, a self-described “old-school,” “pen-and-paper guy” who’s serving his 10th congressional term and was the Libertarian Party’s nominee for president in 1988. “To tell you the truth, I hadn’t heard about this YouTube and all the other Internet sites until supporters started gathering in them,” confessed Paul, 71, who said that he’s raised about $100,000 after each of the three debates. Not bad considering that his campaign had less than $10,000 when his exploratory committee was formed in mid-February. “I tell you I’ve never raised money as efficiently as that, in all my years in Congress, and all I’m doing is speaking my mind.” That means saying again and again that the Republican Party, especially when it comes to government spending and foreign policy, is in “shambles.” But while many Democrats have welcomed the young and fresh-faced Obama, who’s trailing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in most public opinion polls, Paul is barely making a dent in the Republican polls. Republican strategists point out that libertarians, who make up a small but vocal portion of the Republican base, intrinsically gravitate toward the Web’s anything-goes, leave-me-alone nature. They also say that his Web presence proves that the Internet can be a great equalizer in the race, giving a much-needed boost to a fringe candidate with little money and only a shadow of the campaign staffs marshaled by Romney, McCain and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. An obstetrician and gynecologist, Paul is known as “Dr. No” in the House of Representatives. No to big government. No to the Internal Revenue Service. No to the federal ban on same-sex marriage. “I’m for the individual,” Paul said. “I’m not for the government.” If he had his way, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Education, among other agencies, would not exist. In his view, the USA Patriot Act, which allows the government to search personal data, including private Internet use, is unconstitutional, and trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement are a threat to American independence. But perhaps what most notably separates Paul from the crowded Republican field, headed by what former Virginia governor James S. Gilmore III calls “Rudy McRomney,” is his stance on the Iraq war. He’s been against it from the very beginning. After the second Republican presidential debate last month, when Paul implied that American foreign policy has contributed to anti-Americanism in the Middle East — “They attack us because we’re over there. We’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years,” Paul said — he was attacked by Giuliani, and conservatives such as Saul Anuzis were livid. Anuzis, chairman of the Michigan GOP, threatened to circulate a petition to bar Paul from future Republican presidential debates. Though the petition never materialized, Anuzis’s BlackBerry was flooded with e-mails and his office was inundated with calls for several days. “It was a distraction, no doubt,” he said. The culprits: Paul’s growing number of supporters, some of whom posted Anuzis’s e-mail address and office phone number on their blogs. “At first I was skeptical of his increasing online presence, thinking that it’s probably just a small cadre of dedicated Ron Paul fans,” said Matt Lewis, a blogger and director of operations at Townhall, a popular conservative site. “But if you think about it, the number one issue in the country today is Iraq. If you’re a conservative who supports the president’s war, you have nine candidates to choose from. But if you’re a conservative who believes that going into Iraq was a mistake, Ron Paul is the only game in town.” Added Terry Jeffrey, the syndicated newspaper columnist who ran Patrick J. Buchanan’s failed White House bid in 1996: “On domestic issues like spending and taxation and the role of government, Ron Paul is saying exactly what traditional conservatives have historically thought, and he’s pointing out that the Bush administration has walked away from these principles. That’s a very attractive argument.” Especially to someone such as Brad Porter, who obsessively writes about Paul on his blog, subscribes to Paul’s YouTube channel and attended a Ron Paul MeetUp event in Pittsburgh last week. The 28-year-old Carnegie Mellon student donated $50 to Paul’s coffers after the first debate, and an additional $50 after the third debate. “For a poor college student, that’s a lot,” said Porter, a lifelong Republican. “But I’m not supporting him because I think he could get the nomination. I’m supporting him because I think he can influence the national conversation about what the role of government is, how much power should government have over our lives, how much liberty should we give up for security. These are important issues, and frankly, no one’s thinking about them as seriously and sincerely as Ron Paul.”

   

  Autism Debate 6/17/07 

  Cary Hazlegrove for The New York Times Katie Wright and her son Christian, who is autistic, appear in the documentary film “Autism Every Day,” financed by the charity Autism Speaks. June 18, 2007 Autism Debate Strains a Family and Its Charity By JANE GROSS and STEPHANIE STROM A year after their grandson Christian received a diagnosis of autism in 2004, Bob Wright, then chairman of NBC/Universal, and his wife, Suzanne, founded Autism Speaks, a mega-charity dedicated to curing the dreaded neurological disorder that affects one of every 150 children in America today. The Wrights’ venture was also an effort to end the internecine warfare in the world of autism — where some are convinced that the disorder is genetic and best treated with intensive therapy, and others blame preservatives in vaccinations and swear by supplements and diet to cleanse the body of heavy metals. With its high-powered board, world-class scientific advisers and celebrity fund-raisers like Jerry Seinfeld and Paul Simon, the charity was a powerful voice, especially in Washington. It also made strides toward its goal of unity by merging with three existing autism organizations and raising millions of dollars for research into all potential causes and treatments. The Wrights call it the “big tent” approach. But now the fissures in the autism community have made their way into the Wright family, where father and daughter are not speaking after a public battle over themes familiar to thousands of families with autistic children. The Wrights’ daughter, Katie, the mother of Christian, says her parents have not given enough support to the people who believe, as she does, that the environment — specifically a synthetic mercury preservative in vaccines — is to blame. No major scientific studies have linked pediatric vaccination and autism, but many parents and their advocates persist, and a federal “vaccine court” is now reviewing nearly 4,000 such claims. The Wright feud has played out in cyberspace and spilled into Autism Speaks, where those who disagree with Katie Wright’s views worry that she is setting its agenda. And the family intent on healing a fractured community has instead opened its old wounds and is itself riven. The rift began in April when Katie put herself squarely on the side of “The Mercurys,” as that faction is known, on Oprah Winfrey, where she described how her talkative toddler turned unresponsive and out-of-control after his vaccines and only improved with unconventional, and untested, remedies. In a Web interview with David Kirby, author of the controversial book, “Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic,” Ms. Wright lashed out at the “old guard” scientists and pioneering autism families. If the old-timers are unable to let go of “failed strategies,” she said, they should “step aside” and let a new generation “have a chance to do something different with this money” that her parents’ charity was dispensing. Complaints poured in from those who said Ms. Wright’s remarks were denigrating. So, in early June, Bob and Suzanne Wright repudiated their daughter on the charity’s Web site. “Katie Wright is not a spokesperson” for the organization, the Wrights said in a brusque statement. Her “personal views differ from ours.” The Wrights also apologized to “valued volunteers” who had been disparaged. Told by friends how cold the rebuke sounded, Mrs. Wright belatedly added a line saying, “Katie is our daughter, and we love her very much.” Ms. Wright called the statement a “character assassination.” She said she had not spoken to her father since. Ms. Wright continues to spend time with her mother, but said they had not discussed the situation. “I totally respect if her feelings were hurt,” Mrs. Wright said. “But a lot of feelings were hurt. A lot.” Now other autism families who hoped to put their differences aside are shouting at each other in cyberspace. “Our struggle is not and should not be against each other,” said Ilene Lainer, the mother of an autistic child and the executive director of the New York Center for Autism. The big tent approach of Autism Speaks appealed to Mel Karmazin, chief executive of Sirius Radio and an early board member and contributor. “If you look at what projects Autism Speaks has funded, we are agnostic,” he said. Mr. Karmazin, who also has an autistic grandson, added, “I never wanted to look my grandson in the eye and tell him I’m taking just one viewpoint or that I think it had to be genetic.” Bob and Suzanne Wright are sympathetic to Katie’s plight, having witnessed Christian’s sudden regression and his many physical ailments, mostly gastrointestinal, which afflict many autistic children. The boy did not respond to behavioral therapies, the Wrights said, leading to their daughter’s desperate search for anything that might help. “When you have that sense of hopelessness, and don’t see results, you do things that other people think is too risky,” Mr. Wright said. “The doctors say, ‘Wait for the science.’ But you don’t have time to wait for the science.” The Wrights agreed to disagree with most of Katie’s views. But her public attack on other parents crossed a line, Mr. and Mrs. Wright said in separate telephone interviews. “I know my daughter feels deeply that not enough is being done,” Mr. Wright said. “The larger issue is we want to be helpful to everyone, and to do that we need information, data, facts.” Some in the traditional scientific community worry that Autism Speaks has let Ms. Wright’s experience shape its agenda. She scoffs at the notion. Her parents, she said in a telephone interview, are “courageous” and “trying very hard,” but have been slow to explore alternative approaches. “You can say it and say it and say it,” she said. “Show me evidence that they’re actively researching vaccines.” The Wright family’s fight has captured the attention of the bloggers, who are now questioning everything from its office lease to how it makes grants. The charity rebutted the bloggers’ accusations of improprieties in interviews with The New York Times, which examined its IRS forms and read relevant sections to Gerald A. Rosenberg, former head of the New York State attorney general’s charities bureau. He said nothing he reviewed was untoward. The most distinctive aspect of Autism Speaks is its alliance with Autism Coalition for Research and Education, an advocacy group; the National Alliance for Autism Research, devoted to scientific research into potential genetic causes, with high standards for peer review; and Cure Autism Now, which has championed unconventional theories and therapies. Which wing of the merged charity is ascendant? Some establishment scientists and parents now fear it is The Mercurys. They point to Cure Autism Now’s having more seats than the National Alliance does on the board of directors and the growing number of research projects that focus on environmental causes. At a recent benefit gala, featuring Bill Cosby and Toni Braxton, some in the audience were surprised when Mr. Wright announced that all proceeds would go toward environmental research, which generally includes vaccines. But a list of current research grants on the Autism Speaks Web site suggests that the Wrights, while walking a fine line, are leaning toward genetic theories. From 2005 to 2007, the charity sponsored $11.5 million in grants for genetic research (compared with $5.9 million by all its partners between 1997 and 2004). It sponsored $4.4 million in environmental research (down from $6 million granted by the partners in the previous seven years). And many of the environmental studies explore what is known as the double-hit hypothesis: That the genes for autism may be activated in some children by exposure to mercury or other neuro-toxins. Bob and Suzanne Wright say their two-year immersion into the world of autism has been an eye-opener, especially the heated arguments worthy of the Hatfields and McCoys. Mrs. Wright is aware that the marriage of the Alliance and Cure Autism Now, for instance, could fall apart over opposing ideologies. “I’m not going to let it,” she said. “The truth will rise to the top.” She is also aware that the rift in her own family needs repair: On Friday, her daughter posted a message on an autism Web site questioning their “personal denouncement of me.” Yet Mrs. Wright is confident that “we’ll work our way through this.” Autism, she said “has done enough damage to my family. I’m not letting it do any more.” Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

  Peak Test of Technology on Mount Everest

  , Lonni Sue Johnson June 18, 2007 Link by Link Conquering the Peak Test of Technology By NOAM COHEN AFTER weeks of climbing, Rod Baber recently reached the summit of Mount Everest, a dream fulfilled. At the top of the world, as dawn was breaking, he took off his oxygen mask and called his voice mailbox, leaving an exuberant, if weary, message. “Hi, this is Rod, making the world’s highest phone call. It’s the 21st of May, I have no idea what time it is.” He then looked at his watch. “It’s 5:37. It’s about minus 30. It’s cold. It’s fantastic. The Himalayas are everywhere.” It was either the first mobile phone call made from the top of Mount Everest, as Mr. Baber and Motorola, which set up his voice mail, proclaim, or the umpteenth, as climbing experts who track the comings and goings there say. It has taken a couple of generations of technological improvements, but Mount Everest, one of the most remote places on earth, is now officially overexposed. Tom Sjogren who with his wife, Tina, founded mounteverest.net, a news site that reports on ascents of the mountain, estimated that at least 70 teams on Mount Everest “did more or less daily Internet updates with images, text, positions and videos from the mountain.” His business, humanedgetech.com, which sells communications equipment used by climbing teams, outfitted 20 teams this year, Mr. Sjogren said. (More than 500 people are estimated to have reached the peak this year, a record.) The effort to digitally connect Everest has been aided by a series of technological breakthroughs, including a faster, cheaper satellite modem for sending files destined for the Internet, and the introduction this spring of a light, relatively inexpensive Thuraya satellite phone that can take pictures and video and upload them. (The Thuraya, with a long antenna, is already a favorite of insurgents around the world, too.) • Mr. Sjogren speculated that a climber could use the phone to shoot a brief video clip, process it with a P.D.A. (laptops fail at Everest heights) and then beam it directly to a Web site. “The threshold is so low, it is very possible that someone has done it,” Mr. Sjogren said. In late April, protesters at the base camp worked with the same kind of equipment to broadcast the unfurling of a banner against China’s control of Tibet. As described on an activist Web site, realitysandwich.com, the protesters recorded the event and at the same time transmitted it to a MacBook 20 feet away. The file was compressed, sent via satellite to another computer run by Students for a Free Tibet, then uploaded to YouTube and other sites. The protesters were spotted and detained before being expelled. “Because we knew we were probably going to be arrested, we needed to get the footage out live,” said one of the protesters, according to the activist Web site. The Web site ueverest.com, while not setting records or conveying any protests, is an excellent example of how much material can be regularly updated and communicated to sea level from the remote mountain, including daily video and audio clips, photographs and blogs, even charts tracking the heart rates of the climbers. Requiring the attention of two full-time staff members, the site is part of a project to film a team that is retracing the failed ascent of the north side of Everest by the British explorer George Mallory and his climbing partner, Sandy Irvine, in 1924. (A documentary on the film’s production is also planned, said Anthony Geffen, the producer.) Mr. Mallory and Mr. Irvine died on the mountain, leaving a riddle: had they made it to the top? When Mr. Mallory’s body was found in 1999 at an altitude of more than 26,000 feet, the riddle remained. The re-creation of the Mallory ascent — with period costume and equipment — in part is meant to explore how plausible it is that they succeeded. “He was a pioneer of the time,” said Mr. Geffen by satellite telephone from the advanced base camp at 21,000 feet. “When he came to Everest nobody had a map of the place, and he went higher than anyone else for 30 or more years.” • The climbers who recreated his trek reached the summit on Thursday. And the Web site, perhaps in an example of technology for technology’s sake, that day prominently displayed video footage of the radio receiving a transmission reporting the climbers’ success on the way. (The next day there was video taken at the summit of the mountain.) The main information-technology specialist on the team, Mark Kahrl, rattled off the technological challenges of managing a Web site from the Himalayas. “Hardware doesn’t work well in this environment,” Mr. Kahrl said from the base camp. Hard drives, for example, fail because of the thin air, although “we’ve only gone through three.” Knowing this, the team brought extras, and made sure to take iPod Shuffles, which use a memory system that is not affected by the altitude, he said. As the Mallory trek team reveled last week in its success, the members also said that they were reveling in the quiet. The circus had left the base camp, which Mr. Kahrl said was “like a Hollywood production set,” with all its flat-screen TVs and generators. The climbing team gambled by being the last of the season’s climbers to make the ascent — though in many ways it had to wait, since you can’t exactly recreate an authentic climb of 80 years ago with a different climbing group ahead of you speaking on a mobile phone and another behind you videoconferencing with sponsors. There was a chance, however, that monsoon season would begin and jeopardize the trip. While praising Mr. Mallory as “a man of today” and a “pioneer,” Mr. Geffen conceded that because of those qualities “he wouldn’t go to Everest today — people are crawling all over it.” Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

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