The Daily Howler - 09/22/05

WHO WILL OPPOSE THE WAGE CUT? Lou Dobbs asks a good question on Nagin. Jesse declines to respond: // link // print // previous // next //

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2005

MILLIONAIRE COLLEGE PRESIDENT VALUES: We’ve long discussed those Millionaire Pundit Values, the values driving your lackluster press corps. But such values drive most of our modern culture. On the front page of today’s Post, Susan Kinzie describes the world of a D.C. college president. We’ll highlight our favorite element:

KINZIE (9/22/05): An independent report on the personal and travel expenses of suspended American University President Benjamin A. Ladner and his wife questions more than a half-million dollars spent over the past three years, including a family engagement party that cost hundreds of dollars per person, "professional development" trips for the couple's personal chef to Paris, London and Rome, and a lunch of more than $5,000 hosted by Nancy Ladner for a garden club...

Board members asked for an audit after receiving an anonymous letter this spring that complained of lavish spending by the Ladners...

Such are the values that now obtain atop our academic prig-pile. But then, such values have come to dominate American culture over the course of the past fifty years, as we described in our incomparable 1994 one-man show, Material World. (Washington’s insightful City Paper: “Bob Somerby turns a stand-up act into stand-up art...Material World is high comic art.”)