Media Ethics Journalist Howie Kurtz Should Be Ashamed of Himself: New Low in American Journalism

Last Sunday I got an email from one Kevin Kalwary, a Tampa-based private investigator who knows Jill Kelley, the woman at the heart of the Petraeus scandal. Kalwary and a legal team had advised Kelley on a building she’d invested in, in downtown Tampa around 2007 and had helped her sort out the legal messes involved. [There was a tenant to be evicted and Kelley’s investment became worthless]. He’s a nice guy — and had long thought Kelley should speak up for herself.

His email read: “Vicky,

I think I have convinced Jill Kelly to speak with you if you are still interested? Let me know.”

I called Kalwary. I had got to know him and a great many people who know the Kelleys when I spent a week just before Thanksgiving in Tampa researching a 5,000 word piece on Jill Kelley, her sister, Natalie Khawam and her husband Scott, all embroiled in the saga of David Petraues’ resignation as director of the CIA

(For that piece, you will have to wait a couple of weeks for the next issue of Town and Country. By the time you’ve read it I hope there will be a new national catchphrase: “Only in Tampa… only in Tampa”…).

But back to last Sunday afternoon. I called Kevin immediately. I told him I’d fly to Tampa at once but how did I know Jill would not pull out — and what had happened to her Praetorian guard of a publicist, Judy Smith? She who had inspired ABC’s Scandal — and gotten a front page article in the New York Times Style section out of the whole debacle?

Well, Smith had been fired, Kalwary told me. Jill was fed up. She wanted to speak. (I did wonder if she thought it was her turn to be on the front page of the New York Times Style section and then I reprimanded myself for being uncharitable…). “Ok,” I said, I would get on a plane immediately. He went back to Kelley and then phoned me back.

“This woman is just impossible,” he said with a sigh. “She wants the promise of a cover and an assurance that the interview will be favorable.”

I laughed.

“Kevin,” I said “We both know that anyone who promises that is either low-rent or lying.”

He agreed — and we left it at that.

Until today, I saw, to my astonishment, that Jill Kelley appeared to have got her conditions — not in People magazine (she had told Kalwary that’s where she was headed), or the National Enquirer or Us Weekly — but The Daily Beast.

The Daily Beast??

And what’s more the “journalist” who penned the simpering interview that was mind-boggling in one aspect only — its lack of finding any real answers from the interviewee — is Howie Kurtz. Howie Kurtz?

Howie Kurtz has set himself up for years as the watchdog of “media bias” in his various platforms: The Washington Post until 2010; CNN’s Reliable Sources (which he hosts) and the Daily Beast — where he is paid a reported $600,000… hopefully not for puff pieces like the one he put out today…

Among the books he has authored is Media Circus: The Trouble with America’s Newspapers.

On Wikipedia this 1993 book apparently “identifies a host of problems afflicting U.S. newspapers and also offers some suggestions. Among the troubles identified by Kurtz are: timid leadership, a spreading “tabloid” approach to news with a growing focus on celebrities and personal scandal, poor coverage of racial issues and the Persian Gulf war, increasing bureaucracy and a “pasteurization” of the news.”

Well, what does Howie think of this interview — headlined “Jill Kelley Says Paul Broadwell Tried to ‘Blackmail’ Her”? Well, he thinks it’s fantastic. He emailed me this morning. “There were absolutely no conditions for my interview with Jill Kelley. And I don’t agree that the piece was favorable — it was an opportunity for a woman who has been thrust into the vortex of a scandal to tell her side for the first time.”

Kevin Kalwary does not believe this. “I don’t believe there were no conditions,” he wrote me.

Kelley’s publicist has gone mute and is not returning my calls.

OK: I’m not a judge. Howie, like Kalwary, seems like a nice guy. Let’s say there were no “conditions” for this piece, what do we think of it as an interview? Has Kurtz made the most of this amazing “opportunity”?

Let’s take it from the top.

The headline? “BLACKMAIL?”

Bizarrely, nowhere — nowhere — in the piece does Kelley explain how Broadwell tried to blackmail her; she won’t show Kurtz Broadwell’s alleged emails to her and in fact “someone close to Kelley” says the emails were “threatening, without being explicit.” Is this blackmail? I dunno. Apparently the U.S. Justice Department doesn’t think so. It looked into Broadwell’s emails and decided not to press charges. So, I repeat, where’s the blackmail? Am I missing something? Or was the inclusion of that word in the headline just the thought bubble of Tina Brown, Howie’s editirix, of whom I am enormously fond, trying to come up with something punchy to awaken people after a sleepy Inauguration Day? Experience tells me, yes, probably.

Then to the body of Kurtz’s poem of praise — I mean — interview with Jill Kelley: What she won’t say is a lot. In fact it’s a great deal more than what she will say. She won’t say how many emails she and General John Allen, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan — a matter still under investigation — traded. She won’t talk in detail about her friendship with Gen. Petraeus and how she, a civilian, came to be so close to the former head of the CIA.

But here’s what she will say: She says she was shocked — shocked — to have her daughter’s birthday party ruined by paparazzi — and yet the story had already broken before the party — and she went ahead with it anyway. Half of Tampa knew the paparazzi was coming — and she didn’t? Now that is odd — but I note Howie doesn’t dwell on it.

She is upset there are errors on her Wikipedia page (and why, exactly, does she have a Wikipedia page at all?). She does not find it unusual that Generals Petraeus and Allen wrote on behalf of her sister Natalie in her child custody case with her ex-husband even though the judge, Judge Neal E. Kravitz ruled that Natalie was “a psychologically unstable person” with “an unsteady moral and ethical compass.” The judge reported that a court-appointed psychiatrist had found that Natalie’s allegations against her ex-husband — which included his putting a gun to her head — were “part of an ever-expanding set of sensational accusations … so numerous, so extraordinary and so distorted that they defy any common-sense view of reality.” (Natalie is appealing the verdict). Yet Howie accepts Jill’s explanation that Natalie was just her sister — and she, Jill, is nothing more than much-wronged housewife. Howie prattles on about “ordinary people pushed into the media vortex”… but he does not address the apparent contradiction that if she’s so “ordinary” why is she worried about her Wikipedia page?

It’s baffling stuff…

Kevin Kalwary emailed me “My God what an awful story. I can’t believe any true journalist would go with that story.”

The comments at the bottom of Kurtz’s article seem, mostly, to echo that thinking.

For the real story on the Kelleys, you’ll need to wait two weeks. Meanwhile, I am sorry Howie, but today is not a good one for American journalism. This really is a “Media Circus.” Time for a new book?

Hilary Rosen Should Donate to Multiple Sclerosis Foundations

I thought I was done blogging for the day.

But, like Ann Romney, my sister suffers from Multiple Sclerosis. So, even though Hilary Rosen has correctly apologized for attacking Ann Romney for staying at home, being rich, and not representing economically-challenged women in America, I am still furious about the saga in a way, I suspect, that only people who know firsthand about MS, as Multiple Sclerosis is known, can be furious.

Today Ms. Rosen referred to Ann Romney’s “illness”.

Ha. Illness sounds like a head cold.

MS is far from being a head cold.

Every time I’ve watched Ann Romney up there on that podium late at night with her husband, all that energy flowing during the Primaries, I am amazed.

Because I know how tough it is for people who suffer from MS to manage their energy. I know that the later in the day it gets, the harder it is for them — and no matter how rich you are, there is no magic bullet to make you feel better or the weakness go away.

Drugs can help but at the end of the day you have to manage your days and your time so you do not get overtired. Ann Romney has said she copes very well with a mixture of Eastern and Western medicines — and she looks great. But who knows what the real story is? Recently I was sitting in my office with Scott Johnson, the CEO and founder of the Myelin Repair Foundation — a non-profit organization looking at alternative treatments for the disease. Johnson has had MS for 36 years and told me “MS is a secret disease. Far more people have it than is documented.” In other words they prefer to struggle privately than broadcast it.

My sister has to grocery shop in the mornings and rest in the afternoons. She doesn’t like people knowing quite how tired she gets.

I know of others who are much, much worse off. They cannot drive, they cannot walk, and slowly the brain goes too.

That Ann Romney even appears on the campaign trail with her husband, let alone supported him to run for president — not once, but twice — speaks volumes about her courage and utter selflessness. I have also noticed how little she talks about herself, her own battles both with MS and with breast cancer. When she’s up there, it’s all about Mitt.

I don’t care what your politics are, but to attack someone who suffers from a debilitating chronic illness — and has also battled breast cancer — because they are rich and unrepresentative of women who work? What is that?

Many people with MS cannot really work. Especially not in highly-charged America with its grueling hours.

Yes, Ms. Rosen is right: women and women’s economics are hugely important and should be debated heavily in the build up to November. All of us mothers worry about earning enough, paying for our children, and we all want policies to incentivize us to do this. But to knock someone with a chronic illness who has not really talked about her illness, not exploited it for political gain, is shockingly wrong and grotesquely ill-informed about the disease in question.

I am very glad and grateful Ms Rosen has apologized. Let’s drop this line of attack. And start over.

But a donation to the National Multiple Sclerosis society — or to Mr Johnson’s foundation, might not go amiss.

The Ultimate Appeal of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’

So, finally, thanks to a vacation, I got around to reading — well parsing — the bestselling phenomenon du jour: Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James, the romance novel that deals in S&M sex between the ludicrously named would-be dominator Christian Grey and his “oh-I-don’t-want-to-be-submissive-or-do-I?” partner Anastasia Steele.

Why did I put myself through this? To be clear: it was not for sex — or literary — education. No, my straight hairdresser tells me he’s reading it to improve relations with his female clients who have all read it — surreptitiously, on their Nooks. So, I feel it’s my job, as an author, corporate publicist, TV commentator to understand modern culture, probably every bit as much as my hairdresser, who assured me: “There’s not much in it you wouldn’t find in a Harlequin romance.”

Well, yes and no.

I haven’t read a Harlequin romance since I was about sixteen but I don’t think you’d find whipping, spanking, and hitting in a “red room of pain” in a regular romance read.

But Fifty Shades of Grey is not really about S&M sex at all. Its appeal is that it’s a brilliant psychological thriller — albeit a truly horribly written one.

The book keeps you turning the pages because you want to know how far he will push her, mentally, physically; quite regularly he tries to control her food intake, which appalled me until I realized that I’ve watched husbands on New York’s Upper East Side admonish their emaciated wives, in public, not to have dessert, so perhaps this isn’t as weird as I originally thought — but far more importantly, why does he do this?

You sense he both does and doesn’t want to do this to her — and this is one of the book’s two great strengths. He is hugely conflicted by his mysteriously self-imposed role as the dominator. He does and doesn’t want to hurt her.

That’s why the title suggests he is complicated: it is called Fifty Shades of Grey… not Blue and Orange: A Story of Why Two People Were Completely Wrong for One Another… So how will his inner conflict play out, as slowly he falls in love with her?

And as for her? This is the book’s second strength: and the bigger one. Her story is really about her psychological development as a woman on a complicated, intense journey from virginity to learning what it is she really wants from men, from relationships — but far more interestingly, what does she want for herself? This, I think, is the book’s ultimate appeal. The real reason why it’s on top of the New York Times Bestseller list, leaving more established authors — and publishers — scratching their heads.

The book’s great seduction is that is poses a question most women — and for that matter, men — grapple with, secretly, usually every day. They don’t express it because it’s not very politically correct. Would you choose a life of security over love? The answer is supposed to be “of course not.”

Anastasia initially falls not just for Christian Grey’s sex appeal, but for his billions, his helicopter, his glider, his cars, his clothes, his brains, his wit, his vulnerability, and, yes, his controlling tendencies, the fact he’s a challenge; she realizes he’s in love with her — or the closest he’s ever come to being in love — and even so part of him is untouchable. So once she’s fully hooked by him, the question remains what should she do about their emotional (as opposed to sexual) inequality?

In this book she leaves…

But how many women would have the courage to leave like Anastasia when they could have all that money, power, sex — but not love on equal terms?

Think again of those New York women being told not to have dessert by their husbands in case they gain weight; think of the husbands who brag: “My wife is seven months pregnant — and look — she’s only gained ten lbs.” (Yes, I’ve heard this more often than I care to remember.) I think of the tortured look in so many women’s eyes — most of them mothers and wives — as they struggle to be seen for who they really are. Anastasia realizes she is caught in an unequal emotional relationship. Unlike most people who have those sorts of trappings on offer, she chooses for herself: she runs.

So, Fifty Shades of Grey, with all its ghastly prose, raises serious and important questions for women — and, actually, for men. And, nope, I didn’t think I’d be saying that about a so-called “mommy porn” book.

Marianne Gingrich Gave Newt Gingrich the Best Sound Bite of His Campaign

As I write this Newt Gingrich is surging in the polls in South Carolina.

Yesterday the country watched or read about his ex-wife Marianne’s railings both against her ex-husband’s treatment of her. After 18 years of marriage he suddenly called her and said he wanted an “open marriage” so he could pursue his affair with then congressional aide Callista Bisek, now his third wife. Further, Marianne Gingrich claims, Newt was a hypocrite: He had no qualms giving speeches on the merits of family values while seeking a rather less conventional situation for himself.

How have the South Carolina voters reacted? Well, they appear to support Newt Gingrich who called the interview “trash” and obvious “despicable” exploitation on the part of ABC and the rest of the media to air it two days before a primary. His most touching and resonant line, to my thinking, is “Every person in here knows personal pain… ”

Well, he is right.

The end result of this is not that the world feels sorry for Marianne Gingrich — because her story, unfortunately, is familiar. Men leave women for younger women all the time. But because she tried to attack Newt at an obviously vulnerable and crucial moment for him the tactic has backfired. The world — or the world in South Carolina — pities him. They understand his upset and angry words. I repeat: “Every person in here knows personal pain… ” Marianne Gingrich just gave him the best sound bite of his campaign.

I knew this would happen the moment I read about her tell-all because the biggest regret of my life is ever talking about my marriage and my divorce in print. I did so because, at the time, I was still at the end of my mental rope after an exhaustively acrimonious divorce. A British newspaper had offered me a lot of money at the exact moment I was terrified about money — that the ex hadn’t and wouldn’t pay a court-ordered monthly payment — and in a thoughtless panic, I bashed out an article I would forever wish I could take back. The moment the copy left my printer I was in mental turmoil, for myself, for my children and actually for the ex-husband and his nice girlfriend. I didn’t want to do this. And it was too late. I still have nightmares about it.

The fallout from the piece has been very simple. Suddenly where mutual friends had tried to be — well mutual — they were all his. The ex-husband had won the publicity battle. It didn’t matter that in the article I took a lot of the blame for the marriage not working, that I was nice about him — and his girlfriend, for whom he had left me. The fact of the matter was as one very old friend put it: “We don’t want to know. We don’t want to know that he was paying or not paying, we don’t want to know about your marriage or your divorce, period.”

At first I was a little shell-shocked by this. Would my friends really not care if I found myself in a homeless shelter with the kids as a result of the stress, the financial struggles, illness brought on by what had happened? Then I remembered a close friend — who did care, actually — saying remember “When people ask you, ‘How are you?’ don’t ever tell them the truth because 90 percent do not care, and the other 10 percent hope you aren’t doing so well.”

Recently I re-read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last novel, Tender Is the Night, which is the story of a failed marriage: of how one person destroys the other. In many ways it is the ultimate guide to divorce because it shows how one of the parties, Dr. Dick Diver who starts out so promisingly is left broken and dissipated, forgotten, while Nicole his rich wife, at first mentally broken, gets stronger, goes on and survives.

Fitzgerald took nine years to write the book and it is, like so many of his works, autobiographical. The demons faced by Dick Diver are Fitzgerald’s. Drink, dissipation, trying to keep up with a rich crowd, trying to live with a mentally ill wife. What was the upshot? Tender Is the Night met with a mixed reaction by the critics and two years later Fitzgerald died, aged 44, of a heart attack.

I have wondered over and over: Was it worth it for Fitzgerald? Was it worth it to take nine years wrestling with so personal a story, have it bomb and then die?

Neither I nor, I suspect, Marianne Gingrich would claim to be F. Scott Fitzgerald, but the point is the same really. Where does telling the nitty gritty details of your personal turmoil with a man who has let you down get you, except into a painful, spot where no one really empathizes with you and you are left roiling in the pain? Newt Gingrich said it right: “Every person in here has felt personal pain.” In other words, he is saying: “We know what happened. We understand. Move on.” That’s what the world does — and is doing in South Carolina. F. Scott Fitzgerald, being, well, F. Scott Fitzgerald, said it better.

“You’ve made a failure of your life and you want to blame it on me,” Nicole Diver says to the husband who once saved her and now she is throwing off. He does not answer and with a neat precision a few sentences later Fitzgerald writes: “The case was finished.”

Vicky Ward is a contributing editor to “Vanity Fair” magazine.

The discreet charm of Lady McCartney

It was a long way from a chance meeting in a parking lot in East Hampton, New York in 2007 to a wedding celebration in front of the world’s press at Old Marylebone Town Hall in London on Sunday.

But you would have not have guessed this from the demure smile and quietly elegant demeanor of Nancy Shevell McCartney, 51 – the new Lady McCartney – as she and her husband Sir Paul, 69, stood before cameras to receive the cheers of well-wishers gathered outside. Sir Paul, characteristically, was more effusive. “I feel absolutely wonderful,” he said. He’s used to the cameras – he has, after all, been in the limelight most of his life.

His wife seemed a little less comfortable with all the attention, although she looked radiant with her tall lean figure shown off perfectly in a cream above-the-knee dress designed by her new daughter-in-law, Stella. Oh, and then there was the five-carat, vintage 1925 Cartier solitaire diamond engagement ring, said to have cost £400,000; it’s a ring that has been much commented on – partly, of course, for its value but more for what it symbolises: a real love match this time around for the thrice-married Sir Paul.

The new Lady McCartney’s quiet confidence is her trademark in New York, although few people other than the fellow board members of New York’s Port Authority on which she sits really know her.
“No one in New York society had ever heard of her really before she was with Paul,” says one New York society queen. “She had some money, yes – but it was from a trucking business that moved garbage in New Jersey. She didn’t move in New York’s social set – and once she started dating him, yes, the people in Manhattan met her, but she was quiet: when people chatted to her socially, they didn’t feel they got to know her – not in a bad way. You just got the sense she was happy being who she was. She didn’t want to be part of the New York merry-go-round.”

Her obvious happiness at remaining below the media radar is in stark contrast to Sir Paul’s second wife, Heather Mills. (The marriage is widely considered to have been a disaster.)

Unlike Mills – who talks regularly to the media and appeared semi-clad in a skiing shoot for Hello! earlier this year – Shevell has turned down offers from Vogue magazine and pretty much every interview request. She leaves her second cousin, the television anchor Barbara Walters, 82, to do the talking for her. It was Walters, considered in America to be one of the wisest, classiest and toughest women around, who “ran” the romance.

There were reports here that Walters held dinners for Shevell and McCartney so they could meet interesting people; Walters has said that she and Shevell are “very close”. She reportedly kept the romance on track when it was ropey at one point. Shevell, after all, is not the most beautiful woman in Sir Paul’s acquaintance. Julia Roberts is known to be a huge fan, for example. That’s tough competition.

“Nancy is not a classic beauty – but that figure! With that hair!” says someone who knows her. “Even though she’s not considered the most elegant dresser, the figure is just unbelievable …”

Shevell is down to earth – she has never attempted to airbrush her wealthy but somewhat scrappy background and wasn’t afraid to pretend it was anything other than what it was. Her father Myron runs a large haulage company, and in 1975 he and his brother Daniel were charged with, but not tried for, fraud for alleged involvement with the Mafia. They were forced to sell the company and went bankrupt. The New York Observer has reported that the same year Nancy’s uncle Daniel, 39, shot himself. Myron had to start again. But there were more problems and in 1988 Myron was barred for five years from engaging in union negotiations after allegations (not proved) that he’d made illegal payments in an attempt to skirt union rules.

Nancy studied so she could go into the business, marrying businessman Bruce Blakeman, now a failed Republican candidate for the US Senate. They had a son Arlen, now 19.

Ms Shevell kept her maiden name and worked for her father’s firm. She earned a reputation as someone not to be messed with and in 2001 New York’s former Republican governor, George Pataki, put her on the board of the NYPA – where she has stayed for 10 years. “Not just anyone sits on the Port Authority Board,” says a source in local government. “You have to have clout and you have to know what you are doing.”

The romance with McCartney started while she was legally separated from her husband when she ran into the musician in a car park. They had first met 20 years before. The pair started dating but kept the romance secret.Over at the NYPA it was noted that Shevell missed a few meetings, possibly due to the relationship, but the board were said to overlook it because Shevell is well-liked and humble – she had often talked about how she travelled regularly on the bus.

And with Sir Paul she was equally unassuming. She paid for her flights to be with him in England. “She definitely paid for her side of the romance,” says one person who saw the whole thing evolve. Shevell divorced Blakeman, who speaks charitably of both her and Sir Paul. “She is a great mother and he is nice to my son,” he said.

Surprisingly, perhaps, despite her investment in the romance and her love for Sir Paul, sources say Shevell never thought he would marry her: “The last thing she expected was the wedding. She was fully gearing up to be known as Sir Paul’s ex-girlfriend.”

Yet a wedding is what she has got. His children are said to like her very much. And Walters, one of the 30 guests at the wedding, is said to be elated. “Nancy struggled in life,” she told the New York Observer. In 2008 her brother Jon died of a drug overdose.

Now, friends of the McCartneys say, their life will most likely be quiet and low-key. Which is how they both like it. “She’s quiet – but actually so is he. There will be no sturm und drang this time around.”

Which makes for a very refreshing beginning – and ending.

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Enough With the Stupid Studies

“Does your child have the selfish gene?” ran the banner headline on the front of today’s Wall Street Journal. Like every parent, I suspect, I immediately ignored the rest of the front page about the world’s economic woes and headed, in a mild panic, straight for the really important stuff: are my kids helplessly biologically self-centered and, if so, can this be fixed?

But, I then read what the study the headline was based on: a group of Israeli 3 and 4-year-olds were divided into groups and each child was given six stickers; would they consider giving any away to a child who had none? I almost laughed. The answer was, as any parent could have told you, mixed, but mostly the kids gave a sticker away. (They still had five left). I read on. To my amazement 15-month-old babies had also been tested to see how altruistic they are and and so too had British 4, 6 and nine year olds.

An “expert” was quoted as saying “if parents think that generosity isn’t possible at age 2 they won’t try to encourage it.”

Maybe I am lucky because I have twin boys, aged 8, so they have known the concept of sharing right from age zero. They were born early and even shared an isolette in the hospital NICU. I am not saying they are perfect – there have been many fights over a certain piece of lego, or a computer game (sigh) – but I have also seen tear-inducing moments of kindness by each of them to the other right from day one. Now I hear things like: “Bro, you have a go” or “bro, you take it.” These are phrases that warm my heart – despite the fact I don’t quite get why two white kids are talking in “street” lingo.

But the thought that any parent – especially a Wall Street Journal reader who is probably educated – would encourage young children not to share is totally absurd, as I found the premise of the study to be. You don’t need expensive studies to tell you what common sense does.

Donald Trump told Erin Burnett on last night’s CNN show Erin Burnett OutFront that his young son Barron did not need his nine toy airplanes; he would happily give away two thirds….(the bigger notion being it would be better for the US economy and jobs for his son to have three US- manufactured planes than nine made in China). Does Barron, or his parents, need a study that cost, goodness knows how much, to learn this? No, they do not.

Burnett also told us about another study to do with mustaches – which might negatively affect Herman Cain. He has a mustache. He is the only Republican Presidential candidate to have a mustache. Apparently, a study says people don’t trust people with mustaches and this could affect Cain’s credibility. As Burnett would – and did – say, “seriously?”

Over the weekend I read how one study told us that women prefer dating thin, hot rich men to fat ugly poor ones. Wow. I really hope that wasn’t a costly enterprise by whatever group of social scientists decided to investigate that one. And then the New York Times had a report on a study that would contradict the one reported in the New York Post. The study they wrote about said that we date according to our psyche. In other words, on account of our background and mentality, we can’t help being drawn to a certain type. Nothing about fat, rich, hot, ugly, poor or thin in that. What’s a single woman to make of all these conflicting “studies”? It’s headache-inducing.

I had lunch last week with the head of “branding” at a major bank who told me that it was simply “extraordinary” how much money got spent in this country on “studies”. This person’s view was that while some were worthwhile most were not. Surely if you are running business you don’t need “studies” to tell you if it’s going well. Your margins tell you that. I doubt Steve Jobs needed too many “studies” to understand people liked his designs.

Still, despite my skepticism, it was a relief to read today of a study that actually seemed worthwhile! The BBC and The Canada Center for Global Security Studies has looked at internet censorship by authoritarian countries like China and Iran, to see how effectively it hampers news reaching those places. The answer, unfortunately, is very. Now, that, is a worthwhile study. Finally.

Heretical But True: The Very Polite are Not Digital

Today’s front page of the New York Times has the story that two cornerstone books on “etiquette” (What is that? some younger readers might be asking) have been updated or adapted for the Digital Age. In part this is because both were published many years ago when the word “tweet” referred to a sound only birds made.

Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People was written 75 years ago and Emily Post’s Etiquette: Manners for a Modern World was first published in 1922 and has been revised since by her heirs.

Now Post has an updated edition, the first since 2004, and Dale Carnegie’s tome has been adapted — clumsily says the Times — and rebranded How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age.

Both are panned in the Times, rightfully so. Do we really need to be told not to behave like Tiger Woods off the golf course (Carnegie)? Post tells us not to light up our phones in theaters blinding our neighbors, think about what we say in corporate email and so forth. Pretty run-of-the-mill stuff.

But the truth is actually more simple than any of this: if you want to be really polite, don’t be digital.

This might sound like heresy — but it’s true. When you interact with someone one-on-one, the last thing they want to see is your cell phone, tablet or computer. They want to know they have your attention. Nothing is more irritating than arriving to dinner — or even to a business meeting — and finding your companion has his phones spread across the table. He is clearly transmitting a signal of self-importance that misfires badly. The more phones he has, the greater you know his insecurity to be.

If it’s a date then personally I cross off this person as a candidate for sex immediately. Who knows, his phones might trill mid-act and that’s just really rude. Of more immediate concern: if he’s that busy that he needs to use the phones, then he doesn’t have time for dinner and it would have been more polite to cancel.

Second: Facebook. The truly elegant are not on Facebook. This might sound like heresy coming from a blogger for a website who has not one but two Facebook accounts — but who said I was elegant?

There is a dying breed among us who have a long-held belief that the only publicity you want is when you are born and when you die and there are some — interestingly, often the most successful of my acquaintances — who shudder at the idea of Facebook. If they want to show photos of themselves to their friends they do so in private and when it comes to their birthday, well, they rely on the hope (perhaps vain) that people close to them will remember without an electronic nudge. The last thing they want is 100 felicitations from people they barely know.

Then there’s the issue of tweeting. One friend emailed me yesterday that he was gripped by the endless tweets of a man in his forties who was having the first live mid-life crisis via Twitter that he’d ever read. His tweets went something like this: “was just at a party for Jay-z; please see my cute daughter’s bday party; here’s me with Tinsley Mortimer; now I’m interested in Syria.” They are completely ADD — and bewildering. We are all left scratching our heads wondering what he’s doing. “Does he realize he’s having a public melt-down minute-by-minute?” one person articulated to me.

The point is, tweeting about how you feel, who you met, where you’ve just been, is way too much information, even for your friends. It also gives the impression that you are a frivolous person with absolutely nothing else to do.

So all you manic tweeters, try this: If you haven’t thought of your phone or tablet or computer as a gun that killed someone every time you tweeted, then please do so and pause. Because right now as you push send more and more tweet recipients are dying — of boredom at what they are reading.

As for email? Just remember that words come cheap and they are cheaper still when typed fast.
I once asked the brother of a self-made tycoon what would he like as a housegift. The answer: “a handwritten thank you letter.”

“No one” says the brother, “writes those any more.”

Peter G. Peterson, the former Chairman of The Blackstone Group, built a career on carefully written notes on beautiful stationery. The gesture made him memorable; he stood out. He’d stand out even more now — when all anyone does to say thank you following a meeting of business lunch is to shoot off a one word email: “thanks.”

Everyone who aspires to to the American dream should pause and think about that.

Frustration of Justice – Here and in Italy

Like many others I was gripped by the newscasts yesterday in the build-up to Amanda Knox’s release from prison after four years — which blissfully for the TV networks was delayed by almost two hours leaving plenty of time of suspenseful “filler”.

The story had all the drama of a Shakespearean play. There was the “villain” — a strange macabre prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, who had a less than illustrious reputation and refused to let the first defense team look at the DNA evidence: a bra and a kitchen knife, the supposed murder weapon it based its victory on; then there was a beautiful heroine in Knox, now 24, who was either a witch or a martyred angel depending on if you thought she’d been party to a murder — and, really, who knew? Next came the Romeo/Juliet love story: Knox’s new relationship with an Italian computer engineering student, Raffaele Sollecito, 27, who seemed to come from a decent background and who looked far too clean shaven and preppy to have been involved in the alleged orgy that took place…

And then last but not at all least poor dead Meredith Kercher, the 21-year-old British woman, whose only apparent crime in all this was to say that her new roommate, Knox, then 20, didn’t like doing the washing up… and who was found naked, raped with nearly 40 stab wounds four years ago in the room she shared with Knox in Perugia, Italy. Why was she murdered? It was originally claimed a sex game had gone seriously wrong.

“What do you think will happen?” I asked a friend, a New York lawyer whose been involved in what he calls “pretty odd” criminal cases here as I watched the build-up to the verdict in Knox’s appeals trial. “She’ll get off — whatever the truth is,” he predicted correctly. “Truth has nothing to do with this. The law has everything to do with it. And Knox was tried incorrectly the first time around. The DNA evidence was contaminated, it doesn’t add up. If justice prevails she will go free….”

Well, justice did prevail — but I think we’d be inhuman not to feel desperately sorry for the Kercher family who still wonder, appalled, what on earth happened to their kind, dead daughter on that terrible night.

It all reminded me of another case where terrible sordid events happened — and we will likely never know the truth — and this one is far closer to home than Perugia, Italy.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn — or DSK — the former disgraced head of the International Monetary Fund was accused on May 14 this year of raping Nafissatou Diallo, 32, from Guinea in a hotel room at the Sofitel hotel in New York. The office of Cyrus Vance Jr, the New York District Attorney was in charge of the prosecution, which claimed at first that DSK had appeared naked and, according to her “charged” at Diallo, who had come to clean the room thinking it was empty. She claimed he made her perform oral sex — and the end result was his semen was all over the floor and her clothes; her injuries hospitalized her — and yet he told police when they boarded the AirFrance plane on which he planned to leave the country a few hours later “nothing happened.”

According to someone who used to work in the DA’s office before Vance took office there, these words alone should have given Diallo’s suit credibility. If “nothing happened” why was his semen all over the floor? But then, days later, Diallo’s credibility fell apart, amid reports she was an illegal immigrant who had lied on tax forms, she had left the room after the alleged rape to clean two others before reporting it, and that she had a phone call with a man in jail in which she talked about extorting DSK, having now realized who he was and that he was rich.
So on August 23 DSK walked free, because Vance knew he did not have a case he could prove “beyond reasonable doubt”.

But the story goes on, like Knox’s did.

Now Diallo is suing DSK for damages in a civil case where there is no need to prove anything “beyond reasonable doubt” — just enough to look like you are telling the truth. Her American lawyers are confident they will prevail; they say that they can prove with taped conversations that Diallo never planned to extort DSK in any phone call — what she actually said was that he was a “powerful, big man”… and she knew what to do (as in hire a lawyer)… well, duh. They also say they can prove that her cleaning cart never left his hotel room. She did not clean two more rooms before reporting the alleged attack.

So what actually happened? I asked someone close to both the criminal and civil case.

The answer, I was told, was that Cyrus Vance Jr. completely messed up his prosecution. “He put junior people on the case — don’t ask me why,” says one seasoned lawyer, trying not to sound too weary about the whole thing.

Therefore if this plays out as everyone expects and DSK does not get away with his ludicrous plea for diplomatic immunity (he wasn’t here on diplomatic business and America doesn’t have a treaty like that with the IMF) he will pay a large sum to settle out of court with Diallo. The last thing I suspect he wants is a public trial. He has enough on his hands back home in Paris, with Tristane Banon the young French journalist coming out next week with a book “le Bal des hypocrites” that claims he tried to rape her in Paris in 2003.

But even if Diallo gets millions for her ordeal, the truth of what actually happened in that hotel room will still not be known. And that is the one thing I find maddening about the justice system whether it’s here or in Perugia, Italy. At least with Shakespeare, you find out what the real story is.

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What Really Happened With Yahoo and Carol Bartz

At first I was horrified when I read what happened to Yahoo’s former CEO Carol Bartz. A phone dump? Like I think, most people, male and female, when I read the bare bones of the story — that out of the blue she’d been called by the chairman of the board Roy Bostock and given her marching orders — on the telephone — that after two and a half years in the seat she had to go — albeit with a $10 million payoff — I was appalled. Such behavior is not generally deemed okay in the dating world. A phone dump shows an appalling lack of respect for the person being dumped. In the dating world, people who do this are generally subsequently given a wide berth.

Thus, I’d never even heard of such behavior in the corporate world. And nor, as I canvassed other CEOS, had they.

“Maybe if the CEO had been arrested and was in jail for child abuse I’d do it, but only then,” said one chairman of a board with a business with a market capital of several billion dollars.
But today Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway says that Bartz’s subsequent overreaction to the manner of her firing is a grave mistake.

No axed CEO, says Kellaway, especially one with a vast payoff, ought to give an interview as Bartz did to Fortune magazine and call Yahoo’s former board members “doofuses,” or swear: “they fucked me,” or go on and on about the crassness of the phone dump, thereby distracting from the main point — which is that she hadn’t lived up the expectations of her shareholders and had to go. Former CEOs are supposed to shut up, smile and head for the golf course… or back to work in another company, if they don’t blow themselves up in the press first…

Kellaway says that given Bartz’s anger, Bostock did her a favor by not firing her in person — lawyer standing next to him.

Well, I think that’s not fair to Bartz — and here’s why.

A few phone calls to people in the know at Yahoo reveal the following: No one intended to fire Bartz over the phone.

The problem was that she was due to speak at a Citigroup meeting on September 7th; the Yahoo board had belatedly reached its decision to fire her and felt they must do so before this important speech to influential analysts. So, they waited for her return from abroad. And waited. And waited. Enter rain squalls — and on September 6th Bartz’s flight kept being delayed.

Hence the dramatic phone call from Bostock, which obviously stunned Bartz, who was, no doubt, at the time going over the finer points of her speech for the next day. So the real point is not that Bartz overreacted (she may have, but, clearly, she was taken by complete surprise which is in itself revealing about the cowardice of the board).

The bigger point is the board should have fired her months ago.

This is the pertinent point made in the outraged letter to the board by Daniel Loeb, the CEO of the hedgefund ThirdPoint which has a 5.15 per cent stake in Yahoo.

He calls for a new board.

Why?

Loeb writes among other things that the board should have reacted months ago to the obvious: Bartz’s lack of experience in the space and complete unsuitability for the job which has dragged the company’s stock price down to approximately $13.61 a share when he reckons it should be a round $20. Then there was what he calls her “alienation of Asian partners” and a terrible lack of communication skills (which I must confess I agree with, having watched a recent interview done with her on YouTube).

Yet as recently as June 23 the board was backing her publicly. “We believe in Carol” Bostock said.

Was he blind, deaf and dumb?

Loeb’s letter says it all: If the board had done its job months ago, then all this controversy about the etiquette of a firing phone call — which is worthy of commentary and analyzing, and hopefully will never happen again — would be completely moot.

Today’s Headlines About the Arrest of Lehman’s Former Chief Operating Officer’s for Prescription Forging Have a Crucial Message for all Wall Street Firms

So today my phone has rung off the hook.

Why?

The New York Times Dealbook broke the news that Lehman Brothers former COO Bradley (Brad) Jack, who owns the most expensive home in Fairfield, CT, worth $34.6 million was “charged with second-degree forgery and forgery of a prescription drug.”

If he is convicted, he faces jail time, which would make him the first Lehman senior executive to don a jump suit.

On one level this is a huge irony, since as I wrote in my 2010 book, The Devil’s Casino: Friendship, Betrayal and the High Stakes Inside Lehman Brothers (John F. Wiley & Sons) — despite massive unethical and irresponsible business practices, appalling management and board oversight, as well as highly questionable earnings results in 2008 — no one from the erstwhile Lehman Brothers is yet anywhere close to being headed to the Big House.

Bradley Jack could not be held responsible for any of the above since, as I wrote in my book, he was forced out of the firm in 2004 by the Machiavellian man wanting to become the firm’s president (number two): Joe Gregory.

And if anyone wants to blame a single person for Lehman’s demise — well, in my view, after Fuld, it is Joe Gregory who promoted all the wrong people (loyalists to him, rather than competent financiers), punished dissent with backstabbing and was more interested in telling everyone about his lavish lifestyle than managing the firm.

In 2004 Gregory got rid of Jack who was his competitor for the job of President — unfilled since 1997. How did Gregory do this? He told Dick Fuld, the CEO that Jack was allegedly abusing prescription drugs. (Jack had suffered cancer and had a scar right across his torso). I asked Jack about the allegations at the time I was reporting the book and he denied them. But he did talk to me about Gregory’s very “unsympathetic” attitude towards his recuperation, which only made it harder for him to get better. He felt he had to watch his back every second. He knew Gregory was out to “get” him — as did his then-wife Karin, who complained bitterly of the conniving of Gregory’s wife, Nikki. Nikki, she claimed deliberately left her out of an antiquing trip with Kathy Fuld at the Fuld’s home in Sun Valley (Nikki Gregory never commented on this but both Jacks corroborated the story — as did others).

So today’s news that Jack allegedly handed in a fake prescription for 12 Oxycontin pill and nine Ritalin pills at a CVS in Fairfield has not shocked me or the ex-Lehmanites.

But personally I feel sorry for Jack. I left him a sympathetic message along with his ex-wife Karin who provided some of the more blood-curdling material in my book about the tough Orwellian Lehman culture. It was Karin Jack who explained that Lehman wives were expected to give birth on their own, move house on their own — and in one especially grim scenario leave a very sick child’s bedside in order to get on a helicopter to visit a new mcMansion purchased by….Joe Gregory. The senior executives’ lives were subordinated — not for the business — but to pay lip-service to a vain greedy man.

So there are two lessons here.

Had Brad Jack worked for a culture that supported rather than culled illness, maybe we would not be reading today’s headlines. They are a brutal reminder of what a truly horrible place Lehman became, ruining the reputation of what had once been a place of dreams.

But more importantly they illustrate the importance of a firm’s culture. If Lehman’s culture had cultivated dissenting opinions, been more tolerant of illness in capable people, and less about men terrified of losing their corner suites — then they would not have fallen — and more broadly, of course, they would not have caused a worldwide catastrophe which doesn’t seem to be getting much better three years on. All Wall Street firms would be wise to think about this.

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