Comments on the Academy. Fallout from the Duke Rape Case.

Were we expecting a change in Duke or Durham as a result of the Duke Rape case? If so, we were doomed to disappointment. The reason is found in this comment found in Durham-in-Wonderland.

The ratio of nastiness to illumination in this thread of comments is too high for my taste. I suppose it is inevitable that the comments section of this blog should from time to time dramatize the dialogue of the deaf that passes for “political discourse” at many levels in our land. But it is reduced to its sad essence in the brilliant exchange that begins, in effect, “Your are an idiot,” to which the devastatingly witty response is “No, I am not an idiot. You are an idiot.”

I’d like to return to the subject of the post: namely, the effect of what has happened so far to various people at Duke/

The expectation of Apocalypse Now on the Duke campus is and will remain unrealistic. “Why don’t they fire Brodhead?” “Why don’t they ‘clean house’ in this or that department?” “How can they make an 88-er a dean?” To this list of supremely naïve questions I’ll add another one that shows up in various forms: “Why don’t they hire KC Johnson?” Such questions betray a serious lack of understanding of the operations of large and complex educational institutions. They move rather ponderously and within the confines of strict protocols. Our universities have a “business” aspect to them, but it is only one aspect, and the models of business reform or restructuring frequently brought forward are largely irrelevant to them. Duke and many other wealthy institutions are also large charitable entities that view their mission in terms of the redistribution of wealth—first in the relatively paltry manner of handing out scholarships and fellowships, but much more importantly in the creation of lasting “social capital” in their graduates. Most parents are incompetent to judge the actual intellectual quality at a given institution, but they know, rightly, that an average college graduate will have a lifetime income far greater than that of an average non-graduate, and that the average Duke graduate will do considerably better than the average graduate of Western Kentucky State Teachers’ College.

Universities are staffed by faculty members who for the most part enjoy the protection of appointment with continuing tenure. The institution of academic tenure has defensible aims but often-lamentable results. It is nearly impossible to fire a tenured professor, however deep that person sinks into sloth or incompetence. To be fired for “moral turpitude” in today’s climate presupposes a level of sexual athleticism requiring long, arduous Olympic training beyond the capacities of most of us. Hence a university faculty, though highly and self-consciously professionalized, has many of the characteristics of a voluntary organization, like a civic or church committee, or a campaign organization, or a baby-sitting pool. There is seldom a very good match between the need as seen from a center and the competence, willingness, or availability of someone to fill the need. The administration has to cajole people into taking on necessary but perhaps irksome jobs. “Madge, would you be willing to be recording secretary this year? Oh, you’re tied up with the Garden Club?...Well, Tom, how about you? I can teach you to write…” I have not perused a Duke catalogue, but from what has come up incidentally in this blog I get the impression that many Duke faculty (a) teach very little, and (b) teach pretty much what they want to teach, which is (c) two or three variations on an esoteric theme.

A university president may and does have very great power, but is almost guaranteed to fail if he cannot at least achieve a state of uneasy non-belligerence with his faculty. Hence the strange gyrations and even stranger silences of Richard Brodhead. He is a prudent and experienced fellow. If you want to consider what happens when a self-identified political conservative is brought in with powerful board support to “clean up” an institution with a faculty run amok, and is imprudent enough to try to do so, review the sad history of Boston University under the presidency of John Silber. So don’t look for swift actions and dramatic gestures that feature so prominently among the desiderata in these comments. But don’t go to the opposite extreme and suppose that “nothing has changed”. A good deal has changed because of this Rape Hoax.

1. Richard Brodhead’s is a failed presidency. Everybody in higher education knows that, which is why practically nobody in higher education will say it. He will not disappear immediately, but he will disappear. And I mean disappear—not reappear as the president of some other institution. This may not be fair to Brodhead, who is an able person, and his successor is unlikely to be better. But nobody who has presided over such a genuine “social disaster” can recover. And people will in the future reflect on why and how he failed.

2. Another development on the local Duke scene is the “raised consciousness” of sensible alumni and institutional friends. There is a large effort from various sources trying to blunt the effect of this blog and what it has represented. To paint Duke’s critics as neocon, reactionary, racist “blog hooligans” will now work for only a very diminished audience. There now is a very detailed, circumstantial, well researched and well written book that needs to be answered. The one attempt to answer it to date—Piot’s—is so pathetic as actually to amplify the work’s power by giving such a vivid example of the intellectual quality of its opposition. Any intelligent Duke alumnus of whatever age should now realize that he or she probably has more sensible and constructive ideas that many prominent Duke faculty.

3. Do not underestimate the power of the derision and opprobrium heaped on various faculty members through various posting and especially the “Group Profiles”. These were particularly effective, because they were not name-calling but intelligently collected anthologies of the individuals’ own written opinions. It is one thing to shout out that “the Emperor has no clothes”. It is another to present the Emperor in the buff before our own horrified eyes. Professor Piot undoubtedly still has his clannish friends at their unread and unreadable academic journal. But for literally thousands of other people, not to mention hundreds of silent colleagues on his own faculty, the man is now a public fool. This is the result not of name-calling but of self-advertisement. There probably will not be immediate professional effects. But I think it very unlikely that even with a deck of fifty-two race cards Professor Baker, for example, will today seems such a hot property to anybody else as he did to Vanderbilt before the publication of his racist diatribe.

Hurray For Bollywood: "Come See Me Eat My Nipples"

From Ace of
Spades. This is FUNNY!!!

American Moms Using Their Children as Human Sacrifice

Michelle Malkin has the story and the pictures.

Of course it's been done by other people and in other cultures, but women who will kill their unborn children for a whim will not shrink from subjecting their born children to threats of harm.

But of course this woman knows that in our culture the truck won't run over her and her children. What's ironic is that she is an ally of the people who would blow her up without a second's thought.

Other cultures, other rules:
Saudi punishes gang rape victim with 200 lashes

A court in the ultra-conservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia is punishing a female victim of gang rape with 200 lashes and six months in jail, a newspaper reported on Thursday.
The 19-year-old woman -- whose six armed attackers have been sentenced to jail terms -- was initially ordered to undergo 90 lashes for "being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape," the Arab News reported.

But in a new verdict issued after Saudi Arabia's Higher Judicial Council ordered a retrial, the court in the eastern town of Al-Qatif more than doubled the number of lashes to 200.

A court source told the English-language Arab News that the judges had decided to punish the woman further for "her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media."

The woman in the picture is totally unaware of how good she has it, or why she has it this good.

Boy Scouts Troop Donation Boxes Pulled for Implied "pro-war" Message...

But they support the troops?

CAMBRIDGE - Was it just too pro-war for Cambridge? A troop of Boy Scouts is wondering why their donation boxes meant for troops in Iraq were thrown out of polling stations last week.

Election officials ordered the removal of donation boxes set up by a troop of Cambridge Boy Scouts of America during last Tuesday’s municipal election.

The boxes were set up inside the 33 polling stations around the city to collect donations for soldiers serving overseas in the war in Iraq.

Marsha Weinerman, executive director of the city’s Election Commission, said the boxes were removed after a resident complained to commission workers about their implied “pro-war” message.

“We contacted the law department, and it was determined that the best course of action would be to remove the boxes,” Weinerman said.

In a column that appears in this week’s Chronicle, Troop leader Jamisean Patterson said the commission twice granted the scouts permission to set up the boxes at the polling stations.

“We have never seen anything like this decision in Cambridge before,” Patterson wrote. The city is changing for the worse if decisions like this are allowed to be made.”

A commenter states:

You think that is good, how about this! A typical left leaning student at Brandeis University was observed on Veterans Day, hanging a poster in a prominent location at the school, which stated "All Veterans are murderers". Kind of makes you want to beat a liberal with a rubber hose now don't it?

Academia's Pervasive PC Rot

"A RACIST: A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. 'The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture, or sexuality. By this definition, people of color cannot be racists.' "

This is what Liberals think of white America.

Is Rush Limbaugh Responsible for the Writers Strike?

Yes.

The Great Elite Back-Down Issue

New York Governor Spitzer's back-down on drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants just cements illegal immigration as the Great Elite Back-Down Issue.

It's a temporary retreat because the elites know that people opposing legalizing the illegals are the great unwashed, and they know what's best for us.

Kos Goes To Newsweek

Hey Jonah,I was surprised to find no mention of this on The Corner today, but Markos Moulistas revealed on his site that he has been hired as a contributor by Newsweek magazine. The pertinent text from Newsweek:

The other new contributor is Karl Rove.

Mind Games of the Big Green Scare Machine

Global warming cause by pirates:

"You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature."

This statistical correlation is as valid an any shown by Al Gore. It deserves a Nobel Prize.


It's scientific, its done with computers and it shows numbers. Pirated deniers will be ostracized.

When Good News is No News

Victor Davis Hanson remarks on the fact that the Drive-by-media has taken Iraq off the front pages. Invested as they are in defeat, they "spike" good news of American success. turning an old maxim on its head:

There’s an old expression about war: “Victory has many fathers, while defeat is an orphan.” But in the case of Iraq, it seems the other way around. We’ve blamed many for the ordeal of the last four years, but it is the American victory in Anbar province that now seems without parents.

Of course Hanson makes the mistake of assuming that the media's enemy is America's enemy. That would be wrong. To the Drive-bys, the enemy is the Bush administration and victory is defined as defeating anything that Bush does. So from the Drive-by's perspective, victory in Iraq is actually defeat for their side. And that defeat is an orphan, never to be spoken of again.

As an example of the desperate spin and pathetic efforts by dog trainers like the Virginian Pilot I refer you to today's on-line edition. There is actually a headline under U.S./World News: Suicide car bombing in Iraq kills 6 on the main page of the November 15th edition.

Click on the link and you find that the headline on the AP story is the exact opposite of what you have been led to expect: US general: Roadside bombs down sharply

Iran's commitments to stem the flow of weapons and explosives into Iraq "appear to be holding up" and have contributed to a sharp drop in roadside bombs across the country, a U.S. general said Thursday.

Maj. Gen. James Simmons, a deputy corps commander, said that in October, U.S. forces logged 1,560 cases in which bombs were either found and exploded.

That compared with 3,239 incidents last March, he said. The October figure was the lowest since September 2005, he added.

It is not until the 9th paragraph that we get to news of any casualties:

U.S. authorities said penetrators were used in an attack Wednesday against a U.S. Stryker vehicle near an entrance to the Green Zone, killing one American soldier and wounding five others. Iraqi police said two Iraqi civilians also were killed.

It was the first major attack against a U.S. military vehicle in that area in the last four or five months, Simmons said.

There was no suicide bomber, the number of dead were 3 (one American and two Iraqis) and the story was about the reduction in violence.

How desperate was this headline writer? Well, he works for the the dysfunctional Virginian Pilot so you draw your own conclusions.

It's Wednesday, So We Must Have A New Position

This is getting very hard to believe, and it's getting very funny!

First she sounded sympathetic to the idea during a televised debate, and within moments had refused to endorse it. Afterwards, she changed her mind and endorsed it. Now today, after Governor Eliot Spitzer shelved a plan to issue New York drivers licenses to illegal aliens, Hillary Clinton shifted her position yet again to oppose the idea entirely:

Read the rest

The stages of a Clinton scandal (HILLARY!)

Don Surber:

Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff meet Elisabeth Kübler-Ross


All I ever needed to know about psychology I learned from “On Death and Dying” by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.

She described the psychological steps necessary before an individual accepts the death of another or his own dying.

As the planted question scandal unfolds, I notice I can apply Elisabeth Kübler-Ross to a Clinton scandal.

The first step is Denial and Isolation. Now any politician denies a scandal. 4 months after he was caught playing footsies in a men’s stall, Larry Craig still denies he’s gay.

But it is the Isolation that marks the Clintons as unusual, maybe even unique. Kübler-Ross meant the person isolates himself. The Clintons isolate the accuser. She’s a mad woman (notice how often the scandal involves a woman). She’s a member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. She seeks a book deal.

Notice that the one instance where all three demonizations were used against one person was Paula Jones, who succeeded in defeating the Clintons in court over sexual harrassment. The key to her proving her case was establishing a pattern of such abuse of power, which is where Monica Lewinsky comes in.

The second step is Anger. We’ve all seen Bill wag his finger. Everyone who has reached the age of reasoning knows that when he wags his finger, he is lying.

The third stage is Bargaining. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described this as a brief stage in which people try to cut a deal with God.

This is the longest stage for the Clintons. It has four substages.
1.) It is an isolated incident that won’t happen again; move on.
2.) Everybody does it, the Clintons just got caught; move on.
3.) There is no legal controlling authority; move on.
4.) It is old news; move on.

The fourth stage is Depression. Again, the Clintons do not feel this pain; their opponents do. They outlast every scandal. The public gets numb as it slowly sinks in that these people won’t ever go away and take their little soap opera with them.

The fifth stage is Acceptance. I don’t know how this works. The Clintons have never accepted responsibility for anything.

Hillary Abuses the Press, and Gets Good Press... Following the Bush Example?

Hillary Rodham Butterfield
The New Republic's Michael Crowley reports on Hillary Clinton's media strategy. It would be an understatement to call it heavy-handed; is there such a word as "obese-handed"?

Reporters who have covered the hyper-vigilant campaign say that no detail or editorial spin is too minor to draw a rebuke. Even seasoned political journalists describe reporting on Hillary as a torturous experience. Though few dare offer specifics for the record--"They're too smart," one furtively confides. "They'll figure out who I am"--privately, they recount excruciating battles to secure basic facts. Innocent queries are met with deep suspicion. Only surgically precise questioning yields relevant answers.

Hillary's aides don't hesitate to use access as a blunt instrument, as when they killed off a negative GQ story on the campaign by threatening to stop cooperating with a separate Bill Clinton story the magazine had in the works. Reporters' jabs and errors are long remembered, and no hour is too odd for an angry phone call. Clinton aides are especially swift to bypass reporters and complain to top editors. "They're frightening!" says one reporter who has covered Clinton. "They don't see [reporting] as a healthy part of the process. They view this as a ruthless kill-or-be-killed game."

Despite all the grumbling, however, the press has showered Hillary with strikingly positive coverage.

Wow, a paradox! Seems like just the other day we were reading that more people are in prison, despite the declining crime rate!

Don't worry, though, it turns out that the Clintons' thuggishness is all President Bush's fault: "The Clinton machine, say reporters and pro-Hillary Democrats, is emulating nothing less than the model of the Bush White House, which has treated the press with thinly veiled contempt and minimal cooperation."

Yeah, right. Mrs. Clinton must've emulated the Bush approach because it has been so successful in spurring positive coverage.

Waterboarding: Two Other Perspectives

What is torture and is waterboarding torture?

Little has been writeen on this subject that is either hyperbole or moral preening.

The Suicidal Pursuit of Perfection Revisited

What does a psychologically damaged feminist and Frank Rich have in common?

Saudi Prince Buying 'Flying Palace' Jet

In the annals of excess, it could be a new high: a more than $300 million dollar, super-sized luxury airplane, bought and outfitted solely for the private comfort of a Saudi Arabian billionaire.
Once done, the Airbus A380, the world's biggest passenger plane, will be a "flying palace" for Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the manufacturer announced Monday.

This must be why the poor Palestinian Arabs are starving.

Video of Live RPG Removed From Soldier

Well worth viewing.

The Moral Preening of Warren Buffett

Barack Obama said on Sunday's Meet the Press with Tim Russert

But, look, I’ve, I’ve got a friend, Warren Buffett, you may know, the guy made $46 million last year. This is public information because he’s concerned that he is paying a lower tax rate than anybody else in his office.

When we examine Warren Buffett and his complaint that his tax rate is lower than his secretary we find that it’s true. But only because of the way Buffett has decided to pay himself.

Warren Buffett is the Chairman and major shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway, a very successful insurance company that owns large pieces of other companies, like the Washington Post. Berkshire Hathaway is also the sole owner of other companies like GEICO, the insurance company that uses a funny little green lizard speaking with a British accent as a “spokesman.” Berkshire Hathaway has assets of $276 billion, revenues for the first 9 months of 2007 of $90 billion, earnings for the same period of over $10 billion.

Now here’s the reason why Buffett’s tax rate is so low: he pays himself $100,000 per year. Little more than a good plumber or electrician.

And why does Buffett pay himself so little when people with similar jobs are paid $5 to $10 million for similar jobs? Very simple, he doesn’t need the money. His wealth is roughly $40 billion and he has income from dividends and capital gains that represents virtually all of his reportable income.

So all Warren Buffet would need to do to owe more tax is to raise his earned income, in other words pay himself what his peers in the industry are earning.

Buffett’s position on taxes is a form or moral preening. If he genuinely feels that more of his income should be used by the government he can just write a check to the treasury.

Attn Dept G
Bureau Of the Public Debt
P. O. Box 2188Parkersburg, WV 26106-2188

Instead, Buffet hectors the rest of us about not paying enough in taxes. What Buffett is really complaining about is not his own tax bill but the tax bills of other people. And not necessarily the tax bill of billionaires.

Do a little checking about the ultra-wealthy in the US. The Forbes 400 is a good place to start because the bottom of the list is worth about $1.3 billion, a good cut-off point. The fact is that if we confiscated the entire wealth of Buffett, Gates and every other billionaire member of the Forbes 400, the US treasury would gather in about $1.5 trillion dollars, or enough to run the Federal Government for about 6 months.

Of course that wealth is not found as dollar bills or gold bullion in locked vaults. It’s ownership in companies; in most cases it a financial rather than a “real” asset. If the government were to try to confiscate these assets they would disappear like a cloud of dirty smoke. The real value of these assets is found in the knowledge and acumen of the owners. Take that away from them and the value of the asset disappears.

It’s a dirty little secret that government at all levels goes to where the real money is: the middle class. They are the ones who have most of their income in the form of easily traceable wages. They are the ones who have predictable incomes. And they are the ones who command the bulk of the country’s assets.

According to Wikipedia, families earning between $25,000 and $100,000 control 60% of the nation’s income. 68% of the nation’s income is earned by people making less than $150,000 per year. While people making between $100,000 and $200,000 per year are “comfortable” they are not “wealthy” except to class warriors. That’s the reason that despite all the political rhetoric, when the government wants more money, they go where the money is: the middle class.

It’s the dream of every working man to become rich. Its taxes that are the main obstacle to making that happen. Buffet found a bankrupt shirt company that he turned into an insurance company because of the favorable tax treatment insurance companies get. Buffett used the tax code to make himself one of the world’s richest men and now that he got where he is he wants to pull the ladder up and keep others from becoming rich.

I would believe more readily in Warren Buffett’s claims of financial sainthood it he gave away his entire fortune instead of keeping nearly $10 billion for himself. And then if he decided to live on his $100,000 per year annual salary. What is it that a person with $10 billion can’t afford that a person with $40 billion can? That’s in worthwhile question that Warren Buffett may be able to answer for us.

But until then, I’m not taking the bellyaching of a billionaire who does not put his money where his mouth is. Let’s see Buffett stroke that check to the Government. He has the address.

Worth Considering

By Michelle Malkin •

November 11, 2007 08:00 PM Hey, do you remember Bobby Caina Calvan, the arrogant newspaper reporter who blogged about his snit fit in Iraq when a soldier asked him for identification–earning himself a Jerk of the Year nomination?

Well, Calvan’s MSM friends and editors have again come to his defense. They’re as clueless and snotty as he is. Armando Acuna, public editor of the Sacramento Bee, chose Veterans’ Day to mount his blog-bashing campaign and apologia for Calvan.

And on the same subject: Blackfive:

The mighty MM points out an example of complete tone deafness by the Public Editor of the Sacramento Bee in publishing a pitiful rationalization for the actions of their tone deaf and brain dead reporter Bobby Calvan, who I battered here. Let's read the tap dancing of the Sac Bee's conscience, now remember he is covering the ass of his jackass reporter who had the wrong ID and then belittled the gate guard for doing his job.

Even the mainstream media got into the act. On Oct. 25 USA Today’s “On Deadline” Web site wrote about the controversy, including running an excerpt from Calvan’s blog.


It’s as if the armchair critics were pointing a big, fat finger and saying, “Aha, we caught you!”

Well no, actually the little punk fronted himself out and we shined a light on it. Isn't that what you jagoffs are supposed to do? There was absolutely no cause for that reporter to disrespect a kid serving his country. But he did and the idiot Public Editor could have let diseased dogs lie, but NOOOOOO! On freakin' Veteran's day this maroon decides that's a great time for a primer about pissing on the troop's heads and telling them it's raining.

The American Thinker

What do these modern memorials to heroism and sacrifice have in common?

* The Vietnam Veterans' Memorial. Designed by college student Maya Lin, it was unveiled in Washington, D.C. on Veterans' Day 25 years ago. It's a black granite thingy-a long, plain wall that lines a big hole dug 10 feet into the ground. It lists the names of the war's 58,000 fallen Americans and . . . nothing else.

In her first proposal to build the memorial, Miss Lin explained its purpose: "We, the living, are brought to a concrete realization of these deaths." That's it. Not to honor what they did. Just a reminder that they're dead. Thanks.

* The Flight 93 National Memorial. The National Park Service has decided to erect the "Bowl of Embrace," in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 crashed to earth on September 11, 2001. Here's the plan: For their heroism in overpowering four Islamic hijackers and foiling their attempt to destroy the White House or the Capitol, the passengers are to be honored with . . . an empty field. It's little comfort that the field is surrounded by a stand of red maple trees planted in an arc that eerily resembles the crescent of Islam. The design's original name: "The Crescent of Embrace."

Like the Vietnam memorial, the monument itself has no inscription honoring anyone's actions-just 1970s-style wind chimes and the names of dead people inscribed on glass cubes.

* The National September 11 Memorial. On the spot where New York's mighty World Trade Center stood, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.'s anointed designer, Michael Arad, decrees that there be . . . an American eagle? How about a statue of the three firemen raising the American flag over the rubble? Heck no. Just two huge, square, "reflecting" pools. Maybe you can gaze at your navel through them. In a complex slated to cost $1 billion, this urban swamp is called "Reflecting Absence."

Absence, indeed. What these modern war memorials have in common with each other is nothing. They portray nothingness. They have no people in them, never mind men carrying guns or swords, statues of Winged Victory, or even doves of peace. Just death and names -- grief without glory.

Oddly enough, for structures that are purposely barren, the promotional literature about all of them says their purpose involves "healing." By "healing," I infer they must mean "sitting in the corner, licking your wounds and whining pitifully." It may not be surprising that both 9-11 memorials have failed to attract more than a fraction of the private contributions they need in order to be built.

Where did such parking-lot-style art come from? On one level, you might say it results from a misunderstanding between the memorial-creating classes and the war-fighting classes.

In the early 1980s, when veterans proposed adding an American flag to Maya Lin's memorial design -- a design that did not originally contain the word "Vietnam" -- the artist complained that installing a flagpole would be "like putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa." I don't think she meant to compare herself to Leonardo. I assume she meant that a flag would get in the way of her Nothing.

Democratic Party is actually merely the Elective Office Subdivision of the greater Liberal Media Party

What if the drive-by-media is not the handmaiden of the Democrats. Suppose instead they are the agenda setters and elected Democrats are simply following marching orders? Would the world make more sense?

Possibly.

Andrew Breitbart addressed some VIP college Republicans. I guess it was a select group of big college leaders. His speech was actually off-the-record, so I can't report much about it, except to say that it was about his own political awakening, the liberal media, and the soft blacklist against conservatives in Hollywood. His major point is that the media is actually far, far more important a political player than the Democratic Party itself, and, one might say (my words, not his), the Democratic Party is actually merely the Elective Office Subdivision of the greater Liberal Media Party. Harry Reid and Tom Daschle may come and go, but the liberal media is eternal. And of course this was all a preamble to a call for conservatives to become players themselves in the media, including Hollywood itself, whose storytelling through tears and very charismatic actors has more emotional and visceral impact than any twenty slanted stories by David Schuster.

Try this thought experiment: Imagine the Democratic leadership doing the exact opposite of the NY Times editors!

It. Would. Not. Happen.

They would be brought to heel in a New York minute.