Sociopath alert: Bill Clinton

That a man would have an extramarital affair is hardly indicative of sociopathy. That a middle-aged man would have an affair with a 21-year-old who works for him is reprehensible, but still not indicative of sociopathy. That a man would lie about his extramarital affairs is downright normal. Lying under oath is more serious, but even that doesn’t necessarily mean sociopathy. What betrays Bill Clinton’s sociopathy is the utter dishonesty which pervades every aspect of his life, his lack of impulse control, his disloyalty, his facile justifications, and his affect-hungry nature.

Like many sociopaths, Clinton will massage the truth even when he doesn‘t have to. But it is the bald-faced nature of many of his lies that really gives him away. During his 1992 campaign, Clinton heatedly denied an affair with Gennifer Flowers even after being caught on tape telling her how to deny their affair. Most married men lie about their affairs -- but few would have the gall to continue lying at that point. Clinton did. Five years later, during his deposition on the Paula Jones case, Clinton admitted the affair with Flowers. But even under oath, he admitted only to having had sex with her once, while Flowers -- by then the more credible of the two -- claimed a twelve year affair.

Many of Clinton’s lies are well documented. His tortured explanations for his draft dodging are classic Clinton slipperiness. Clinton said as little as possible on the subject of Whitewater, other than deny knowledge of it. (Are we to believe that as a poor young governor, this famously detail-oriented man knew nothing about his own investments?) Likewise, regarding Filegate and Travelgate, he was widely regarded as being disingenuous and evasive at best.

But much of Clinton’s dishonesty is not clearly visible until his behavior is viewed through the prism of sociopathy. Ironically, the Clinton comment most widely derided as a lie during his first term, his claim that he did not inhale the one marijuana cigarette he ever smoked, was, I think, the truth. His advisers would never have let him concoct such a ridiculous lie. And Clinton is, in fact, allergic to smoke. It also seems likely that during an era when it was considered cool to smoke marijuana (the late Sixties, when Clinton was at Oxford), he would have wanted to appear hip. Thus, when a joint was passed his way, Clinton probably would have taken a toke, but would have (deceptively) only faked inhaling. In this instance, Clinton was probably lying to his fellow students at the time (“This is good stuff. Man, have I got a buzz going!”) rather than the American public twenty odd years later. The public didn’t believe him because there is no point to smoking marijuana without inhaling. There is no point, that is, unless you are the kind of phony who wants to appear to be smoking when you’re not.

Perhaps most tellingly, Clinton is emotionally dishonest. He drips with the seemingly heartfelt sincerity that only the utterly insincere can muster at will. Whenever he reviewed and saluted the troops, he would sport the mock proud look; and whenever he was being applauded, the mock humble look. C-SPAN once showed President and Mrs. Clinton standing in a receiving line with the Ghanaian President and his wife. I was riveted by the sight of Clinton, who had just the day before been publicly accused of having raped Juanita Broaddrick as Governor, acting as if he were having the time of his life. He received each and every one of the guests as if he (or she) were the one Clinton had been looking forward to seeing all evening.

For most Presidents attending state funerals, it suffices to appear somber and dignified; Clinton always had to take it a step further, and act as if he was overcome with grief and trying bravely not to cry. Clinton exudes all the warmth that only the completely cold can project for anybody, anytime.

During a discussion of the poor during the 1992 Presidential debates, on several occasions Clinton looked down and bit his lower lip as if overcome with sadness at their plight. Are we to believe he was thus affected in the middle of a high-stakes debate? Human nature is such that our heartstrings are pulled by a sad personal story, not by a recitation of statistics. But the nature of a sociopath is that he is moved by neither, thus does not know when to pretend to be sad. (“Eighteen percent of Americans are living below the federally mandated poverty line as defined by HEW, a household income of $16,000 for a family of four -- boo hoo.”)

Telling the American people “I feel your pain” is just the sort of thing a sociopath would claim. At the time, this statement was widely viewed as an example of what a touchy-feely, emotional man the President was. But in fact, empathy is usually most heavily advertised by those who feel it the least, i.e., sociopaths. (Most of us just assume that others realize we feel some compassion, and thus don’t feel obliged to point it out.)

Clinton’s lying seems to know no bounds. The following is an excerpt from the December 25, 1998 issue of The Forward, headlined ‘Clinton Lied About Meeting Children: It was a Clinton classic. President Clinton stood before the Palestinian National Council and spoke of two ‘profoundly emotional experiences in less than 24 hours.’ One of those experiences was his meeting with the children of jailed Palestinian-Arab terrorists. The other experience was meeting Israelis, ‘some [in Clinton’s words] little children whose fathers had been killed in conflict with the Palestinians…..[But] the Israeli Embassy’s Minister for Public Affairs was unable to confirm that a meeting between Clinton and Israeli children ever took place….Other Israeli government sources who would speak only on condition of anonymity said Clinton never met with the Israeli children. The White House and State Department did not return calls about whether such a meeting took place. There was no such event on the public schedule of the trip.” In other words, this was just more phony emotionalism.

When the Dick Morris scandal broke in the summer of 1996, the media focused on the sexual aspects of Morris’ entanglements with Sherry Rowlands. What got lost among the more prurient aspects of the case was Morris’ characterization of Clinton to Rowlands. Morris called him “the monster” and said that he had no empathy and no common sense, two things sociopaths notoriously lack. Morris has also been quoted as saying, “Hillary loves Bill, and Bill loves Bill. It gives them something in common.” (It also gives Bill something in common with his sociopathic brethren.)

Clinton is corrupt. Hillary’s infamous cattle trading futures profits (courtesy of Tyson Foods’ man at the exchange) were a bribe to Bill, not to Hillary. It was Governor Clinton, not his wife, who had the power to -- and did -- pass legislation favorable to Tyson, laws which allowed Tyson to pollute lakes and streams with impunity and to drive oversize trucks through the state. (This from a man who advertised himself as an environmentalist.) Prosecutors were unable to prove it a bribe, but it stretches credulity to think that Hillary actually studied cattle futures on her own, then turned a $1000 stake into $100,000, then just as suddenly decided to quit. (Why not turn the $100,000 into ten million?) Regarding Whitewater, it seems reasonable to assume that a man who would accept a bribe to poison his home state’s waterways would certainly not be above accepting a sweetheart real estate deal.

Jim McDougal, in his book “Arkansas Mischief,” said that he regularly gave cash to Governor Clinton (a charge Clinton denies). He characterized Clinton as a man who succeeded by promising everything to everyone (a typical sociopathic trait). McDougal also says that he accidentally discovered that Clinton had an affair with his wife Susan (which she has denied).

Clinton is disloyal. The phrase “Friend of Bill,” heard so frequently during his first term, seemed to have fallen out of favor by his second, given its by then ominous implications. The list of people whom Clinton dropped when politically expedient is much longer than the list of aides who managed to last for his entire administration. The moment nominees or advisers became tainted, he dropped them quicker than you could say “Nannygate.”

Another sociopath trait Clinton exhibited is minimal impulse control. According to inside accounts at the White House, Clinton had little control over his temper. (George Stephanopoulos, a dedicated aide during Clinton’s first term, is said to have left in part because he tired of being Clinton’s whipping boy.)

People become addicts because they can’t control their impulse for immediate gratification. Clinton reportedly at one point had a cocaine habit. The November 1996 issue of The American Spectator listed several witnesses to Clinton’s cocaine use, and speculated that this was why he would not release his medical records. A woman who lived next door to Roger Clinton said she heard Bill Clinton comment on the quality of the cocaine he snorted several times. Roger Clinton has been tape-recorded saying that Bill had “a nose like a vacuum cleaner.” Asharlene Wilson, who has been convicted of drug violations, testified that she had personally witnessed Clinton take cocaine at least twenty times. When The American Spectator tried to investigate rumors of a Clinton hospitalization for an overdose in the aftermath of his gubernatorial defeat in 1980, the woman at the University of Arkansas Medical Center, rather than deny it, said she couldn’t talk about it or would get into trouble. Despite his personal involvement, Governor Clinton later had his brother Roger arrested for possession.

“I think we’re all addicted to something,” Clinton told an interviewer in the 1980s, according to his biographer David Maraniss. “Some people are addicted to drugs. Some to power. Some to food. Some to sex. We’re all addicted to something.” Having been addicted to all four, Clinton knew of what he spoke.

Clinton’s character is also demonstrated by his sense of entitlement. Remember that infamous haircut by Christophe? President Clinton decided to have a trim aboard Air Force One while on the runway at Los Angeles International Airport, delaying the other planes for over an hour. Hundreds of other passengers waited so that Clinton could satisfy his vanity; this is not the choice of a man burdened with a sense of shame.

Clinton’s most highly publicized weakness, of course, has been women. Imagine for a moment that Paula Jones’ allegations were true. (She did tell two different people about the incident within an hour of its occurrence.) What kind of man approaches a woman he barely knows by dropping his pants, pulling out his genitals, and asking for oral sex?

While the fact of Clinton’s affairs is not necessarily indicative of bad character, the way he handled the Lewinsky coverup exudes sociopathy. His reaction to the initial accusations was very telling. Clinton stood at the podium wagging his finger at the press, jut-jawed, saying with all the righteous fury of a wrongly accused innocent, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
Clinton even lied to those closest to him about Monica. According to Gail Sheehy in the February 1999 Vanity Fair, he told adviser Sidney Blumenthal that she had come on to him, but he had told her he couldn’t have sex. “I’ve gone down that road before,” said Clinton. “I’ve caused pain for a lot of people and I’m not going to do that again.”

Clinton went on to describe how he had tried to help, in his word, the “troubled” young girl. (It would be one thing to simply deny the charges; but a sociopath must take it one step further, and claim he is doing good.) Hillary herself told the press that the President had been “ministering” to Monica. When the evidence of Clinton’s semen on Monica’s dress came to light, he was caught red-handed (but not red-faced; he is incapable of embarrassment).

Clinton’s claim that oral sex isn’t really sex was a national joke for several weeks. But Clinton didn’t mean it as a joke, and it is exactly the type of facile justification that sociopaths specialize in.

Monica, in her testimony, characterized her relationship with the President as casual sex that turned into friendship; the President characterized it as a “friendship” that spun out of control, as if his initial interest in her were purely nonsexual. This is a common sociopathic lie, to paint a picture of “friendship” that rings hollow.

Monica later said that when she asked Clinton if their affair were merely about sex, “he started to tear up and told me he never wanted me to think that.” When she told him she loved him, he told her, “That means a lot to me.” (Surprising that the opinion of a “troubled” girl would mean so much.)

Clinton’s most shameless manipulation of Monica came when he implied to her that they had a future together. On one occasion, Clinton told Monica that he “might be alone in three years.” Then he asked her, “What will we do when I’m 75 and have to pee 25 times a day?” (Since, according to Clinton, their relationship wasn’t purely sexual, it is curious that he would worry about their “future” in those terms.)

When Monica expressed concern to Clinton that he was more interested in Kathleen Willey than in her, he told Monica that Willey’s breasts weren’t large enough to provoke his interest. With this one statement Clinton managed simultaneously to flatter Monica, lie to her, and insult Willey for her physical attributes, a neat sociopathic hat trick. (Remember, this is the same man who fired Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders for having mentioned masturbation while discussing sexual health with adolescents, and decreed that unmarried donors not be allowed to sleep together in the Lincoln Bedroom.)

Monica also said that Clinton told her that “beginning in third grade there were two Bill Clinton’s -- the good boy and the secret boy.” This sounds almost schizoid on the surface, but in fact is just a typically sociopathic way of separating oneself from one’s bad actions.

Then, on August 17, 1998, came Clinton’s famous nonapology to the nation in which he manfully claimed “full responsibility” for his actions, but then essentially absolved himself from blame. He mentioned that his earlier denials of sex with Lewinsky were “technically correct,” which even his most ardent defenders described as a “lawyerly evasion” (read: lie). Then Clinton lambasted Ken Starr for going after him. Clinton often criticized Starr for the time and money that were put into the investigation; but Clinton could easily have saved the taxpayers that time and money by not stonewalling from the start (after having promised the public “more rather than less, sooner rather than later.”)

Ken Starr obviously recognized Clinton as a corrupt, dishonest, manipulative user who’d gotten away with a lot; yet Starr was unable to make any of the original Whitewater charges stick because of mute (or dead) witnesses and missing files. So, in the manner of Eliot Ness going after Al Capone on income tax evasion, Starr settled for nailing his man on a lesser charge (the Jones/Lewinsky matters).

On October 7th, Clinton announced publicly that the House members should “cast a vote of conscience” on the Republican-written impeachment inquiry. Meanwhile the White House worked hard behind the scenes to pressure Congressional Democrats to vote for a more limited investigation.

Shortly after the impeachment Clinton was asked at a press conference if he felt persecuted, as if there were a conspiracy against him. He responded with what he said was one of his favorite jokes: a man is walking along the rim of the Grand Canyon and falls over a cliff. He sees a twig and grabs it, but then the twig starts to come out by the roots. He then looks up above, and says, “God, why me?” God responds, “I don’t know, there’s just something about you I don’t like.” By this point Clinton had already blamed his troubles on a right wing conspiracy, an overzealous prosecutor, and a troubled young girl. Why not a God who didn’t like him?

It is testimony to Clinton’s character that when he bombed the Sudan and Afghanistan in the fall of 1998, many wondered if he were just trying to deflect attention from the Lewinsky matter. The strikes were ostensibly aimed at Osama bin Laden, who at that point was known primarily as the man behind the bombings at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania weeks earlier. But as time went on it became increasingly apparent that the bombed plant in the Sudan was devoted to making pharmaceuticals rather than chemical weapons, as originally claimed.

Clinton’s public pronouncement after the strike was that he stayed awake “till 2:30 in the morning trying to make absolutely sure that at that chemical plant there was no night shift. I didn’t want some person who was a nobody to me, but who may have a family to feed and a life to live, and probably had no earthly idea what else was going on there, to die needlessly.” Noble words. But they weren’t quite original. About eight months before the bombing, the movie “The American President” came out. It was an extremely sympathetic portrayal of a Democratic President and widower (played by Michael Douglas) whose affair with an environmental lobbyist (played by Annette Bening) creates a mini-scandal which his loathsome Republican opponent tries to make an issue of. It is hard to believe that Clinton would not have seen this movie, which was partially shot in Washington D.C. In any case, at one point in the movie President Douglas must make the decision whether to bomb Tripoli. Late at night, a grim-faced Douglas asks the assembled military brass, “How many people are working in the damn building? The fewest -- what shift has the fewest people? The night shift, right? When are they on?” He then gives the go-ahead for the bombing. Later that night, in the small hours of the morning, when an adviser tells him the bombing will make him look Presidential, Douglas solemnly responds, “What I did tonight was not about political gain. Somewhere in Libya right now, a janitor is working the night shift at Libyan intelligence headquarters. He’s going about doing his job ‘cause he has no idea in an about an hour he’s going to die in a massive explosion. He’s just going about his job because he has no idea that about an hour ago I have an order to have him killed.” Sound familiar? Now ask yourself: was Clinton motivated more by genuine concern for the folks on the night shift, or by a desire to come across like the American President?

Senator Joseph Biden was widely mocked when it turned out he had plagiarized Labor leader Neil Kinnock’s speech about his ancestors in the coal mines. (Of course, it was easy to prove Biden’s ancestor’s weren’t miners, whereas it would be impossible to prove Clinton wasn’t up until 2:30AM thinking about the night shift.) Clinton’s speech may not cleave close enough to President Douglas’ to qualify technically as plagiarism, but it does seem screenwriter Aaron Sorkin should have received at least partial credit for his words.

Clinton left the White House the same way he occupied it, embroiled in another scandal. On the last day of his Presidency Clinton issued more than 170 Presidential pardons, for tax evaders, drug dealers, swindlers, and terrorists, among others. The most widely publicized pardon went to Marc Rich, the convicted fugitive financier who underreported his taxes by fifty million dollars and violated the US ban on trade with Iran. His ex-wife Denise Rich gave over a million dollars to various Clinton causes including his Presidential Library and lobbied strongly for his release. Hugh Rodham, Hillary’s brother, took hundreds of thousands of dollars from both drug dealer Carlos Vignali and swindler Glenn Braswell, both of whom Clinton pardoned. In March of 2002 the House Government Reform Committee released a report on these pardons which it titled “Justice Undone: Clemency Decisions in the Clinton White House.”

Perhaps the essential question to ask is, can you picture Clinton sitting in the White House, head in hands, mortified over one of his moral slips? It’s easy to imagine him angry at Ken Starr, or frustrated at his negative press; but hard to imagine him feeling ashamed. This is the key to his character. People who handle stress well, people who weather personal scandal with aplomb, are often said to be able to “compartmentalize” their lives. (Clinton’s mother Virginia Kelley actually claimed in her memoir that she taught her sons to do this.) What this phrase means, essentially, is that these people don’t let such things faze them. But isn’t this the essence of sociopathy, to be unbothered by any sense of guilt, shame, or responsibility? This is why Clinton was able to present such a strong, smiling face to the world the morning after his impeachment; this is why he is able to lie with such seeming conviction.

Contrast Clinton’s demeanor in the middle of his impeachment to Richard Nixon’s. Nixon, who was later described by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as “a basket case” at the time of the Watergate hearings, finally resigned in August 1974 rather than face the shame of impeachment. Clinton’s State of the Union speech in January 1999 was completely different. Clinton strode into the Senate beaming, shaking hands jovially, head high, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. During the speech itself he came across empathetic, sincere, caring, humorous, and determined. The greatest stage actor, given the luxury of ten takes, could not have done better. There was no sense of sheepishness, no sense of being troubled by the impeachment; make no mistake, it was his sociopathy that allowed him to deliver such a magnificent performance.

Sociopathy does run in families, and Clinton’s family background is certainly dysfunctional enough. His stepfather, Roger Clinton, was an alcoholic who physically abused Clinton’s mother. Strangely, Clinton, born William Jefferson Blythe III, took his stepfather’s name after his mother had divorced the man, despite the fact that Roger had refused to legally adopt him.

Clinton’s mother, the late Virginia Kelley, was described as “an Arkansas original.” This is a nice spin on a woman who had scant control over her various appetites. She loved to smoke, drink, and gamble. And, in her words, she “loved men.” Clinton is truly his mother’s son.

The question is, who is Clinton’s father? William Blythe, the traveling salesman (and accused bigamist) whom Virginia Kelley claimed was Clinton’s father, died in a car accident in May 1946, three months before Clinton was born. That much is not in dispute. The problem is that nine months before Clinton was born, Blythe was serving his country in Italy. When this information surfaced after Clinton was elected President, Kelley said that Clinton’s birth was induced a month early because of a fall she had taken. In her 1994 memoir, however, she never mentioned this. And Clinton weighed eight and a half pounds at birth, a weight almost never reached by premature infants. Not knowing who one’s father is can have a devastating effect on a young boy’s psyche. One certainly cannot blame Clinton for the confusion surrounding his paternity; but then neither can one blame Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, or David Berkowitz (the Son of Sam) for the confusion surrounding theirs. And such backgrounds do tend to be fertile soil for sociopathy.

Jeffrey Toobin wrote an article in the July 6, 1998 New Yorker in which he quoted Linda Bloodworth Thomason: “For as long as I have known the President, he has been extraordinary in his devotion to winning over the most negative person in the room.” (Since Thomason is a Clinton ally, it is reasonable to assume she meant this in a positive way.) Virginia Kelley herself said in her memoirs that if she or either of her sons were at a party with ninety-nine people who liked them and one who didn’t, they would spend the evening attempting to win that person over. This sounds like an affect-hungry sociopath’s description of affect-hungry sociopathy. What better job for such a person than the Presidency?

Jonathan Alter wrote an article in the February 2, 1998 issue of Newsweek entitled “Clinton on the Couch: Why would he risk it all for a little sex with an intern? Look to his biography -- and biology.” Alter states that Clinton was teased for being fat as a kid, then quotes Ben Stein: “He is remedying an early deficit in female attention. Like all childhood deficits, it can never be filled.” Stein is implying that Clinton is making up for a lack of admiration from female classmates. Stein is partially right -- Clinton did suffer from a deficit in female attention during his formative years -- but it was from his mother. As an addict herself, Virginia Kelley was probably emotionally unavailable for her sons; that would certainly explain their later behavior. (Remember, the difference between Bill and his half-brother Roger is IQ, not character.) The tone of Alter’s article seems to imply that Clinton is a good man who has been brought low by this isolated flaw. But the flaws of a sociopath are never isolated.

In the same spirit, it was often said that Clinton had a “zipper problem,” as if his flaw were sartorial in nature. But his entire personality is irrepressibly unzipped: not only can he not tie himself down to his marriage, he can’t button his mouth, he can’t rein in his anger, he couldn’t even stay tethered to one stand on a political issue.

The New York Times, endorsing Clinton for the 1996 election, stated that he could resolve the “character issue” which had dogged him through his first term by standing firm on his core liberal beliefs and not waffling on policy. This is ridiculous. Sociopathy, or the lack thereof, is not demonstrated by one’s political stance. It is demonstrated by the pattern of one’s personal behavior. Another Times editorial once mentioned Clinton’s “mysterious passion for lying.” This passion is mysterious only if you don’t understand sociopathy.

Many seem to think that Clinton’s waffling was a result of agonizing over the heart-wrenching choices he had to make, that he was torn because he wanted so badly to do the right thing. In fact, it was more a matter of following shifting polls and telling whichever audience he was addressing at the time whatever they wanted to hear.

Maureen Dowd offered a particularly telling comment on Clinton’s hypocrisy after both Bill and Hillary had objected to their daughter Chelsea being depicted in a (positive) cover article in People magazine: “As he huffily demands that one young woman be protected from the media monster, he did not hesitate to let another young woman [Monica] be devoured by it.” (The New York Times, February 7, 1999.)

Bob Woodward wrote a book, “The Choice”, in which he characterized Clinton’s thinking this way: “Part of him yearned for an obvious call to action or even a crisis. He was looking for that extraordinary challenge which he could define and then rally people to the cause. He wanted to find that galvanizing moment. ‘I would have much preferred being President during World War II,’ he said one night in January 1995. ‘I’m a person out of my time.’” What kind of vanity must one possess to wish a world war upon his country merely in order to look more heroic, and perhaps be treated better by the history books?

David Brooks wrote an editorial in the September 3, 1998 USA Today in which he highlighted Clinton’s moral vanity: “Many politicians are self-righteous, but Clinton possesses the trait in pure form…..Clinton talks as if he were the embodiment of virtue. Anything done on his behalf, no matter how sleazy or deceptive, is done in the name of virtue and therefore virtuous…..‘I’ve tried to do a good job of taking care of this country, even when I haven’t taken such good care of myself and my family,’ he said at one point. As if his problem were that he isn’t selfish enough.” Moral vanity is one of the hallmarks of sociopathy; a sense of irony is not.

David Maraniss, a journalist for The Washington Post, wrote a series of articles about Clinton the candidate back in 1992 that glowed with admiration for his empathy, openness, and close friendships. In 1995, Maraniss’s book “First in His Class” presented a more mixed view of Clinton. By this point Maraniss recognized the blind ambition and duplicitousness behind the façade. In 1998, Maraniss wrote a book entitled “The Clinton Enigma: A Four-and-a-Half Minute Speech That Reveals This President’s Entire Life” (a reference to the Clinton nonapology of August 17th). As the title indicates, by this point Maraniss was thoroughly disenchanted. He called Clinton “a dissembler” and “one man darkness unit,” and “a personality that explained and rationalized compulsively.” Maraniss said Clinton had a “lack of normal standards of self-control,” and was “incapable of learning and changing.” All phrases that are code for sociopathy. That Maraniss could be so taken with Clinton in 1992 demonstrates just how successfully charismatic and manipulative a sociopath can be; Maraniss’s eventual disillusionment is also typical.

During Clinton’s second term, polls showed 70% of the electorate thought Clinton was a liar. Some Clinton defenders tried to claim the moral high ground by saying that those who detested Clinton were “haters.” But hatred is a natural reaction to incessant dishonesty and insincerity, and is itself no indication of character fault unless directed at a wide range of people.

It is hard to accept that a recent President of the United States is in fact a sociopath, with the same basic mindset as all those infamous serial killers. But Clinton is, and unmistakably so.

Abraham Lincoln, arguably our greatest President, is said to have remarked that you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Bill Clinton, arguably our most sociopathic, devoted his Presidency to trying to disprove that theorem.

Marc Mezvinsky

Marc Mezvinsky, the Goldman Sachs banker who just married Chelsea Clinton, comes from an interesting family.

His father, Ed Mezvinsky, was a con man who was eventually convicted of several dozen counts of fraud and spent five years in federal prison. He still owes his various victims $9.4 million.

It would seem unfair to condemn the son for the father's behavior. But there is an old saying: the apple never falls far from the tree. From what I've seen, there's a lot of truth to it.

If Marc is as slippery as his father, he is working at the right firm.

And he's married into the right family.

Princess Diana II

Is it that slow a news day or is the attention being paid to Chelsea Clinton's wedding just a bit excessive?

"This I know how to do."

The NY Post had an item on Page Six this morning about how President Obama attended a fundraiser at The Four Seasons yesterday and then went to a private dinner for "fashion royalty" at Anna Wintour's.

(The Devil raises money for Barack Obama? Only fitting, I guess.)

Obama gave a brief speech to Wintour's guests and said he wasn't worried about his low poll numbers. He said he planned to go on a national tour delivering the message to voters about his administration's achievements so far.

The Page Six article then quoted him as saying, "I've got my message across before and I'll do it again. This I know how to do."

That last sentence featured an interesting choice of word order. By placing the object at the beginning of the sentence he emphasized it, and set it apart.

It was almost as if he were saying, "This I know how to do -- even if I don't know how to do other things, like govern."

Perhaps it's my political bias that causes me to read this tacit admission into the sentence. But it was a noticeable choice of word order.

That I'm sure of.

Protesting is fun

Last night U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton issued an injunction against the Arizona immigration law, SB 1070.

Despite the ruling, today's scheduled protest against the law was not called off. The marchers, eleven busloads of whom were driven in from Los Angeles, went ahead and had their protest anyway. Why cancel the party just because the reason for the party was canceled? The weather was nice, all their friends were there, and it's hard to beat that warm fuzzy feeling you get when waxing self-righteous.

So they marched from the state Capitol chanting "Hey ho, hey ho, SB 1070 has got to go." (The meter may have been a bit off, but at least it rhymed.)

They also stood outside the office of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio chanting "Sheriff Joe, we are here, we will not live in fear." (True enough; when you really fear someone you generally don't hector him right outside his office.)

Traffic on Tucson's I-19 was disrupted when protesters threw tires, paint buckets, and glass onto the highway. (It is as yet unclear how many commuters were won over with this tactic.)

Let's face it, protesting is fun. It's fun the same way throwing snowballs at cars is fun. Or heckling a comedian. Or razzing a teacher. Or having a few beers and yelling for your favorite sports team. Or looting during a power outage. Or playing mailbox baseball. All of these things allow you to feel naughty and work out aggression at the same time.

And protesting is as gratifying as rebelling against your parents.

Most people outgrow this kind of thing after their teen years. But not everybody. The high derived from protesting can be habit-forming. You get swept up in the crowd's frenzy. You feel a certain strength in numbers, and an exultation in your collective power. You get to yell at the top of your lungs, which can be therapeutic in a primal scream sort of way. You get to hang out with like-minded people. And to top it all off you get to feel virtuous.

It certainly beats reading a book and actually trying to learn about whatever it is you're protesting.

Change in health care priorities

The New York Times ran an article in their business section this morning titled "A Shift Toward Fighting Fat." It talked about how the money targeting obesity has grown while the money aimed at stopping smoking has shrunk commensurately:

"And the nation's battle to shed pounds has in its corner the White House, with Michelle Obama leading a new campaign against childhood obesity. Shortly after the first lady kicked off the 'Let's Move' program, the administration awarded more funds to fight obesity than tobacco through two big new money sources for preventive health. The funds, totaling $1.15 billion, came from economic stimulus and health care reform legislation. They still provided $200 million for tobacco use prevention, but much more to grapple with obesity."

Come to think of it, it would be a bit awkward for Michelle Obama to make an anti-smoking campaign her signature cause as First Lady.

But it'd be awfully funny if she did.

A rule with no exceptions

Nothing quite says class like a guy with a pair of earrings.

Before and after

(above left and right, before and after pictures of Sammy Sosa; immediately above, Bruce Jenner triumphing in Olympic decathlon, 1976; right, a more recent picture of Jenner)

Steve Sailer's blog (isteve.blogspot.com) recently featured before and after pictures of Sammy Sosa in a post about skin color and status in foreign countries. And whatever dermal treatment Sosa has used has bleached his skin quite a bit. Sailer attributes Sosa's "creepy" appearance to the newly heightened contrast between his skin color and lip color.

But Sosa's features also seem to have become feminized. He now has a vaguely drag queenish look: his cheeks are fuller and softer. This is what happens when you stop taking steroids. If your body receives an exogenous supply of testosterone for a while, it stops generating the hormone on its own. (This is why the testicles shrink.) Eventually, when you go off them, your body will be receiving no testosterone from either source, and as a result you'll develop feminine secondary sexual characteristics. (This is why ex-steroid users sometimes start to grow breasts.)

There is a difference between the two sets of before and after photos with Sosa. In the set at top left, the before shot shows Sosa at the peak of his home run swatting powers; he has a hard, gristly look. In the set on the right, the lefthand shot shows him after he's off the steroids, but before the bleaching treatment: although his skin is still dark, he has already acquired a softer look.

(It makes one wonder if having a lower level of testosterone predisposes one to having one's skin lightened; the only other guy I know of who had a similar treatment was Michael Jackson.)

Bruce Jenner went through a similar metamorphosis. Jenner was the Olympic decathlon champion who later went on to become a sort of show biz hanger on; he is probably now most famous as the stepfather to the Kardashian clan. His striking change in appearance since 1976 is generally attributed to plastic surgery. But he was widely rumored to have been one of the first Americans to use steroids, and as such, was not familiar with the fact that you're supposed to cycle them, i.e., use them for brief periods and take breaks in between doses, otherwise you permanently kill your own body's ability to produce testosterone.

As a result Jenner's cheeks have had very feminine contours since the 1980's, and now he actually looks more like the Kardashians' stepmother. (Note to Bruce: that pouffy hairdo, which must be intended to evoke 1976, does nothing but emphasize your feminine appearance.)

There's a neat yin and yang symmetry to what has happened to these men. Try to make yourself super-masculine at some point and eventually you'll pay the price by becoming more feminine.

It's sort of like that story "Flowers for Algernon," but about masculinity rather than intelligence.

In any case, both men are now cautionary tales.

Astronomy

(The Milky Way galaxy)

My father mentioned yesterday that the nearest star to our sun is Alpha Centauri (in fact a double star), which is 4.2 light years away. A light year, of course, is the distance that light, which travels 186,000 miles per second, can travel in a year.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is a spiral galaxy approximately a hundred thousand light years in diameter and about two thousand light years thick. The period of our sun's orbit about the center of the galaxy is approximately once every two hundred and fifty million years.

The Milky Way contains between 200 and 400 billion stars.

(Our neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, contains approximately a trillion stars.)

There are over a billion galaxies in the Universe. And that's just the observable part of the Universe.

And the universe is ever expanding.

It is always said that contemplation of these facts will remind one of one's own insignificance in the cosmos. And how trivial our problems really are.

My ego (and my problems) are such that it fails to have that effect on me.

But perhaps it will work for you.

(Or, maybe you can use that line of logic the next time someone complains to you. Just say, "Hey, we're just one little planet out of nine in the solar system, our sun is just one of three hundred billion stars in our galaxy, and there are billions of galaxies in the universe. On our little planet there are 62,000 species of vertebrate animals among over a million animals worldwide. And of our species, you're just one of seven billion. So stop being so goddamned egocentric -- no one really gives a shit about your problems.")

Electricity

A violent storm came through my hometown two days ago and much of the town (including our neighborhood) has been without power for almost two full days now. It certainly underlines how dependent we are on electricity.

I'm no Bear Grylls: put me in the jungle and I'd be dead within two days. I wouldn't know which plants to eat, how to kill an animal (or keep one from killing me), how to construct a rudimentary shelter, or even which water would be safe to drink.

There does seem to be something a little pathetic about a guy so utterly helpless he's almost like a newborn baby in many ways.

But as much fun as Bear is to watch on TV, I still have no particular desire to learn those things.

Most suburban -- or urban -- types are the same way. And the more civilization progresses, the softer we get. (I can't even imagine how harsh life must have been for those unfortunate souls who lived in the pre-internet era.)

Something has been lost.

Rape?

The following article appeared in today's The Guardian:

Arab guilty of rape after consensual sex with Jew

A man has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after telling a woman that he was also Jewish.

A Palestinian man has been convicted of rape after having consensual sex with a woman who had believed him to be a fellow Jew.

Sabbar Kashur, 30, was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Monday after the court ruled that he was guilty of rape by deception. According to the complaint filed by the woman with the Jerusalem district court, the two met in downtown Jerusalem in September 2008 where Kashur, an Arab from East Jerusalem, introduced himself as a Jewish bachelor seeking a serious relationship. The two then had consensual sex in a nearby building before Kashur left.

When she later found out that he was not Jewish but an Arab, she filed a criminal complaint for rape and indecent assault.

Although Kashur was initially charged with rape and indecent assault, this was changed to a charge of rape by deception as part of a plea bargain arrangement.

Handing down the verdict, Tzvi Segal, one of three judges on the case, acknowledged that sex had been consensual but said that although not "a classical rape by force," the woman would not have consented if she had not believed Kashur was Jewish.

The sex therefore was obtained under false pretences, the judges said. "If she hadn't thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated," they added.

The court ruled that Kashur should receive a jail term and rejected the option of a six-month community service order. He was said to be seeking to appeal.

Segal said: "The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price – the sanctity of their bodies and souls. When the very basis of trust between human beings drops, especially when the matters at hand are so intimate, sensitive and fateful, the court is required to stand firmly at the side of the victims – actual and potential – to protect their well being. Otherwise, they will be used, manipulated and misled, while paying only a tolerable and symbolic price."

Gideon Levy, a liberal Israeli commentator, was quoted as saying: "I would like to raise only one question with the judge. What if this guy had been a Jew who pretended to be a Muslim and had sex with a Muslim woman?

"Would he have been convicted of rape? The answer is: of course not."

What exactly would happen in this country if, say, a light-skinned black man told a white woman that he was white, the two had consensual sex, and the woman then found out that he in fact had black blood and accused him of rape on those grounds? Would a court even hear the case? And what would happen if the court convicted the man? Exactly how loud would the public outcry be?

What would the NAACP have to say about it? What would President Obama say?

The fact is, they'd be right: such a conviction would be a case of racial discrimination, pure and simple. There would not have been any rape involved, not by any remotely relevant definition of the term. All of the public outrage would be against the woman, for her racism, and even more against the court, for its racism.

This was not the work of a lone rogue Israeli judge, either: there were three judges deciding the case.

The judges tried to obfuscate the naked racism involved with their statement, "If she hadn't thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated." By using the word "bachelor" they are implying that he was hiding his marital status, and there is nothing in the article which says he did that. And by using the phrase "serious romantic relationship" they are implying that this starry-eyed young ingenue was hoping that this romance might eventually lead to marriage -- but if she were interested in marriage, or even a seriously long term relationship, would she have had sex with him immediately after meeting him?

(If sex obtained under the "false pretences" of being interested in a serious relationship is a crime, then most of the male population of the US ought to be incarcerated.)

In any case, it's an interesting insight into Israeli attitudes.

What's wrong with our government

("Congressman, I really wish you'd reconsider your vote on deep water drilling in the Gulf....I'd be ever so grateful. Really....I would.")


The NY Post ran an article this morning about how House Minority Leader John Boehner has told GOP congressmen who partied with female lobbyists to "knock it off."

The Post article stated, "While there's no evidence of anything more than friendly flirtatious behavior, the lawmakers have been told to keep partying to a minimum in this midterm election year."

The article went on to cite several examples of Congressmen who had been seen in intimate conversations with "comely lobbyist[s]" in various venues.

When I was working at Goldman, we had a female lobbyist come in to give a presentation to our department one time (the partner in charge of our department had hired her to represent the firm in Washington). She was a very attractive woman, and smart enough. But she also looked, smelled, and carried herself like a high priced hooker.

Which, reading between the lines of the Post article, is what many of these female lobbyists evidently are.

(One wonders exactly how the interview process goes when one of these good-looking women applies for a job at a lobbying firm. How clear is it made to them exactly what the job entails? Or is it left up to them to make clear what they are willing to do for their job? And how exactly do these interviews square with the laws on sexual harassment -- and prostitution?)

Put yourself in the shoes of a congressman from a small town in, say, Nebraska. You've slept with exactly six women in your life (the national average for this particular statistic), one of whom is your wife. But none of the women you've been with had nearly the sexual allure of this incredible-looking creature who is sitting across from you at a fancy restaurant in Georgetown, plying you with drink. And here she is, hinting seductively that if only you would vote to allow, say, more deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, a certain intimacy will ensue. You know that such drilling might result in a horrible accident, but.....damn she looks good.

All your life it seems you've been around women who look and sound like Rachel Maddow, but this woman looks like one of those Fox news analysts.

This, in a nutshell -- or perhaps in a tight-fitting cocktail dress -- is what's wrong with our government. Congressmen are all too often willing to sell their country out for a campaign contribution -- or for a romp with the kind of woman they never got before they were congressmen.

When you think about it, this kind of behavior is downright treasonous -- and there ought to be penalties attached which reflect that.

(The only other entities which employ such honey traps are foreign intelligence services, which don't exactly have the best interests of the American people at heart either.)

But the only people who could pass a law against this sort of thing are, well, congressmen, many of whom know that their fastest ticket to wealth is to become lobbyists themselves after they leave office. And why would they voluntarily give up the kinds of goodies which are available to them before they leave office?

This is an issue which needs more airtime.

The lack of seriousness with which this issue is taken may best be indicated by the fact that the Post only ran their article as an item on Page Six.

(The NY Times, of course, would never run it at all, since even bringing up such a topic would imply that some women actually voluntarily sleep with men as part of their jobs, and that would be sexist.)

He can have his life back now

The NY Post just reported that Tony Heyward is expected to step down as CEO of BP within the next ten weeks.

A BP insider was quoted as saying, "Why keep damaged goods on the shelf?"

Why indeed.

Animal fights

A friend, Guy Davis, sent this this morning with the note, "One badass leopard":

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3347532/Leopard-savaging-a-crocodile-caught-on-camera.html

It is an inspiring story, since crocs usually get the better of leopards, and given that we are instinctively inclined to root for our fellow mammal over a reptile.

This article brings to mind what another friend told me twenty-nine years ago: if you could get a tiger and a polar bear together, people would pay any amount of money to watch that fight.

True enough.

For generations, young boys have asked their fathers who would win in a fight, a lion or a tiger. And their fathers have almost universally answered, "A tiger, son." This answer made perfect sense: after all, tigers weigh up to 900 pounds, and are extremely graceful, whereas lions weigh in at 600 pounds at most, and generally only hunt in packs.

It turns out the answer is not that simple. Evidently the Koreans -- bloodthirsty savages that they are -- used to actually stage fights between lions and Siberian tigers. Surprisingly, at first the lions almost always won these battles to the death. The reason was twofold. First, tigers generally kill by jumping onto the backs of their prey and dispatching them with either a swipe of their powerful paws or a bite to the spine. Lions, on the other hand, will generally go for the jugular, literally: they will clamp their jaws around the throats of their prey and suffocate them to death. So when a tiger attacks from above, it leaves its throat open, leaving it vulnerable to the lion. (As they say in boxing, styles make fights.) Secondly, the Siberian tigers were surprisingly unaggressive, especially compared to lions.

So now we know: the expression "Go get 'em tiger" is in fact misleading. And "the king of the jungle" is, in fact, the king of the jungle.

Eventually the Koreans thought to bring in Bengal tigers for these fights, and the Bengals, a more aggressive breed of cat, proved an equal match for the lions.

It would be harder to figure out whom to root for there than it is in the leopard vs. crocodile matchup. Luckily, these fights are no longer allowed, so we needn't bother.

"The Sitch"

The NY Post reported this morning that Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino, of Jersey Shore fame, has a workout video out and is also marketing his own line of health supplements.

Look at Sorrentino closely. Observe his weak jaw line, lack of prominent Adams apple, and thin neck. They are indicative of the modest level of endogenous testosterone he had while growing up. They don't match his muscular torso and arms, which were obviously pumped up with the aid of an exogenous supply which was introduced later. (Very few guys work on their neck muscles.)

The only supplement Sorrentino is qualified to market are the steroids which he and most of his male castmates on The Jersey Shore have taken to transform their naturally wimpy physiques.

Sorrentino's new gig as a hawker of "health" supplements is reminiscent of the time the first President Bush appointed Arnold Schwarzenegger to be the head of the President's Council on Physical Fitness. Schwarzenegger was also an admitted steroid abuser and had already suffered minor heart damage as a result (he had open heart surgery in 1997). This was the role model that kids were supposed to emulate?

No wonder that twenty years later so many knuckleheads like Sorrentino have juiced up.

Suicide rate by country

Here is a list of the suicide rates by country, from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

It's an interesting list. As in the United States (see previous post), the rate of suicide for men was much higher than that for women, ranging from roughly three to six times as high.

The country with the highest rate was Lithuania, at 30.7 per 100,000 population (55.9 for men and 9.1 for women). Lithuania is a relatively small country, though, with a population of 3.5 million, and tiny countries tend to be outliers on these types of charts. (Look at the list of longevity by country, and Andorra will rank first, ahead of Macau and Japan, but Andorra has a population of 73,000, so it hardly counts as a country. And Macau itself is pretty small as well.)

Second is Belarus, at 28.3 (63.3 and 10.3). Third is Kazakhstan, at 26.9. The latest year for which data were available for Kazakhstan was 2007; Borat was released in 2006. Coincidence? Maybe.

Japan, the land of hara kiri, ranks fourth at 24.4. Fifth is Russia, at 23.1. One has to wonder if the rate has gone up or down since the fall of the Soviet Union. (My guess is up.)

And sixth is Guyana, at 22.9. One has to assume the rate there was considerably higher back in 1978, the year the Reverend Jim Jones had his followers drink the Kool Aid.

The five countries with the lowest rates -- Honduras, Jordan, St. Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, and Haiti -- all have a rate of 0.0.

Being in Haiti has never been my idea of perfect happiness. But evidently appearances are deceiving.

Suicide rates by race and sex

This table lists suicide rates in the US from 2002-2006, by race and sex. Native Americans and whites had by far the highest suicide rates, with black, Hispanics, and Asians/Pacific Islanders at less then half their rate. (I've seen similar tables for other time periods, and the results are similar.)

One hears a lot about the despair on the reservations, and how bleak life is there. That is certainly borne out by this chart. But one also hears about the hopelessness of life in the ghetto. Yet that isn't borne out by the statistics at all. Blacks kill themselves at less than half the rate that whites do.

Strangely, one never hears about the despair and hopelessness of life in the suburbs. Yet whites commit suicide at a rate almost equal to Native Americans. It's hard not to think that were the disparity between the white and black rates reversed, this difference would get a lot more attention from the media. A lot more. And it would be cited as just one more bit of proof of what a racist country we live in.

Another interesting disparity is the difference between the sexes. With the exception of Asians, where the rate is slightly more than twice as high for men as for women, men commit suicide between three and four times as frequently as women.

Yet you never hear of this disparity, either. Were this statistic reversed, one suspects that the media would be making a very big deal of it, and pontificating about how this is proof that it's a man's world, that women are subjugated, and that we need to do something to remedy this. But it's the other way around, so there is, as with the racial disparity, merely a deafening silence.

Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa's name is synonymous with saintliness, even if she has yet to be fully canonized by the Catholic Church. Certainly, on the surface, anyone who has devoted her life to caring for the poor of Calcutta would seem saintly. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and was beatified by Pope John Paul II (this is the third of four steps to official sainthood).

Yet it's hard not to be a bit suspicious of such a pristine public image. Especially when such great care seems to have been taken to burnish that image.

Christopher Hitchens' book about her, "The Missionary Position" was published in 1995, two years before Mother Teresa died. The book details the life of an extremely ambitious woman who cultivated the rich and famous, but who did little real good for those to whom she was supposed to be ministering.

Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, was always secretive about her Albanian origins. Her father, who evidently was involved in Albanian politics, died when Agnes was nine. Agnes left home at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto; after that she never saw her mother or sister again. This makes one wonder what kind of family bonds she had. If she had any love at all for her family, one would think she would have made some small effort to see them, at least once. But she could never be bothered.

Question: if Agnes had no real love for her own family, how much love could she really have had for those to whom she ministered later in life?

Agnes soon thereafter took the name Teresa, after Therese de Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries.

In 1952 Mother Teresa converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the Dying. According to Wikipedia, "Those brought to the home were afforded the right to die with dignity, according to the rituals of their faith: Muslims were read the Quran, Hindus received water from the Ganges, and Catholics received the last rites."

Mother Teresa was quoted as saying, "A beautiful death is for those who lived like animals to die like angels."

Mother Teresa also opend an orphanage and a home for lepers, who received medical attention. The Lancet and the British Medical Journal, however, both criticized the quality of medical care she made available, reporting reused syringes, poor living conditions, and cold baths for all patients. Patients who might otherwise have survived died of infection and other easily diagnosable diseases because of the slipshod practices at her hospices. Mother Teresa herself did not believe in pain relief: she felt that suffering would bring people closer to Jesus.

As Hitchens points out in his book, Mother Teresa could have taken the considerable war chest she had accumulated, which amounted to over $50 million, and built the finest teaching hospital in Calcutta. But instead she chose to keep the money in the bank, and instead merely have hospices, which generally consisted of large rooms with straw mats for the indigent and dying to lie on the floor.

The money she did spend went mostly toward building new convents, the purpose of which was to spread her religious beliefs.

(When Mother Teresa herself had a heart attack, she wanted nothing to do with her own clinics. Instead she opted to be treated at a fully equipped hosital in California.)

Mother Teresa interpreted the teachings of the Church so strictly and literally that she saw no room for alternative interpretation. She said that even when a husband regularly beat his wife, the wife should not leave because divorce is a sin. However, when it came to her friend Princess Diana, Mother Teresa said that she deserved a divorce, because she had "suffered enough."

She cultivated other rich and powerful friends, for instance the Duvaliers of Haiti. Baby Doc, son of Papa Doc, and his wife Michelle, who basically stole the entire national treasury of $800 million when they left the country, may have hoped to achieve some measure of redemption through their association with her. What Mother Teresa wanted from them was probably money.

Mother Teresa also became friends with Charles Keating, of Lincoln Savings and Loan fame. She would occasionally travel on his corporate jet. When Keating was on trial in Los Angeles for fraud, she wrote a letter on his behalf to Judge Lance Ito (yes, that Lance Ito) pointing out that Keating had donated $1.25 million to her Missionaries of Charity, and asked him to "look into [his] heart" and "do what Jesus would do."

Deputy DA Paul Turley, who was prosecuting the case against Keating, then pointed out to Mother Teresa that Keating was on trial for having stolen more than $250 million from over 17,000 investors. He wrote to her:

"Ask yourself what Jesus would do if he were given the fruits of a crime; what Jesus would do if he were in possession of money which had been stolen; what Jesus would do if he were being exploited by a thief to ease his conscience? I submit that Jesus would promptly and unhesitatingly return the stolen property to its rightful owners. You should do the same. You have been given money by Mr. Keating that he has been convicted of stealing by fraud. Do not permit him the 'indulgence' he desires. Do not keep the money. Return it to those who worked for it and earned it! If you contact me I will put you in direct contact with the rightful owners of the property now in your possession."

As Hitchens then pointed out, "Mr. Turley has received no reply to his letter. Nor can anyone account for the missing money: saints, it seems, are immune to audit."

When Mother Teresa had an audience with the Pope, she flew to Rome on a private jet. Then, once in Rome with the press watching, she rejected an offer of a limousine ride to the Vatican as too ostentatious. Instead she took a bus, because that's what the common people take.

On another occasion, she visited a convent near Washington D.C. The nuns who were hosting her, excited to have such a famous guest, gave her the nicest room at the convent. But Mother Teresa, upon arriving, insisted that the room be redone in a more austere fashion which would suit her image better. So, at great expense, the nuns had her room redone.

(Wouldn't a real saint have just stayed in the room without putting her hosts to so much trouble?)

One scene from Hitchens' book has stayed with me. At one point a suffering patient at her Calcutta hospice begged her for medication, saying that his pain was just unbearable. Mother Teresa, who didn't want to spend any of the vast fortune she controlled on painkillers, refused. Instead her eyes lit up, she grasped his hand, and said, "My child, the pain means that Jesus is holding you."

It was the part about her eyes lighting up which really struck me: it was almost as if she were enjoying and savoring his pain. What kind of person enjoys this? I'm reminded of Jack Kevorkian, another who devoted his life to working with the terminally ill, and who also saw himself as a saint. There was an unquestionably ghoulish aspect to his work.

I'm even reminded of Ted Bundy, who once early on worked at a suicide hotline, theoretically helping those at the end of their tethers. Why would he, a man who clearly enjoyed causing others pain, have done this? One can only conclude it was because, at a certain level, he enjoyed savoring their pain.

I meet good, decent people all the time. They love their families and none could imagine purposely cutting off all contact with them after age eighteen. They tend to express their goodness in small but telling ways. They don't crave reputations for goodness, let alone saintliness. It's the people who express their "good character" in loud, splashy, public ways who make me suspicious. When I see a new wing of a hospital with some hedge fund billionaire's name on it, it doesn't make me think, wow, he must be a really good person. What I think is, hmm, he really wants public acclaim.

Now devoting your life to the poor of Calcutta is certainly an altogether different matter from peeling off one percent of your wealth to slap your name on a public edifice. But it's not that different than the work that Jack Kevorkian did, at least before he went to jail. And one can make the case that he actually alleviated more suffering. Mother Teresa was not interested in actually curing the ill or eliminating poverty. (In her words, "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of poor people.") She was much more interested in giving them a place where they could die in a religious atmosphere. While burnishing her public image.

But would a real saint campaign for sainthood?

Tyson, again

Back in October I wrote an impassioned defense of Mike Tyson:

http://justnotsaid.blogspot.com/2009/10/mike-tyson.html

Here is a recent interview with him that confirms some of that post:

http://www.details.com/culture-trends/news-and-politics/201008/interview-boxing-mike-tyson?currentPage=1

In this interview Tyson is brutally honest about himself in a way that no sociopath would ever be. He also has some interesting insights about other boxers, including Muhammad Ali, whom he calls the "meanest" boxer ever.

Sociopath alert: Oksana Grigorieva

(Mel and Oksana in more peaceable times)

There has been a lot of publicity recently about how Mel Gibson is out of control, ranting and raving and threatening and even hitting the mother of his newborn daughter, Oksana Grigorieva.

Gibson once threatened to burn her house down but demanded oral sex first. Another time he told her she needed "a fucking bat in the side of the head." When Gregorieva called him mean, Gibson replied, "Yeah, you know what mean is now, don't you? So don't call me mean when I'm nice to you. Because I'd like to show you what mean really is. Bitch....whore.....gold digger! All true! You fucking proved it to me! If you're ever interested in proving otherwise, let me know....Look at yourself. And look at what you've fucking done! Look at your son. He's a fucking mess. You fucking excuse for a mother! You're a fucking bitch!"

Gregorieva also accused Gibson of hitting their baby, and supposedly has a photograph of the baby with a bruise on her chin as proof.

It's definitely been a year of living dangerously for Mad (very mad) Max, whose tongue becomes a lethal weapon after one too many tequila sunrises. And Braveheart certainly didn't make his reputation by threatening women, even a woman who tries to hold their daughter for ransom.

But a lot of guys -- including me -- would, if recorded at their angriest, sound like monsters. When you're furious, you'll say anything.

To me the more interesting question is the one the media has ignored: what kind of woman calmly goads a guy on to these heights of fury and then surreptitiously records him? Why was Gibson so angry at her in the first place? And if Gibson is so abusive, why did he never hit his other seven children with his first wife? In fact, his ex-wife Robyn just offered today to testify on his behalf that he was always a good father and husband. (If Gibson had been abusive towards Robyn, would she have been willing to testify on his behalf?)

Did Gibson suddenly become abusive towards women at age 54? Or was there something about Grigorieva that brought this out in him?

Gregorieva's Wikipedia entry says that her parents were music professors. But it also quotes her as saying, "I've always looked after myself. I've never been dependent on anyone financially." A statement like that makes one wonder about her family bonds and early upbringing.

Grigorieva was obviously after Gibson's money. (She refused to sign a prenup which would have given her $5 million.) And her one previous marriage was to James Bond portrayer Timothy Dalton, which means she searches out the rich and famous to have relationships with. These are red flags for sociopathy.

(She also looks as if she's had extensive plastic surgery, which, if done while young, is a yellow flag.)

None of this excuses Gibson's behavior. Gibson has a serious drinking problem, and when he's drunk he uses vile racial epithets. (And given the nature of what he's said, he may use them when sober as well.)

Gibson hasn't been very popular in Hollywood since he made The Passion of the Christ. And his intemperate racial statements have turned off many. So a lot of people seem to be rejoicing in his downfall. But these recent tapes have to be viewed in the context of his relationship with a sociopath.

(I'm not a Whoopi Goldberg fan, but Goldberg, to her immense credit, did say after the tapes came out that in all her dealings with Gibson over the years he never seemed racist to her. Which makes one suspect that his raging at Grigorieva that she would "be raped by a pack of niggers" was more a function of him instinctively using the ugliest language while in the ugliest of moods rather than a considered statement of his attitude towards all black people.)

Gibson needs to go through that twelve step program, dry out, do some apologizing for his racial language, and choose his paramours more wisely.

Unfortunately, there is no cure for Oksana's sociopathy.