Q&A

Back when I was a prof, I used to get emails from Duke alumni and parents of prospective students asking for the real skinny about the U. I haven't received one of those emails in a while. But today I did. He asked about an earlier blog posting where I mentioned vomit and used condoms. Is it really that bad? Below was my response.

My experiences suggest that about a third of the Duke undergraduate population is crude, rude and spoiled. That leaves two-thirds who are decent to great kids. But that 1/3 can, if you don't manage things right, kill a classroom. And they can, if Duke doesn't manage things right, create a campus culture that is dreadful.

When I saw the vomit and condom, I was disgusted. I remember going home and thinking, "This place is a sewer. What am I doing here?" I asked someone who cleans my office how common it was. His answer was, "We clean that sh*t up all the time." That's a sample of one. I didn't ask more people in the cleaning staff to back up his statement.

Duke's leadership response to the work light/debauch hard undergraduate culture has been very hands off. They never criticize the faculty for not demanding more of students. They hire people to clean up the mess so that the campus looks decent in the morning. They dutifully take kids to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped tens of times a year so that they don't die. That's their way of dealing with the problem. They have been irresponsible.

A few years ago, I point-blank criticized a senior administrator (no longer in administration) about Duke leadership's handling of the work light/debauch hard culture. He didn't deny that the culture was awful. In defense he said, "We aren't doing anything that isn't being done elsewhere." I'm told that Brodhead, when asked (at a closed to the public faculty meeting last year) to publicly condemn Duke's culture of debauchery, declined with a similar excuse. Essentially he said that this culture of debauchery is everywhere on campuses and in high schools; there was no point in making a public condemnation of something so common.

The implication is that Duke's problem is a nationwide problem on campuses. I think that's mostly right. But my gut feeling is that it's a bit worse at Duke than it is at most other elite private colleges. The work load is lighter. The weather is warmer. There is the entertainment of a nationally ranked basketball team. As a result, it tends to attract students who are searching for an "education-lite" experience and who have so much free time on their hands that they drink out of boredom. It's a little ruder and cruder than most.

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He asked a few more questions in another email. Below was my response.

The humanities faculty members tend to be on the far left. They have their own political agenda, one concerned with race and gender. Academic standards and morals aren't major issues with them. I wish they were.

Durham is Durham. I agree it's a low key kind of place. I think RTP helps quite a bit, but it's no Silicon Valley.

I agree that Brodhead has acted poorly. Every step of the way, he's been working from the public relations playbook. Doing the right thing has never entered into the picture.

There's a lot to like about Duke. I left because in the balance, it wasn't a positive place for me. But that was a personal evaluation.

That said, Duke could be so much better than it is. The key issue for me is standards. The professorate needs to collectively demand more from the students. They're smart. They can deliver. I talked to many great kids at Duke who were disappointed because they weren't being challenged. Duke needs to challenge the best and brightest. If they do that, word will filter down to the high schools and you'll see a different and better population of students at Duke. There are a lot of great kids at Duke. There need to be more. If it had been a better place academically, I would have stayed.

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And with that I'm on vacation for a few days. Have a great new year.

Dearly Departed

This week, two minor icons from my childhood passed, James Brown and Gerald Ford. I saw James Brown perform live once; it wasn't a good show. But I've seen videos of some of his performances and when he was on, he was without a doubt the most energetic performer in pop music. I write a lot about pop music on my music blog at myspace.com/stuartrosh and sometimes the two blogs overlap. But I'm going to try to keep them separate and if you want to read about my ruminations about James Brown you can find them there.

Yesterday, I was at a little gig of mine in town when I saw images of Gerald Ford on the bar TV screen falling down and playing golf badly. I said it must be Gerald Ford's birthday; someone else said, nah, he probably died. I said no way; they'd treat him with more dignity than that if he died. Shows you what I know about TV now. They treated his death like a comedy show...badabump. We are in an era where crudeness and tastelessness reign supreme. We don't hold back even with the death of a former president. Lovely. I'm sure the producer of that TV segment would be aghast if his own father's death was treated like a farce. He must have forgotten about the Golden Rule.

Thinking about Gerald Ford brought me back to a time when I was hitch-hiking across Canada and elsewhere. The Watergate hearings would be background noise on TV sets as I traveled. Then I went to Israel to help pick grapefruit and tomatoes on my cousin's farm during the Yom Kippur War. It was a crazy time for me. I had replaced drugs with girls and sex; I can't seem to have two obsessions at the same time. I came back to the US and hitch-hiked and camped the summer of 1974. On the day that Nixon resigned I had just come out of the wilderness for two weeks and was in the tourist town of Wall, SD eating a 49 cent eggs and coffee breakfast. I looked up at the TV screen, dumbfounded. I had no idea Nixon was going to resign; it was incomprehensible to me that any president would resign from office.

When I think of those times, I think that they defined me in more ways than I can possibly imagine. They left me with a profound mistrust of anyone in a position of leadership, a mistrust that began to form when I talked to my parents about life in Stalinist Eastern Europe, but was fully stamped by Richard Nixon. They left me with a permanent sense that government is inherently necessary, but also inherently corrupt. It's a wonder that anything gets done of value in government; but it does.

When I think of Gerald Ford, I think of someone who became a leader by accident. What was interesting about Gerald Ford was that he knew he was in over his head. He was amazingly free of hubris. A leader who knows his limitations is a good thing. I wish the same could be said of our current president.

Just Trying To Keep His Job

I haven't been watching the Duke Lacrosse scandal very closely. I check up on it a couple of times a week. And today I noticed that last week Duke President Brodhead spoke out against Nifong for the first time. It was a good moment for him to do this; the news has been filled with articles about Duke and Nifong. He opened his mouth when he knew he wouldn't be making news himself.

Why, after so long, does Brodhead suddenly decide to support the lacrosse players? It's an act of desperation. Early decision applicants at Duke were down this year because of the Lacrosse Scandal. Those numbers just might translate into another drop in the US News Rankings in August; then again those rankings are so phony anything could happen. Enough about rankings and numbers. Brodhead is just trying to salvage his reputation and keep his job. But his reputation as a leader with any integrity is already in shards. Whatever he says now is almost immaterial.

It's an interesting thing about people in power. I've never encountered one who wasn't immoral. I'm not saying that moral leadership isn't present; I've just never seen it first hand*. Yet what I've noticed is that we expect people in power to have a patina of ethics and morality, to at least talk the talk. But if that patina is ever scratched and the real person is exposed, they become damaged goods. That's what has happened to Richard Brodhead.

I don't know Richard Brodhead. The only communication I've received from him was an email in response to my stating that he was just being another weakling president at Duke; he said he had no intention of being a weakling. This was early in his leadership when he got stripped down to his shorts by Coach K and AD Alleva over Coach K's supposedly serious consideration of a job offer from the LA Lakers.

While I don't know Richard Brodhead, I know many of the people who work for him quite well. They are a rather slimy lot. Early in my academic career, I had vague aspirations of becoming a university administrator. But as I got to know people in administration more and more, I dropped that idea like a hot potato. Just about that time, someone asked me to move into an adminstrative role. I quickly said no. Who wants to work around slimy people seven days a week? Life is about the company you keep.

For those interested in the character of Richard Brodhead, I invite you to track down a video on the web of his first press meeting following the announcement of his becoming president. It's a telling portrait of a man who will say anything to look good. Everybody I know has a "tell" when he is lying. When Richard Brodhead lies, he makes a certain head and eye movement. Watch that video and look for that "tell." It's there time and time again. The one good thing I can say about Richard Brodhead is that at least he doesn't believe his own b.s. I'm glad I don't work for Richard Brodhead.

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*I'd like to change that statement. I thought about it a bit and realized that three of my best friends are in positions of leadership and I admire the hell out of them; they walk the walk. And when I was at Duke, there were two people in positions of leadership, one of them fairly major, that were very straight shooters. Sometimes I type faster than I think.

Living With Myths

The only bar I've ever been kicked out of was located on the Haight in SF. I walked in with a couple of friends of mine, sat at the bar and ordered a beer. The people at the bar rose up their heads from their glasses as I said the word "beer;" I might as well have used the f word. The bartender, an older diminutive man in a white shirt glared at me. "Get the hell out of here," he said. "You'll be happier at the fern bar down the block."

I was incredulous. "Are you kidding, me?" His resolve was firm. "Get out!" We went to the fern bar down the block. It was a crappy place. We talked about the bartender at the other spot and decided he was psychotic.

About a year later, I had moved from SF and was listening to an interview on NPR with a guy who had rated bars across the country for their ability to make martinis. Two bars out of hundreds visited - the guy must have been a real lush - were given a five martini rating: one in Cleveland and the other one that bar on the Haight in SF.

I like martinis. For me, it's the only drink I'll have at a bar in the winter. And it better be a gin martini. Vodka is made for getting drunk. My grandfather used to keep 180 proof vodka in his house and would burn a spoonful for me for fun before he drank. Gin is for sipping. Unlike my grandfather, I'm a sipper.

I resolved that one day I'd get back to that bar on the Haight and try this vaunted five-star martini. I read up a little about the bar. The psychotic bartender was also the owner. He'd owned the place for decades. And he'd kicked out a lot of people from his bar for offenses far less trivial than ordering beer. That's why the regulars kept flocking back; it was entertainment to watch Bruno the bartender do his thing. Plus he made a helluva martini.

But every time I'd go back to SF, the bar would be closed. Once I got Bruno on the phone and asked if he was open. He said, "Right now I am." I hopped in a cab. It was 7:00. By the time I got there fifteen minutes later, the iron gates in front of the bar were closed. I'd just missed him. Or maybe he was just pulling my leg and the gates were closed even when I called.

This went on for years. It became a kind of quest. I started to think the bar was never open. But I asked around and found out that the only reliable time Bruno opened his doors was during Monday Night Football. This seemed odd to me because I remembered the bar as being a classy place, no TV, something out of the Rat Pack era in terms of decor.

But one day I found myself in SF on a Monday night and called the bar. Bruno answered. I hopped in a cab. The iron gates were open. The regulars were seated around the elegant if time-worn bar. I sat down. At first, Bruno pretended that I wasn't even there, not a good sign. He turned to me and asked dryly what I wanted. I told him. He said nothing. Two minutes later a martini arrived in an orange juice glass.

I took a sip. It was the worst martini I'd had since one lousy night in Columbus, Ohio many years before. I gave him a five-dollar bill. He gave me back four singles. The drink was lousy, but at least it was cheap. I asked if he could call me a cab. He declined and said I could use a pay phone down the block.

I don't know if he purposely served me a lousy drink. Or maybe he always made lousy martinis and people were simply interested in the entertainment value of Bruno so they created a myth about his bartending abilities. Either way, I had accomplished one of my very minor lifelong goals: to get into that bar and have a martini. It felt kind of redemptive in a way.

The cab came and took me back to my hotel. I went straight to the hotel bar and ordered a martini, Bombay Sapphire please. Ten bucks later, I took a sip. A solid martini. Sometimes myths get in the way of a good drink.

The Man Who Destroyed Congress

Newt Gingrich announced on Meet the Press today that he was thinking of running for president. The man is delusional. Somehow, the very Newt Gingrich who went on the congressional floor to denounce Bill Clinton's morals even though Newt himself was screwing some babe on the side, thinks he can garner the support of a Bible thumping, Republican Party faithful. He must be on drugs.

Ignoring that the man has a long rap sheet of personal moral failures, you have to ask what exactly has Newt Gingrich done of value for this country? And the answer is that what he has done for politics is a very big negative.

It's useful to describe modern national politics in terms of two phases: before Newt and after Newt. Before Newt, Congress worked across party lines to make deals. The idea was that for this country to work well, Congress had to work well. People, ultimately had to get along. Language in Congress was by contemporary standards polite. Interactions were civil. And not surprisingly, things got done.

Newt Gingrich changed all that. His language was vitriolic. As Speaker of the House in the 1990s, he ushered in an era of partisanship, backbiting, unruliness, petulance, and childishness. It is not an exaggeration to say that he almost single-handedly through leading by example created the current ethos of Congress where party lines are sharp, compromise is rare, and not surprisingly little of value gets done. Today's dysfunctional Congress is the "brainchild" of Newt Gingrich.

The man resigned from Congress in disgrace in 1998. Now he wants to be president? “It all depends on whether the movement I’m building gets big enough and how large the vacuum of leadership is,” he said. Quite simply, Newt Gingrich is unelectable. Sure, the American public was dumb enough to vote for George Bush; but there is no way it is going to stoop this low.

Dealing with rejection

In my business, you need a very thick skin otherwise you’d go nuts. Rejection is the name of the game. If you get one yes for every 99 nos, you’re actually doing real well. I like the word “yes.” I wish I heard “yes” more often. I could change my last name to Yes. That might be the trick.

But I’m okay with the word “no.” It doesn’t bother me in the least. Once, I was at a record label pushing tunes for other people to sing and out of the blue, the A&R guy, someone whom I barely know said, “You know what I like about you, Stuart? Other people come in here and you can tell on their face that they are upset and angry when I turn them down. But you. Every time you come in here. It’s like water off a duck’s back. You understand. Very professional.”

We all have to cope with rejection. Hopefully, you deal with it in a professional way. But if not, here’s some advice.

Take a dish that you don't like, but pretend that you do. Throw it against the wall. Watch it break into a dozen pieces and a few hundred shards. Nothing quite like breaking a dish to make you feel much, much better. Make note to go to Goodwill and pick up a few more dishes for future throwing use.

That blog of yours has been, after an initial surge that lasted two weeks, a dead possum in the blogsphere with no new entries for six months. Now's the time! Write a furry! That ##$#@#$$$%! Rejecting me! How dare they! For pointers on how to do this well, consult Michelle Branch's blog diatribe a couple of months ago about her record company and her fans. I'm sure it made her feel much better. You will too.

Write a song. I don't know about you, but I can't write a lick when I'm feeling good. But when I'm angry or about to slash my wrists, well then, the words and the notes just pour out. And rejection over my music gets me going pretty good. Not as well as when a girl dumps me or my mother calls to tell me about how Michael just got promoted again and I still have time to go back to law school and make something of myself, but rejection is pretty good stuff. Here's a title for you: Reject Me You ##@SSDD! OK, I know it's already been done by Neil Young and a million other songwriters, but I'm sure you can add your own unique flavor to it.

I'm sure others can think of some good ideas as well. The point is don't just mope about. Get proactive! Rejection is a force. It requires an equal opposing force. It's just basic physics is all. But be careful about this physics thing. An old girlfriend of mine once flunked her geology exam, mostly because she said she was too in love to study (I took it as a compliment). As she walked out of the classroom she kicked the wall hard. The wall responded by breaking her toe. She was in a cast for six weeks. Much better to break a dish than a toe methinks.

Payola, playola, shmayola

Tonight I'm going to go to a concert where two up and coming acts will be playing in a small club for 10 bucks. I don't like their music, but I need to meet some people there for business purposes. The show is sponsored and heavily promoted by a local radio station, which not so coincidentally has been playing songs from the two acts.

The economics of all this doesn't make a lot of sense, but let's run the numbers. About 200 people will pay 10 bucks to hear the show. That's 2000 dollars. The cost for travel, paying the traveling sidemen, and roadies, etc. for the two bands works out to about 4000 dollars if they are being economical (and they probably aren't). So right up front the numbers look bad; somebody has to be subsidizing the band; the radio station is making no up front money. At face value, the only entity making money is the bar, which will likely get some of the door and get all of the drinks.

But behind the scenes some real money is being transferred. To get that radio play and get the promotion for a live concert (that they are subsidizing), the record company is giving the radio station something. It may not be cold, hard cash. It could be a brand new van emblazoned with the call letters of the station. It could be something as innocent as a donation to a local charity. But it's something. And it runs into five figures. It's called payola.

A few years ago, Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General of New York, made a big splash by going after payola. It was political grandstanding at its worst/best depending on your view. Record companies paid millions of dollars to settle out of court. The settlements gave great publicity to Eliot Spitzer. The end result is that Eliot Spitzer is now Governor-elect of New York and payola goes on as always.

Payola, like rock and roll, is here to stay. The basic problem is that there is a finite amount of time on the radio and a nearly infinite supply of music chasing after that finite amount of airtime. A radio station gets besieged with literally hundreds of CDs per week. They aren't going to sort through all of those CDs and find what they like the best. They need a filter. Payola provides that filter. Even with payola, there are many more record companies willing to pay money and services for play than there is airtime. So the radio stations can pick from the best music out of those willing to bribe them. Money can't make them play music their audience won't listen to; otherwise they lose their listeners. So for radio stations, it's the best of all worlds; they get money/services and they get to pick what they like.

The system is so engrained that payola is built into a radio station's revenue stream. So when, as happened last week, the FCC holds a meeting and the FCC chair decries payola and the lack of local artists getting airplay, he is literally howling at the moon. Radio stations for major markets have values in the eight figures; part of that value comes from the revenue it receives from payola. Eliminate payola and a radio station is worth less. What are the chances that this is going to happen?

What all of this means for artists who aren't on labels is that there is absolutely no way to get commercial radio play. You can get college radio to play you. You can get community radio to play you. But you could have the hookiest song in the world and unless you have someone willing to belly up to the bar and pay some money or services, you aren't going to get a commercial radio station to even listen to your CD.

For me, what all of this means is that I don't listen to commercial radio. When you run a radio station worth 10 million dollars, you have to try to appeal to as broad a base as possible. When you are a record company that is outlaying about a half a million dollars in cash and services nationwide to radio stations to launch a single, you better have music that appeals to as broad a base as possible. The end result is music as bland as Cream of Wheat. The music is dreadful. It's been awful for decades now, ever since the values for radio stations skyrocketed. Why anyone listens to that stuff is beyond me. If you want real music, the only place you're going to find it is on the left end of the radio dial.

On Performance Enhancement

Suppose there was a pill out there that people could take to make them smarter. Maybe it was illegal, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it had negative side-effects. Regardless, I’m willing to bet the ranch that there would be a large demand for such a pill even if it cut life expectancy by a decade.

And if a scientist were to take that pill and make a major scientific discovery I sincerely doubt that the Nobel Prize committee would somehow ban that person from receiving a prize. There would be little in the way of other scientists being in uproar that the discovery was “juiced.”

Similarly, if an artist takes hallucinatory drugs that enhance his creativity, no one is being critical of the fact that his inspiration isn’t “natural.” If anything, artists' reputations seem to be enhanced when they admit to using drugs to spur their art.

The fact is that we the public resort to medicine and pharmacology for many non-life threatening issues. Don’t like your nose? Change it. Want 20/20 vision? Laser it. Having problems in the bedroom? Viagrate it. It’s an accepted part of society to enhance our physical attributes by any means necessary. No one is banning Pamela Anderson from photo shoots because her breasts are fake.

There seems to be one area of human activity where drugs are considered taboo. Sports. We don’t want our athletes to win loaded on performance-enhancing drugs. It’s OK for them to start their training at the age of two driven by mentally-touched parents desperately looking for a cash cow. It’s fine for them to engage in nutritional regimens designed by experts that charge an arm and leg for their services.

But when it comes to drugs that enhance endurance or strength we say no.

The taboo we place on drugs like EPO and steroids places a direct conflict between the athlete and overseeing bodies. The drugs are readily available. They help athletes win. The end result is that athletes try to cheat. Many of them succeed.

For example, the track and field performances of Florence Griffith-Joyner in the 1988 Olympics were phenomenal. Her world sprint records have yet to be broken. I invite you to look at pictures of her from that time. Look at her physique and tell me with a straight face that she wasn’t on steroids. Steroids work.

Similarly, the baseball players Mark McGuire, Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa underwent tremendous changes in their physiques in the middle of their careers. The end result was a prodigious increase in their home run totals. Because I’m a baseball fan (it’s about the only sport I watch) and a numbers guy, I’ve done some analysis of their home run prowess. It suggests that none of them would have hit more than 50 home runs in a year without steroids. Roger Maris would still have his record, albeit with the strange asterisk that was attached to it long ago.

Because drugs work so well at enhancing performance, we play a game of cat and mouse. New drugs are created to evade detection. New lab techniques are created to identify the new drugs. Even newer drugs are created to yet again stymie detection.

Perhaps this cat and mouse game represents the best that can be done given the public’s wish to believe that extraordinary performances are “pure.” And while I too would like to see drug-free athletes, my own view is that we’ve long since past that time.

Personally, I’m not a fan of lifestyle/appearance/performance enhancement through medicine. My own view is that Kesey/Burroughs et al. would have written better novels had they avoided drugs. My nose, lord knows, is my own. My glasses/contacts work perfectly fine. My interaction with fake breasts suggests to me that a woman is better off without them. And as for Viagra, I’ll worry about that bridge when I come to it.

But if someone wants to use medicine to help them feel better about themselves, that’s their prerogative. And if athletes want to win so badly that they inject themselves with every chemical under the sun, that too is their prerogative. For example, Barry Bonds is the best ballplayer I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen a lot of them; he’d still be a Hall of Fame caliber ballplayer without steroids. I could care less about the content of the creams he uses to soothe his aching muscles.

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And with that, I’m off this site for awhile. I have too much other writing to do.

Silence Is Golden

In reading comments from supporters of the Duke lacrosse players there is a consistent thread: Brodhead and faculty members should rally around the players. Brodhead should publicly proclaim the innocence of the lacrosse players and denounce Durham’s DA. They are angry that Brodhead hasn’t done so. They are both mystified and hurt that faculty members haven’t stepped forward to support the students.

I think I understand exactly why Brodhead hasn’t said a thing. To do so would light up the front page of newspapers yet again. It would be the perfect story: Duke President vs. Durham DA, a 12 round fight. The press would eat it up. Sure it would be the right thing to do to at least reinstate the students, but this isn’t about doing the right thing. This is about public relations. And the public relations playbook says to do whatever it takes to keep the story out of the news. For Brodhead, silence is golden.

As to why professors haven’t stepped forward and embraced the innocence of the students, there are a number of reasons for this. First of all, most faculty members will generally do anything to stay out of the limelight. They have their research. They have their teaching. They don’t want newspaper reporters banging on their door. They tend to be quiet, reticent people, nerdy research types. Regardless as to whether they think these lacrosse players are innocent, they just aren’t going to say anything, especially after all the attention those that have signed or said anything have received.

Second, they lack the drive to rally around the community and help someone in need. Professors generally don’t tend to feel that they are part of a “Duke family” in an emotional sense. They are off in their own world.

I’ll give you an example as to their reticence to rally around anyone’s troubles. Several years ago, President Nan Keohane was the subject of a nasty demonstration by Duke students over the university’s alcohol and bonfire policy. The students protested, lit a bonfire, and shouted “F*ck you, Nan” in front of the administration building. She was horribly shaken by this incident.

In response, her husband sent an email to the faculty asking to rally around her and give her support in her time of emotional need. The response was a collective, “Who me?”

Now you may think that this isn’t right. Faculty members should help those in their community, whether it is a president who has been emotionally drained by rude and obnoxious students or three athletes that probably have been wrongly arrested. I would tend to agree. But they don’t. It’s hard to even get them to visit or send condolences when other members in their department are dealing with illness or death in their families. It’s almost as if faculty members possess a collective Asperger’s syndrome.

Third, they may be hedging their bets. For example, while I think the lacrosse case doesn’t have legs, I won't go out on a limb and state that these students are undeniably innocent. Distortions, half-truths and fabrications have been coming from both sides of this case and I don't possess the magical ability to separate the b.s. from the facts.

Fourth, relationships between students and professors aren’t always congenial. The Duke student community has many great kids. But in the mix are some real pieces of work. In the old days, you could take those students to task and try to get them to behave like mature, decent human beings. Nowadays, they are the customers of a product for which they pay dearly and the customer is always right. Whether you feel positively toward the Duke community of students depends on your specific encounters. And if you’ve had a lot of bad experiences, you just might be inclined to not give a damn if any of them are in trouble.

Fifth, to generate collective public outrage, wronged parties need to be very, very sympathetic. People usually reserve their collective heart for cute things like furry kittens caught in trees, kidnapped children, and pregnant pretty women murdered by their husbands. At face value, three big guys holding a drunken party and hiring a couple of strippers can’t compete with kittens, children and pregnant pretty women regardless of the charges against them.

So no, professors aren’t going to come forth and declare these students innocent. And just like they don’t rally around anyone, they aren’t going to rally around the students. Doing either just isn’t on their radar screen.

The end result of a public relations motivated president and a reticent, apolitical faculty is silence. People who expect more are bound to be disappointed. Regardless, those who have made statements that this collective silence means that many faculty members actually hope these students are guilty are just plain wrong.