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The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 45

Publication:
The Boston Globei
Location:
Boston, Massachusetts
Issue Date:
Page:
45
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

Go! Thursday D2 Book Review D3 Advice D4 Radio Tracks D7 wfifino TV Radio B4-5 Movie Directory D6-7 The Boston Globe Thursday, January 3, 2002 Alex Beam The Media Slim Inside Larry Summers's brain cant believe this is happening. Fifteen months ago I was running the world economy, comparing fashion notes with classy central bankers such as Laurent Fabius and iV i 1 i I I vi if 5 Ill I V55, it Mhi ft Lr xii.J wlii lUiiLJ i Mi. Casualties ofwar coverage Pundits, promos, and other annoyances we can live without By Mark Jurkowitz GLOBE STAFF The surest sign that the first fevered rush of terrorism coverage has ended is The New York Times's decision to discontinue its separate "A Nation Challenged" war news section and its "Portraits of Grief" capsules of the Sept. 11 victims. Their termination coincided not only with the new year, but also, at least for now, with some ratcheting down of the crisis mentality in the nation and its news media.

The screaming headlines are giving way to a more measured flow to the story (as well as to other news, which had been virtually blacked out since Sept. 11.) And while I will miss "A Nation Challenged," here are a few wartime staples that fall into the "good riddance" category as the media adapt to a different phase of "America's New War." Richard Butler: Well be better off when the TV pundits and generals take a little vacation from our living rooms. And this guy surely wont be missed. A former UN chief weapons inspector and Saddam Hussein hater extraordinaire (not that there's anything wrong with that), Butler comes across as Dr. Ghoul, laying out worst-case anthrax and terrorism scenarios in that unnerving Aussie whisper of his.

"Paula," he would intone to the CNN morning anchor, Paula Zahn, "This is a verrrrrrrry disturbing development." Butler might have been a very good weapons expert, but he is the Vincent Price of pundits. WBZ-AM radio promo: There's been no shortage of patriotic messages emanating from the nation's news media, but it's time to ease off the stentorian-toned promo blaring on the city's all-MEDIA, Page D7 GLObt STAFF PHOTOTOM LANDERS Sophie Freud is surrounded by the legacy of her grandfather. 11 1e it reuaian Wim Duisenberg. (They were right about double-breasted; it's not right for the full-figured man.) Now I'm ducking Jesse Jackson's phone calls and praying that Al Sharpton doesnt hop on the shuttle to Boston and stage a hunger strike on the steps of Massachusetts Hall. Why is everyone piling on? It all started when I called in this guy West "Brother Cornel" to his doctorate-totin' homies; can you believe he called me "Brother Summers" in the Crimson? Where was Oh, yes.

So I call in West, who's teaching this 585-student circus called Afro-American Studies 10, and I suggest very delicately that Professor West might enforce some academic standards here at the World's Greatest University instead of lollygagging around Sacramento cutting rap records, or managing the presidential campaign of "Brother Al." (What does Sharpton want to be president of, anyway? Def Jam Records? I digress.) So I'm suggesting to Cornel maybe a little more W.E.B. DuBois and a little less of da boyz. Well, that doesnt go down at all. The next thing I know, Brother Skip and Brother Charles are mau-mauing me, claiming that I'm wobbly on diversity and affirmative action here at WGU. Who are these guys? The Spin Brothers? It's chilling to think that I the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy at age 32 should be taking guff from the likes of Henry "Skip class to schmooze with Tina Brown" Gates.

Isnt he busy enough "editing" that slave "novel" he claims to have discovered? And who is Charles Ogletree anyway? Last I saw he was yapping to the Jamaican press about their wonderful prison system. (I'm sure that report of the inmate beheading is just Amnesty International propaganda. You know how overreactive they can be.) Suddenly Ogletree's back on the mainland, busting my chops. And they're threatening to troop off to Princeton? My eye! Remember Gates whining about the "plantation mentality" at Duke? Raleigh-Durham is Paris compared to southern New Jersey. Out in area code 609, SkipH be like that Siberian killer in The Sopranos" lost in the Pine Barrens.

I wonder if I could trade them for Paul Krugman and two double-domes to be named later. He's a handful, too. Never mind. Look, I may be a media-obsessed, ego-maniacal jerk, but I'm no racist, OK? That memo I wrote for the World Bank about dumping toxic waste in Third World countries is ancient history. I'm running the most diverse campus in America.

After all, of the three white men they considered for president here, one of them was from the Midwest If that isnt diversity, I dont know what is. Where did everything go wrong? Bullying those Mexican banker deadbeats into line back at Treasury was easy compared to this. Down in D.C. they used to call me "Dr. Elbows." Sure, maybe I roughed up a few Internal Revenue Service time servers, but once Bob Rubin put me through Charm School 101, 1 got the hang of the smiley-face thing.

And for a time, it seemed to work. I certainly gulled those tough-as-nails (ha ha) Wall Street Journal reporters in the Washington bureau. After I chatted them up on the plane to the G-7, they would file these stories about how I was running the world. Which, with Clinton trying to lie his way out of the Monica Lewinsky mess, was true. I was the master of the universe.

Now they're calling me the mastah of the university. What happened to my honeymoon? There have been a couple of nice moments. The installation ceremony was nice lots of flowing robes, and everyone bowing and scraping. My "mainstream values" speech was pretty well received, outside of the People's Republic of Cambridge, at least That patriotism stuff worked for the other president and it worked for me too for a while. Of course, he's managing a war against bloodthirsty terrorists, and I'm stuck nickle-and-diming Sal vadoran janitors sorry, Miguel, that $18 billion endowment isnt for you and listening to Sharpton berate me on talk radio.

I should have pulled a Geraldo and volunteered for Tora Bora. Where's Osama, I wonder? Is there room for two in that cave? Simmons professor Sophie Freud, granddaughter of Sigmund, has her own theories, and they don't involve psychoanalysis in ii iiiiii 1 1 mi i mm i ii 1 1 iiiiiiii nun in in i in Inside today The Look Mens facial hair has a long history that keeps growing. D3 By Bella English GLOBE STAFF Only minutes into the graduate course in social work at Simmons College, the professor has begun to trash transference and psychoanalysis, major elements of the work of Sigmund Freud. Nothing particularly new there, except the professor is Sophie Freud, granddaughter of. Referring to a case study the class has just read, she says: That's a very Freudian interpretation." It isnt exactly meant as a compliment Freud, Professor Emeritus of Social Work adds: "I dont know if I buy it I have some questions about this Oedipal relationship." On her desk, she has propped several books on the Holocaust, and Freud is giving her attentive graduate students a capsule review of each.

Then she hands out student evaluations. "You can say bad things anonymously," she warns, "but I know your writing styles by now." Her eyes twinkle, the students laugh. They write down most everything she utters. On the subject of transference, Sophie says: "Women are forever falling in love with their male therapists regardless of whether there is abuse or not Freud sanitized it by calling it He said it doesn't matter, women get over it afterward. But I disagree.

Women then go to another therapist to get over that one." On Freud's theory of penis envy: "Oh, it's FREUD, Page DS f. vu'r Li ni j.lmi i inn i Al Gore's "career-changing" beard and mustache. IIMMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMIIIIIIIIIIIIinilllllllllllllHIMIIIIIIIIIIIIMIIIIIHIIIMIIIIIIIIIMIIIIIHIIIHM A new Chelsea landmark By Robert Campbell GLOBE CORRESPONDENT It's hard to believe that the new Chelsea Trial Court was designed by the same firm that, only a couple of years ago, did the flashy -J7 1 new entry wing to the New England Aquarium. Architecture i Ls Err 1 rr Li to its particular circumstances. Warren Schwartz, who was lead designer for both buildings, says he was trying to do two things in Chelsea.

"We wanted it tough, gritty, durable, not fancy," he says. He notes that the courthouse backs up to an off-ramp from the Tbbin Bridge. It's a site where a delicate or precious building would look silly. His other goal was to make the courthouse look like a courthouse. In the past, traditional courthouses accomplished that by speaking an architectural language everybody understood.

There might be a dome, and beneath it a tall row of classical columns in the manner of the Roman Empire, and a wide flight of steps leading up to the entry. Those were all elements that said: This is a civic building, this is a landmark in the city. ARCHITECTURE, Page D6 1 Li r-f ii i i 1 i 1 1 4 The Chelsea building is surfaced in old-fashioned red brick, and its shapes are simple. The aquarium is sheathed like a fish in shiny silver scales, and its shape is that of an explosion, if that's a shape. But such is the method of these architects, who are the firm of SchwartzSilver.

They have no house style, no signature esthetic you can recognize from one building to the next They believe they might be better known if they had one. But they also believe the right way to design is to fit each building ij .1 PHOTOP. VANMRWARKER Alex Beam 's e-dress is beamdiglobe.com. The new Chelsea Trial Court is "tough, not.

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