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  • Gagging on the Patriot Act

    If the title of patron saint of journalists were not already held by the seventeenth-century French priest Francis de Sales, many American reporters would be ready to canonize Professor Jane E. Kirtley of the University of Minnesota for her steadfast support and defense of their work. Through a serendipitous career as a reporter, attorney, advocate, and academic, Kirtley has built a reputation as the nation’s leading expert on the First Amendment and its practical application to the media. She has also emerged as a major critic of increased government secrecy since September 11.

    In journalism circles, Kirtley gained renown for leading the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) from 1985 to 1999, helping to shape the Washington, D.C., organization into a substantive, respected resource on First Amendment issues for reporters across the country. As director of the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law, she still serves as a source for scores of media inquiries each year, while teaching media law classes that are in great demand and continuing her crusade for press freedom issues, both at home and abroad.

    Slight of build, with green eyes and a thin, regal nose, the amiable Kirtley seems an unlikely champion for America’s often boisterous fourth estate. When on a soapbox for freedom of the press, she is more beatific than belligerent, a joyful missionary for the First Amendment. She once told her law school alumni magazine, “I suspect that if you asked some of my professors, they never would have believed it was possible that shy little Jane Kirtley could actually be taking on Jerry Falwell or Pat Buchanan on Crossfire.”

    Since coming to Minnesota four years ago, Kirtley has maintained a busy schedule that combines public engagement and scholarly research. She has given 115 lectures, presentations and speeches outside her own classrooms; written or co-written thirty-seven publications; served on seventy-seven panels or seminars; consulted on freedom of information and the press in ten countries; and been interviewed by the media nearly three hundred times.

    When The Rake caught up with her in January, Professor Kirtley was preparing to leave town for a semester as a visiting professor at Suffolk University Law School in Boston. Kirtley, an admitted Anglophile who quotes the fictional Rumpole of the Bailey in law review articles, was also nursing a cold that she had picked up on vacation in London with her husband, law professor and playwright Steve Cribari. Despite the sniffles and the peripatetic schedule, she was true to her reputation as an accessible and “above and beyond” resource for journalists.

    Even after three decades in the news business, Kirtley still gets choked up over what most Americans take for granted. “It’s really hard for me to talk about the First Amendment without getting extremely emotional,” she declares a little bashfully. “It’s such an article of faith with me. It’s what makes our country different from any other democracy in the world.” Kirtley sees one of her roles at the University of Minnesota as “passing the torch” to budding journalists. “We have a new generation that needs to understand the importance of the First Amendment,” she says.

    Los Angeles Times media writer Tim Rutten says it’s clear that principle, rather than a love of publicity, drives Kirtley’s work. “Some people believe in free expression because they think it’s a bedrock value of a free society,” he says. “Then there are those who adore malicious license. Jane is in the first camp—that sets her apart from many lawyers interested in media.” Adam Liptak of the New York Times, a libel attorney turned reporter, lauds Kirtley for her comprehensive knowledge of the law and her “authentic commitment to First Amendment values.”

    Even those who disagree with her views hold Kirtley in high esteem. “I enjoy sparring with Jane a tremendous amount,” declares Minneapolis attorney and former federal prosecutor William Michael, Jr., who has debated her on the USA PATRIOT Act and other Bush-administration security initiatives. “It’s good for the country that she continues to speak on her views. It leads to a better-informed public and better-informed decision-making authority.”

    Kirtley grew up in Indianapolis, the daughter of a research physician who subscribed to the city’s three daily papers. “Eugene Pulliam, who published two of those papers, was—bless his heart—slightly to the right of Attila the Hun, but he really believed in freedom of the press,” Kirtley says. Bitten by the journalism bug early on, Kirtley says she regarded the profession as a way to do interesting things without overspecializing. Arts reporting was a particular interest, and today Kirtley remains an avid opera fan with a soft spot for Verdi. (One can only wonder how Verdi’s tales of skullduggery and betrayal amongst the rich and powerful might turn out differently, were a gaggle of reporters suddenly to horn in on the storyline, exposing key secrets for benefit of the public.)

    Her career took an unexpected turn while studying at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. As part of her master’s program, she was assigned to cover nuclear energy and nuclear-weapons policy in Washington, D.C., for the Oak Ridger, the newspaper serving Oak Ridge, Tennessee, home of a major nuclear-weapons and energy facility. “At that time, Oak Ridge had one of the highest concentration of Ph.D.’s anywhere in the U.S., so I had to get everything right. You couldn’t fudge it because you were writing for an audience who knew this stuff inside and out.”

    That assignment led her to a critical realization. “What really struck me was the fact that if I couldn’t get the information, then I couldn’t really write. Over the years, working in emerging democracies and so forth, I’ve come to the conclusion that the right to say or report anything you want is only half of the idea of freedom of the press. You also need to have the right to get information. Otherwise you have nothing to say, or what you do say is nothing but hot air.”

    In these days of zealous government secrecy, Kirtley is fond of quoting federal Judge Damon Keith, who wrote that “democracies die behind closed doors.” She adds that “Democracy is not self-executing. Just because we declare a democracy doesn’t mean it really exists. If we want to preserve it and have it be what it’s really supposed to be—that only happens if we have access to information.”

    In a recent article, she makes the claim that “democracies can’t accomplish much of anything without the free flow of information—including waging the war on terrorism.” She notes that a congressional investigation into the events of September 11 showed that relevant CIA and National Security Agency reports were so highly classified that FBI agents in the field—the actual law enforcement officials who might have been able to pre-empt the attacks—did not have access to these reports. Her point was underscored by Tom Kean, co-chair of the federal September 11 commission and former Republican governor of New Jersey, who observed in a December interview with CBS: “I’ve been reading these highly, highly classified documents. In most cases, I finish with them, I look up and say, ‘Why is this classified?’ Maybe out of our work, a lot of these documents that are classified will be unclassified.”

  • Innie or Outie?

    When visiting sculptor Joe Anton’s split-level rambler in Brooklyn Park, it might take a while for the subject to come around to art. Horsepower TV might be on, demonstrating the latest muscle-car trick modifications. You might need to help unload an awning from the bed of his Ranchero. Plaques in the rec room display his name on General Mills patents, the most recent for a machine that marks extruded cookie dough to show exactly where to slice it. You may unexpectedly receive a humongous bag of dehydrated strawberries or Green Giant asparagus spears.

    The stainless steel sculptures, large and small, are everywhere in the Anton home. Mostly they show whimsical animals and humans—somewhat akin to Alexander Calder’s early wire sculptures, but constructed from a boggling array of household items. In Anton’s hands, common objects achieve a sort of visual onomatopoeia: forks become feet, spatulas fold into wings, spoons overlap to form reptilian scales, a caulking gun handle forms the beak of a penguin, spark plugs suddenly look strangely facial and snoutlike. Already loaded with gifts of food, I tried once to decline the offer of a sculpture, a frog made from forks, spoons and nuts. “Be a cheerful receiver,” scolded Anton.

    The living room contains a steel mesh chair and a galvanized end-table made from scrap for which Anton dumpster-dives (an activity he refers to as “the fine art”). He takes the outsider artist’s benevolent view of utility: art doesn’t have to be useless. The chair is comfortable, the table functional. He once welded a figure of a firefighter onto a hot-dog skewer, the skewer anatomically located (if not accurate). It, too, bears evidence of regular use.

    Anton’s gift for perceiving organic forms in almost any hunk of metal may derive from being “a machinist from birth.” But it also grows out of the way he lives, including his Tao-like version of Christian faith, the central doctrine of which is adaptability.

    “A chameleon who can’t change colors is a dead chameleon,” he quipped. “You have to make yourself ready for a window to open, for an opportunity. God doesn’t test you. He gives you chances.”

    Putting this faith at the center of their lives, Anton and his wife, Sue, are always seeking to know how their actions “reflect the mind of Christ,” as Sue puts it. Practically speaking, this means that if God provides you with chances for good fortune, you must also be alert for opportunities to do good. “We tithe. We go beyond tithing,” said Anton, without a trace of evangelical mania. “Does that make you a Christian artist?” I wondered. “And is this Christian art?” “That’s like saying if you’re a Christian farmer, you can only grow Christian vegetables,” replied Anton, clearly amused by the thought.

    Windows of opportunity have indeed opened for Anton recently. While his work has sold mostly in the gift market, in February 2002 General Mills installed his first large commission, a four-by-eight foot stainless-steel abstract piece titled “Genesis.” This came to pass, he explained, when he called attention to an irritatingly blank wall near the human resources offices. Then a public-relations manager noticed that a flower he made from spoons resembled the Yoplait division’s trademark daisy. Rather than litigate for copyright infringement, she ordered 150 copies.

    He still works as a machinist, but Anton has also become General Mills’ house sculptor of sorts, turning out extra daisies on demand and welding whimsical award plaques. At the moment, he’s working on a modular piece for 8th Continent, the soy milk division. This good fortune, however, has taken some serendipity out of his work. He orders spoons wholesale, in lots of four hundred. “You can only hit your kitchen drawer so many times,” he lamented.
    —Joe Pastoor

  • Seeking Refuge

    Sleeping birds are vulnerable. This is why the lucky ones flock by the tens of thousands to roost for the night on the low, gnarled branches of the mangrove trees that flourish in the back bay waters of Estero Island, Florida, where I just spent a week with Jon and our kids.

    In these quiet, tidal waters, masses of entangled leaves, boughs, and trunks spring out of the sea itself—there’s no ground at all above water. On the landless Bird Island, some fifteen thousand birds gather at dusk to nod off in peace. No ground, no predators. These birds are fearless for the night. How I envy those birds on Bird Island. The romance of it makes me shudder: What would my life look like if I erased all predators?

    Oh Lord, I’d have my work cut out for me. Obviously, at this very moment, I’d eradicate my proclivity to sun rash (an unfortunate ailment I’ve passed along, much to her horror, to my elder daughter). Without sun rash, I could enjoy a week at the beach without red blisters, ice soaks, antihistamines, cortisone, calamine, and Desitin ointment.

    What is sun rash, anyway, my daughter wants to know as her hands and feet swell and itch painfully with small blisters and under-the-skin bleeding. Is it some sort of allergy? Indeed, it is, known medically as the exotic-sounding “polymorphous light eruption.” When I was little, my mom used to call it “heat rash,” a term decidedly less flattering than either sun rash or polymorphous light eruption. Heat rash sounds oddly private, and vaguely unclean. We girls will take our sun rash, no matter how gruesome, to any form of “heat rash,” thank you. But if we had the chance to be as free of menaces as the birds on Bird Island, then we’d banish sun rash, and all other rashes for that matter.

    There are other things I’d ditch faster, though, come to think of it. Based on today’s mail offerings, I’d erase the mean people from the law firm that handled my divorce almost four years ago—the ones who now send unpleasant letters regarding the obscene amount of money I still owe them and the inadequacy of my regular monthly payments. Maybe all bills could be eliminated.

    But first I would erase my son’s melancholy for all things dead and gone: his first house, friends who’ve moved away, his homemade cardboard mailbox that I threw to the floor and broke (it still hurts to recall the snapping sound) in a sleep-deprived fit of frustration when he was three years old, and his several deceased pets, including Popsicle the parakeet who dropped dead while my son was traveling, adding shock and guilt to his inevitable heartbreak. I would get rid of it all, and more, until he was a free eleven-year-old boy, alight on a mangrove branch with his blond head tucked under a sturdy wing.

    Though I imagine the melancholy could wait until I’d done away with assaults. The boys who jumped out at my friend and me in a haunted house twenty summers ago, grabbing us and tearing the buttons from our shirts, bruising our wrists, scaring us senseless before the next person who’d bought a ticket for fear stumbled down the darkened hallway. The crazed men who’ve assaulted so many women I know. The stepfather nicknamed Mafia by his friends, not enemies, who picked up my sister by her long straight hair. All assaults would be erased on my Bird Island.

    And how about psychic assaults, those haunting bad memories and humiliations? I’d can them. The time my friend and writing colleague called from Knoxville to say our editor at Simon and Schuster had received our manuscript and was demanding a total rewrite. “She hated it,” drawled my friend. “Just hated it.”

    It’s exhausting, this process of elimination. It’s not the same as feeling somewhere in your ancient psyche that the light is waning, and taking wing to a certain spot far out in the water where you know you will rest easy for the night, safe, fearless.

    So I throw the mail in the mail basket and carry my daughter’s blanket up to her lofted bed. I tuck it in around the edges, smooth it out. I lie down with her while she reads Caps for Sale. A spray of freckles has emerged on the tan skin across the bridge of her nose (unlike her sister, she does not get sun rash). I run through all of the kids in my mind, their faces, their quirks. Who needs what, who’s doing okay, who’s struggling. Eventually, they all sleep.

    Sleeping children are vulnerable. There is no Bird Island in sight, and only flawed parents to keep them safe. Let us rise to it, even if barely. That’s ultimately all I ask. That’s my real Bird Island.

  • The Funny Thing Is…

    With dark hair and a slightly rumpled appearance, Bob Daily has the low-key delivery you’d expect from a man whose job is not to seem overly amused by the jokes he writes for a living. Daily is a 1982 graduate of Carleton College, and a writer (and current co-executive producer) for Frasier. One day in late January, he left the balmy climes of Hollywood for an auditorium in Northfield, where he gave a talk called “Writing and Producing the Television Situation Comedy.” The live studio audience, as it were, was a capacity crowd of students. They asked the tough questions: How does one break into Hollywood? What is David Hyde Pierce really like?

    Being a network sitcom writer is not easy these days. Reality shows are hogging prime-time real estate, while cable TV is snagging high-profile awards and thumbing its nose at the banality of network shows whose characters can’t swear or discuss their sexual exploits.

    What’s a network comedy writer to do? For Daily, the situation isn’t as dire as it first appears. Good comedy, he notes, relies on more than shock value. One of the things common to most long-running comedies is writing that appeals to both the head and the heart, with jokes that work on more than one level. In other words, you can write a dumb joke about a smart subject, or vice versa, thereby appealing to both sensibilities. As an example, Daily offered what he thinks of as the perfect joke about highbrow post-modern composer Philip Glass.

    In the scene, Frasier, Roz, and scriptwriters B.K. and Ed are working on a documentary about space travel. As they discuss the possibilities for the show’s accompanying music, B.K. suggests the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The recommendation is vetoed by Frasier, who finds it trite., B.K. tries again. “What about Philip Glass? You know, go completely minimalist,” he says. “It’s like space,” Frasier chimes in eagerly. “Now we’re cooking!” The scene continues with the characters ticking off obscure composers while Roz grows increasingly agitated.

    “If we do a reference like that, we write it in such a way that even if people don’t know who Philip Glass is, they get it in the context and the attitude of the actor,” Daily said. “We don’t try to be snobbish, but if it’s constructed in the right way, you can do a smart joke without alienating your audience.”

    However smart, can comedy really compete against, say, a bikini’d babe eating live minnows? Well, sure. Daily regards intelligent humor as both the past and the future of the network sitcom. Television executives habitually underestimate their viewers. The longevity of the witty, classy Frasier has proven that a show need not pander to achieve mainstream success. Classic sitcom formulas can spell success, as long as the writing sparkles and the acting is superb—take Everybody Loves Raymond and Friends as two beloved examples.

    Despite their current dominance, reality shows probably won’t stay hot forever, Daily said. He cited a truism he learned from a friend: “Hollywood is a place where people run to wherever lightning has recently struck. As soon as people heard about reality shows, everyone ran to that spot, but I think most will disappear eventually.” Then, too, clever writers may begin to crib from reality TV’s playbook. Daily said he knows of at least two pilots being created presently that are ripping off Survivor—shows set on a desert island.

    Daily will put his theories to the test this May, when Frasier takes its final bow. He recently inked a deal with Paramount that gives him two years to formulate ideas for series and pitching them to networks, in hopes that one will make it on air. “The odds are always against you in something like that. But there’s a great tradition of comedy at Paramount—Taxi, then Cheers, then Frasier,” he said. “I want to keep that going if I can.” He hesitated. “Got any ideas?”—Erin Peterson

  • “I Snuck Into Fashion Week!”

    I had a ticket. I had a ticket, and a pseudonym. At this and all other New York City fashion week events, I was G— T—, a high-ranking executive at a nice Midwestern cosmetics firm for which I do some grunt work. I’m not sure what she does there, but she—meaning I—sure raked in the invitations. I’d even RSVPed, and now if I could just get up to the table of perfectly manicured hostesses checking people in for the Rosa Cha show, I felt certain they’d upgrade me from standing room to a seat along the runway.

    Really, they could have crammed a lot more people in if this were Glamorama and not the Bryant Park tents. In New York, if you don’t rate front row seats in clear view of the press, you don’t rate at all.

    I’d managed some pretty decent seats in earlier shows; at the Lloyd Klein show, I was briefly wedged behind super-socialite Jocelyne Wildenstein, the walking plastic-surgery cautionary tale who is openly referred to as “the cat woman.” I also had my nose in the hair of a lanky brunette who may or may not have had a bit part in Monster’s Ball.

    “It’s ahwlreddy 9:20 and the schedule says nine,” a Brooklyn-bred newbie next to me whined to her boyfriend. I gave her a withering look. “These things never start less than a half-hour late,” I said, not exactly trying to be helpful. A huddle of art students spoke in luscious Brazilian Portuguese on the other side of me.

    Rosa Cha swimwear does not quite cover the most beautiful butts in Rio, and was drawing a big crowd—whoops, there’s Ivana. Hold the phone, it’s Cuba Gooding. Hello, Beyoncé. Pick your seats, Toni Braxton and Venus Williams—but once the celebrities were all in, they were sure to usher in the designer’s countrymen, and me, of course.

    Except moments later, clueless Brooklyn and her date inexplicably appeared on the other side of the ropes, gliding into the darkened entryway. I saw strobe lights. I heard the jungle beat. I’d been shut out of Rosa Cha.

    I was supposed to be scoping out bathing suits for our campaign’s upcoming shoot in Miami, not craning to see past the two techies apparently tapping a direct stream on the lobby monitor. “Dude, did you see who’s in the front row? Pharrell Williams,” said one. “What show is this anyway?” Nerds. “Rosa Cha,” I replied, a little snottily. I wondered if that was rain I was hearing and if I shouldn’t just call it a night. The color on the screen was whacked and you’d need to wear three of those suits back at Lake Calhoun anyway.

    But it was raining, and raining hard, and we were all stuck there under the vestibule until it eased up, even the A-listers when they came samba-ing back from carnival. I talked to a young woman whose boot-cut Miss Sixty jeans, peasant smock, and Ducati head wrap struck the perfect balance between somebody and anybody, who told me that her Yorkie, Nikky, had watched three shows from the comfort of her bowling-bag carrier. “So how does she like this scene?” I asked. An amputee stumped incongruently by.

    Miss Sixty began to gush, then caught herself. “Oh, she loooves fashion… except for the noise, of course, and all these people, and…” she sniffed. She had a gold sand dollar around her neck, and dangly oversized monogram earrings.

    I did not ask what the P was for, nor the V. I did not ask who Pharrell Williams was, though his posse was blocking the door. Rain or no rain, I had not gotten into Rosa Cha, and I was out of there. “Excuse me,” I said, trying vainly to nudge past a hip-hopper with a snake tattooed on his neck.

    “Psst. That’s Pharrell Williams,” said someone at my elbow. I looked at him blankly. Outside on the steps, a herd of teen-aged boys with cameras jostled. “Pharrell, Pharrell!”

    “He’s my cousin,” one of them said, and looked at me hard, to see how gullible I was, and how starstruck.

    “Sure,” I shrugged, a Minnesota girl in the Big City. “Just folks.” And I crumpled up G— T—’s invitation and made a dash for the train. —Jennifer Gage

  • Incredible—and Yes, Edible Too

    Sitting at the Ideal Diner in the spring can be anything but. In this Northeast Minneapolis joint there is the counter and there is the cooking line, and that’s it. Perched on a prize stool, you are simultaneously warmed by the remarkable heat emanating from the grill and chilled by the rush of cold air from the swinging door behind you. But it is there, trapped in the nexus of fire and frost, that you might meet a wizened sage, your oracle, also known as the short-order cook. You may enter as a skeptic, sizing up the grease-stained apron and witnessing the alarming use of lard in the hash browns while perusing the spotted menu. But all you need do is clear your mind, center yourself and order two poached eggs on toast. His reply, “Adam and Eve on a raft, coming up,” signals that you are in the presence of greatness.

    Who else but a philosopher, a truth-seeker, would have such insight into the symbolism of eggs? He could have called them “two googly eyes on a raft” or “double sun in the clouds.” But he didn’t, he gave them monikers synonymous with creation. As the moist spring air whips the door open one more time, you may wonder if he has the answer to the ultimate question, the question of life itself: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

    On the food timeline, eggs are as old as salt and water. Eggs, and the birds that laid them, were around before there were humans to write about them. The first domestication of fowl is believed to have taken place somewhere in India around 3200 BC. The Egyptians and Chinese both record egg production around 1400 BC.

    Although we agree when we speak of eggs we are speaking of chicken eggs, it is important to know that oology, the study of eggs, covers all kinds. So in the broadest oological sense, duck eggs are quite popular among enthusiastic egg-eaters, as are goose and quail eggs. Turkey eggs are rarely available to the consumer, as most are hatched, and ostrich eggs are sold primarily for use in very large novelty omelets. As for rattlesnake eggs, let’s just move on.

    It seems that as long as humans have been consuming eggs, they have been consumed by their spiritual nature, their symbolism and connection to the divine. The Phoenician creation myth tells of a very large egg splitting open, its two halves becoming heaven and earth. The idea of the egg as a self-renewing model of the cosmos is central to many ancient religions. Hindu writings tell of deities Brahma and Prajapati each forming an egg and then emerging from it. Egyptian hieroglyphics often depict the god Osiris being reborn from a broken eggshell. Probably the best-known legend is that of the Phoenix, which, in the tale from Greek historian Herodotus, died in a rage of flame and was reborn from an egg it had laid.

    Rebirth was a crucial belief among early civilizations, which celebrated it every year when the earth went through her own springtime regeneration. The sun’s return after a dark winter was a miracle, and the egg became emblematic proof of the renewal of life. Celtic tribes observed the vernal equinox with a feast including red-dyed eggs, whose shells were vigilantly crushed to ward off cold weather. With the spread of Christianity and the assimilation of local traditions, the egg came to symbolize Christ’s resurrection from the tomb, also celebrated in the spring. “Easter” is believed to originate from Oestar, an ancient goddess of spring and renewal.

    Eggs were among the first forbidden foods of Lent, making them a special treat at the subsequent Easter feast. In many Eastern European countries, people carried baskets of food, which usually included eggs, to church to be blessed before their preparation. It was considered a special gesture to give someone an egg, especially a decorated one. By the sixteenth century, the court of France was commissioning ornately decorated eggs from famed artists—an art form that reached its apex in the late nineteenth century, when the czar of Russia had his court jeweler, Carl Fabergé, create incomparable eggs encrusted with gold, crystals, and gems. As for the bunny? Blame those crazy pagans, who saw the rabbit as a symbol of fertility and new life, and kooky Germans, who believed that a magical rabbit would bring them a nest of eggs if they were good during Lent.

    Even without the symbolism, the egg is the perfect food. Nature designed it as a total life support system, so it contains nearly every nutrient thought to be vital to humans. The proteins in egg whites are of such high quality that they are held as a benchmark for all other food proteins. The yolk provides goodies like vitamins A, D, E, and B12, as well as folic acid, iron, and zinc. True, the yolk also contains fat and cholesterol, but as long as you don’t eat fifty eggs you should be fine. Nobody can eat fifty eggs.

    How your egg looks depends on who dropped it. Chickens with white feathers lay white eggs, naturally enough, while those from red-feathered breeds are brown. The yolk’s color may change with the diet of the hen—for instance, marigold petals are added to feed for a brighter yellow. Many of us have had the luck to crack a double-yolk egg, but few have cracked an egg with no yolk, which is rare but not impossible.

    Now that various diets are leading people away from carbohydrates and toward proteins, the egg is having a rebirth of its own. Some places, such as local favorite The Egg & I, will always bring you eggy delight. I say go soft-boiled and do some toast dipping. For a truly spiritual experience, try the soft scrambled eggs over cured salmon at Solera. How they get them so silky and delicate is a true mystery of life.

  • The Wages of Sin

    Say what you will about David Denby, at least he doesn’t pick his nose and eat it. We can make this postulation with a fair degree of confidence for the simple fact that, were he to engage in such behavior, he would almost certainly write about it. Denby is the sort of memoirist who believes that every personal action must be revealed and examined, no matter how repellent (or mundane).

    Thus, fourteen pages into American Sucker (Denby’s second memoir; his first, Great Books, chronicled his return to Columbia University at the age of 46 to reexamine the works of Western Civilization) we are treated to Denby’s brief-but-harrowing addiction to Internet pornography. Denby being Denby, this revelation is naturally accompanied by a disquisition on how Plato, Hegel, and Nietzsche might judge these activities, which is either comically self-important or one of the most ingenious meta-commentaries on masturbation we’ve come across in some time. Then, on page 53, Denby informs us of his inability to fall asleep without a cocktail of Xanax and NyQuil, the latter described as a “slimy, licorice-tasting liquid that provided an instant of nausea” (hey, Dave, they also make it in cherry, which goes down much easier). Incidents of impotence, acts of adultery, and even an extensive paragraph on his upset stomach and the successful treatment thereof (Tums and a bowel movement, if you’re scoring at home) follow on with depressing regularity. It gets so predictable that when Denby writes “I climbed into a king-sized bed, but I was unable to sleep,” the reader speculates on which of two possible remedies will be employed to meet the challenge: self-love or over-the-counter cold medication?

    Ostensibly an account of its author’s debacle on the rocky shoals of the New Economy, American Sucker seeks to place Denby in the role of the crash’s Everyman, in which he is swept up in the mass delusion of a never-ending expansion, then treated badly by the manipulative hedge-fund managers and stock analysts who withheld vital information or flat-out lied to the stock-buying public in a desperate attempt to keep the money flowing. Never mind that the average investor lacked both Denby’s loss-padding book deal and his personal access to the era’s key financial gurus (he lunches with Merrill Lynch stock evaluator Henry Blodget, dines with ImClone CEO Sam Waskal, and even scores a meeting with SEC Chair Arthur Levitt, Jr.). While briefly acknowledging the advantages he holds over his fellow losers, Denby still offers the grandly condescending hope that “some aspects of my behavior will inspire self- recognition…” Well, okay, maybe masturbating to the Internet rings a bell.

    American Sucker is a book that inspires sorrow, pity, and ultimately anger, but mostly for the reader who has to endure it. Dilatory, repetitive, and endlessly self-reflective (Denby cannot pass a street corner in New York without recalling how, six months earlier, he was on the same street corner, no doubt remembering an even earlier visitation at that identical location), the memoir meanders through the author’s divorce and what could charitably be called a midlife crisis. Denby wanders from tech conference to tech conference, willfully blinding himself to the glaring signs of impending market doom, and while he certainly wasn’t alone in this regard, it doesn’t speak well for Columbia University that an individual who passed through its marble halls twice could be so infuriatingly stupid. He searches for philosophical certainty and understanding, but ends up offering bootless profundities that are hard enough to read, let alone understand. (“Time, properly speaking, has no volume, no body; it has no speed.”) Inspired by the long-dreaded loss of his home—tragically, he was forced to move from a large Upper West Side apartment to a somewhat smaller one a few blocks away—Denby ventures into a bizarre extended metaphor concerning casual china (“When a teacup cracks, one thinks of death”), at which point the reader wishes this guy would just buy a red sports car and get over it already. (He does, in fact, spend several pages mooning over the Audi A6—whether this is simple automotive lust or a desire to demonstrate his understanding of Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class is an open question.)

    The low point—and in a book that shamelessly posits the “practical limit on greed” to be two homes and $5 million in liquid assets, that’s saying something—comes in a chapter titled, simply, “September 11, 2001.” The attentive reader, having felt rising dread as the chronology moves ever closer to that date, is compelled to read on, if only to see how Denby can take the nation’s darkest day and yoke it to his favorite subject (Denby). True to form, Denby suggests that one of the ways to combat Islamic fundamentalism would be to, well, send Denby overseas to “make the case for secularism, for free speech, for transparency… Who better than me?” Who indeed? Sadly, after deciding that such an endeavor is not to be, Denby at least vows that he will no longer “be quite as passive as I was before September 11.” Thus is born another knowledgeable investor.

    Denby is not a terrible writer; he’s not even a terrible thinker. There are flashes of insight here, but they’re so few and far between as to make the reader crave the next nauseous self-revelation, or something meretricious to add the vital spark to an otherwise sluggish flow of detail. (A chapter devoted to the physical workings of fiber-optic cable is sure to try the patience of even the most determined reader.) At one point, venting his anger at the corporate malfeasors whose actions directly affected his portfolio, Denby rails, “Some of the insiders stole from us—from ordinary shareholders, and in some cases from employees, too. They stole from me.” The reader, having lost countless hours to the writer’s ceaseless examination of the writer’s navel, can finally feel some empathy. After all, we’re victims too.

  • Seller’s Remorse

    Wisconsin Estate Sale, Antiques, Collectables, Linens, Furniture. Quality Household Miscellaneous. Pole Barn Full of Tools. Everything Must Go! Friday,
    Saturday and Sunday. 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

    I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to write one of those ads. But let me tell you, it’s pretty hard to make the words “household miscellaneous” jump off the page. And I had a personal stake in it, too. My parents, their sale. Last November, and I’m still having nightmares about it. But when I catch a case of the sweats at 3 a.m., it’s not my father’s illness I’m thinking about, or the inevitability of his physical decline. I’m not thinking about my mother’s heart, either, which breaks a little more each day as she tries to ease her husband’s suffering. I think about those things in the daylight, in my world, where it seems safer: A world of belligerent teens and gassy old dogs, of crackpot schemes, and my own husband, who I’m beginning to realize just might love me as much as he says he does.

    In the daylight, as tough as things can be sometimes, it’s easier to put life’s trials into perspective. It’s possible to look at them more as rites of passage. But the thought process that I employ to force my fears into submission dissolves as soon as I hit the sheets. In dreams I’m racing through a field of lidless Tupperware containers, chasing after buyers and screaming “ONLY FIFTY CENTS! FIFTY CENTS! FIFTY CENTS!”

    I get it. It’s the futility of the situation that haunts me. In sleep, it’s just transferred to a related event of tangible effort. I can’t make my dad better, and I can’t take away my mother’s pain. Any more than I can put a dollar value on a rusted coffee can full of nails.

    I decided to run my parents’ estate sale when I found out that the only person who ran sales in their community would demand 35 percent of the take. I did a mental tally of what they had left at their house, and in the words of Ed Kruse, well, the hell with that. Any and all profits could stay with my folks. I took a week off from work to get the sale ready. Dear friends and family rallied to the cause. Heavy lifting was done. Coffee was made and drunk. Eye-catching groupings of mom’s tchotchkes were arranged and priced. Joyce, a church friend of my mother’s, enlisted the help of her handy husband Dwayne, and he personally knocked signs in the grass along the highway, five miles in each direction so that no one could miss them.

    One of my biggest concerns was the pole barn. It was, indeed, full of tools—some old, many new and never used. It was also full of dreaded Halloween bugs, those nasty ladybug wannabes that crawl into every last crack and corner and never ever ever die. They go dormant, like Cher. There was no way I could hope to empty the barn—much less run outside to staff it anytime someone wanted to buy a pitchfork or a mower. The day before the sale began, a wiry little man arrived early in a big truck. Delbert said he’d heard there were some tools for sale, and wanted to know if he could take an early look. I walked him out to the barn and told him I’d give him a deal. Five hundred bucks if he hauled everything away: my dad’s landscaping tools, his fishing tackle, the jigsaw and workbench. And the bugs. There was a moment of silence while Delbert calculated the merchandise versus the job at hand. Then he turned to me and said: “I ’spect I’ll take it.”

    The sale was a huge success. I worked in a white heat, re-arranging wares after each wave of shoppers swept through. In the waning hours of the last day, the new owner of the house showed up. A single man with a classic car collection. My sister Tracy had brought a bottle of champagne, which we poured into paper cups. The three of us stood out on the deck, and toasted good old times and new ones to come. The man told us how nice that pole barn was going to be for his cars, and I laughed in relief, thinking of Delbert.

    We cleaned up, ran a vacuum, said our goodbyes. I was the last to leave, but not the last to see the place. Tracy would come back in two weeks with our mom, for the closing. I’m still coming to grips with the fact that everything must go.

  • The Lo-Res Scarlet A

    In America, every accused person is innocent until proven guilty, right? Well, we may profess such lofty thoughts, but the cold reality is that most people believe that if you are in jail, you gotta be guilty of something. Look no further than the way people have reacted to Alfonso Rodriguez, Jr., the prime suspect in the Dru Sjodin disappearance. From the very first moment Minnesotans saw him under the glare of television lights, manacled and wearing a faded prison-orange jumpsuit, he was as good as guilty. What’s more, Rodriguez became exhibit A in the argument for bringing back the death penalty to Minnesota. The hysteria surrounding Dru Sjodin graphically illustrates the dangers of publicizing crimes before they’ve been prosecuted, publicly identifying “criminals” before they’ve been convicted of anything.

    Dakota County recently created a website identifying who is in the pokey. I am normally a big First Amendment kind of guy, but I think such websites, in the guise of “keeping the public informed,” provide the kind of information that makes a mockery of the notion of presumed innocence.

    The website, called the “Dakota County Jail Booking Search,” allows anyone with access to a computer to search the Dakota County jail records to find “anyone that has been booked or is currently in jail.” Now, keep in mind that not only have these individuals not yet been convicted, many have not even made their first appearance before a judge. The DCJBS home page cautions that “information contained herein should not be relied upon for any type of legal action.” Wait, it gets even better. The Dakota County Sheriff’s Office admits that it “cannot represent that the information is current, accurate, or complete. Persons may use false identification information. True identity can only be confirmed through fingerprint comparison.”

    So, if the website information should not be relied upon for “any type of legal action” and in fact may be flat out wrong, why in the name of truth, justice, and the American way would any sane organization post it? Dakota County Sheriff Don Gudmundson reportedly believes that it will reduce calls from lawyers, bail bonds workers, and others who want to see if someone is locked up. Chief Deputy Dave Bellows told the Star Tribune, “a lot of people do call to find out if their husband is in jail…we are just trying to make this department a little more user-friendly.”

    Which users does Deputy Bellows have in mind? Does he really think that some distraught spouse looking for her husband will get an “I could have had a V-8” moment, pop on to the jail website, and find her Waldo? More likely, the web-site users will not be bail bondsmen and worried wives, but others—like landlords or the habitually nosy. And, given that African Americans and other people of color are disproportionately arrested in this state, this is very scary stuff. According to Robert Sykora, publicizing this information could lead to lost jobs and denied housing. Sykora, a public defender and member of a Minnesota Supreme Court advisory committee looking at Internet access of court records, thinks that easy electronic access to such sensitive information is the start of a very slippery and dangerous slope.

    I think Sykora is absolutely right. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that the media could not obtain comprehensive FBI “rap sheets” from a central location. Why? Because the court decided that requiring people to physically retrieve this kind of information creates “practical obscurity” that helps to protect privacy.

    The jails are filled with the accused, not necessarily the guilty. An arrest is really only a criminal accusation, and to put an accusation online means that the accused have acquired the electronic equivalent of a scarlet A. Even if they are ultimately exonerated, there is a good chance they can be scarred.

    If “innocent until proven guilty” has even a ghost of a chance in our web-crazed society, we should accept that there is such a thing as “too much information.” We do not need to make access to arrest records easy. They are merely a starting point for legal action, not an end point, and the web implies that the case is already closed. Arrests should not be allowed to acquire the aura of established legal fact that a listing on the Internet can create.

  • Louie the Wine Guy

    I am delighted to prepare this inaugural “inside the industry” report in partnership with The Rake! Every couple of weeks, I’ll clue you in to the best opportunities to learn about, taste, and purchase wines in the Twin Cities and surrounding communities.

    Let’s start with our overview of free public tastings, which occur more often than you might think. While most better wine shops offer tastings during big sales, many others extend this service to customers every week.

    France 44, for example, hosts a tasting every Saturday from 2-5pm, with five to eight wines available. This month’s featured winery is Gundlach-Bundschu (check out the ’01 Mountain Cuvee!). (612-925-3252)

    Byerly’s Golden Valley similarly showcases a few special wines each week, poured by Connie (formerly with Surdyk’s for 15 years!) on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 4-7pm. Call the store for details on this week’s featured wines (763-544-8978).

    South Lyndale Liquors, one of my favorite shops, is featuring Echelon Winery, pouring six wines from the California Central Coast (Fridays, 4-7pm).

    If you want regular access to some rather serious wines, then you need to become one of Phil’s good buddies and join him on Friday nights at Hennepin-Lake Liquors. Phil is definitely a character, and his store offers an amazing selection and some terrific values. In browsing the narrow aisles of this place, you can’t help but absorb some knowledge about the world of wine. Phil’s tastings are not pre-planned, so count on an adventure; he tells us that he opens ten to twelve winesdaily, depending on “who stops in”. He also stands by the statement that he will beat anyone’s price in town—any wine, any time. So bring your favorite sale catalogue over and do some comparison shopping of your own.

    Other Tasting Events

    Advance notice is in order for a very special evening on April 16, presented by The Rake and sponsored by Excelsior Vintage (www.excelsiorvintage.com). The wine tasting party is the kick-off for Louie’s Wine Club, named after yours truly, of course. Our Napa Spring Wine Fling will highlighting more than fifty labels from Napa Valley, many of which are hard to find or not yet available in Minnesota. A strolling magic show, live acoustic guitar, and a special collection of Napa Valley photographs will add to the evening’s gala flair. Call 763-476-0699 for tickets; and see page 24 of The Rake’s April issue for more details.

    Tasting Notes

    My personal reaction (as opposed to tedious and pretentious varietal characteristics) to wines recently tasted at various venues (prices, if listed, are full retail):

    Ferrari-Carano Fume ’01: clean, elegant, great food wine. $14.99

    Ferrari-Carano Chardonnay, Alexander Valley ’01: one of my all-time favorites; rich and lush, with big oak and a loooong finish. Worth $30.

    Chalone Group Syrah Four-Pack: $72 (as far as I know, you can only buy the Jade Mountain as part of this series):

    Echelon ’02: surprisingly good; a nice value at about $13.
    Edna Valley: a bit lighter than the Echelon; not quite what I look for in Syrah.

    Jade Mountain: I can see why they “protect” this gem; very special. Worth buying the four-pack, even if you gave away the other 3 bottles.

    Chalone Estate ’01: wow! If not for the Jade Mountain, this wine would have been my top wine of the whole evening. Huge, ripe, & delicious!

    At a recent Pinot Noir tasting we sampled four labels:
    La Crema ’01($20)—always a standard by which I judge other pinots, smooth & light.

    David Bruce ’01 Central Coast ($25)—similar to La Crema, with perhaps a touch more elegance.

    Fess Parker ’99 American Tradition Reserve ($35)—yowzaa! Did this baby rock! It easily blew away the competition.

    Patz & Hall ’00 Russian River Valley ($40)— I had been looking forward to tasting this highly rated pinot producer for some time, and perhaps, this was a “bad bottle,” but I was very disappointed. I need to give Patz & Hall another try.

    Another disappointment was the ’96 Terra Valentine Cabernet—and in this case I tasted from two different bottles, so it was the wine, which was very light, even fragile. Perhaps it wasn’t fair to sample cabernet right after the blockbuster syrahs, but even the next day the T-V didn’t hold up as I thought it might.

    One particular tasting party ended on a happy note, sharing a bottle of Pirramimma’s stunning Late Harvest Riesling. I am always so pleased to introduce people to this wine, as I think it’s one of the very best values anywhere at about $16 (for 500ml). As much as I favor California wines, there is no better example, dollar for dollar, of late-harvest Riesling.

    Recently, a fellow customer at a wine store asked me to recommend the best Cab under $30, and I showed him one of the very last bottles from the great Gallo of Sonoma “Frei Vineyard,” ’97 vintage, which was a steal at $25.99. Later that evening, however, I had the pleasure of sharing a bottle of Gundlach Bundschu’s Block 13 Cabernet ($20). Simply beautiful! Had I tasted this earlier, I might have changed my mind.

    Best Retail Values This Week

    Sam’s Club & Costco

    These stores carry some really fine wines, as well as the best day-to-day prices in town. Many people don’t realize that the “member-only” policy of Sam’s and Costco does not legally extend to their liquor sales—meaning that anyone is free to purchase wine there. But do your homework before you go, as there is no staff at these stores to answer your questions. Which, of course, is where I come in. Here’s the scoop:

    Sam’s Club has a much larger selection than Costco, and usually the prices are a bit better, with a few exceptions. Here are some wines that Sam’s offers regularly, with comparative prices at Costco and MGM (who have the gumption to tout their great prices!).

    Kendall Jackson ‘00 Reserve Chardonnay: S—$8.88, C—$9.99, MGM—$12.99

    Columbia Crest ’00 Merlot/Cab: S$5.33, C N/A, MGM $7.99

    Rancho Zabaco ’01 H-Vines Zin: S—$9.84, C—$10.49, MGM—$13.99

    Ecco Domani Pinot Grigio: S—$6.83, C—N/A, MGM—$8.99 (sale price!)

    You might not expected to see higher-end wines at Sam’s, but here they are:

    La Crema ’02 Chardonnay: S—$12.87, C—$13.49, MGM—$21.99

    Sterling ’02 Chardonnay: S—$11.56, C—$11.29, MGM—$22.99

    Cambria ’01 “Katherine’s Vineyard” Chard (90 WS): S—$12.04, MGM—$18.99

    Stonestreet ’97 “Legacy”: S—$45.56, MGM—$99.99

    Stag’s Leap ’00 “Fay Vineyard”: S—$62.12, C—$62.99, MGM—N/A

    Dry Creek Vineyard ’01 “Heritage Clone” Zinfandel: S—$12.87, C—$16.49, MGM—$16.99 (sale price)

    Costco, however, can boast some wines I haven’t seen anywhere else, like Montes Alpha “M” ’99 ($56.99) and Montes Folly Syrah ’00 ($57.99), as well as two ice wines from Canada, Inniskillin Gold & Silver ($75 and $65, respectively).

    In short, an occasional visit to both of these “member’s only” stores is well worth the time.

    I tip my hat to the MGM store in Plymouth, for it has one bottle of the amazing Gallo of Sonoma ’97 “Stefani” Cab ($26.99), as well as two very special wines from Sterling: the ’00 “Diamond Mt Ranch” Cab ($48.99), which I sampled and loved at a recent Sterling Wine Dinner at Tejas; and the ’98 “Three Palms Vineyard” Merlot ($79.99).

    The Wine Bar Scene

    I’m currently recruiting “secret agents” to report in on favorite wine bars and restaurants that feature a newsworthy list of wines by the glass. Beyond Beaujo’s, Bev’s, and Bobino’s, my research has yet to mine the rich vein of wine gold I know is out there. Special rewards await those who contribute to this noble cause; e-mail or
    call in using the website below.

    And now… I’m off to Napa Valley to get inside information on new releases and new labels coming to our area. I’ll be back in two weeks with a full report!

    Contact Louie and get information about Louie’s Wine Club www.louiethewineguy.com