I did see the headlines about that controversy, but didn’t think it was worth following up. At least, not for now.

In any case, I do appreciate your discussion about the variations between bad guys and bad girls. You might be on to something…

These days, Jerry Levin, the former Time-Warner CEO, and his wife run an addiction rehab center in Santa Monica, California.

The center is described in brochures as “a place to revel in the wonder of you.”

The Financial Times reports Levin is not only helping people to “revel in the wonder” of themselves; he’s making a round of public apologies for his role in the 10th anniversary sale of Time-Warner for shares in AOL which at the time were inflated by the dot-com boom.

Levin appeared on CNBC Monday and said, “I presided over the worst deal of the century, apparently, and I guess it’s time for those involved in companies to stand up and say: you know what, I’m solely responsible for it. I was in charge. I’m really very sorry about the pain and the suffering and loss that was caused. I take responsibility.”

I appears Levin consumed ten years in the effort to “revel in the wonder” of himself, while helping others to “revel in the wonder” of themselves, before finding the gumption to go on national television – albeit a business news channel – to admit he fucked up.

The FT called the $164b sale of TW shares “disastrous,” and Levin urged other business leaders who presided over recent corporate debacles including, presumably, outright fraud, to follow his example.

“Where is the stand-up leadership,” he said, “that’s going to take responsibility for what’s happened and do something about it?”

Levin went on to say the AOL deal was a “magnificent concept,” but added that he did not treat employees’ fears with enough compassion.

“It’s a little hard to exercise compassion, connection and love when the market is very unforgiving,” Levin said.

Levin admitted he’s waited a long time to apologize for the AOL deal.

“Maybe you could say in my case it’s a little late.”

Bad girls are a world unto themselves, and they’re worthy of another post (step right up!), not to segregate mind you, but to give them their due, as in, all the credit in the world.

Back to bad guys though, I mean they still have all the heavy weapons: off-shore guns bolted to navy ships, batteries of howitzers arrayed across picturesque rolling plains, bunker busters dropped from intercontinental bombers, credit default swaps, bundled (or bungled) mortgages, lucrative defense and mercenary contracts, shoe and underpants explosives, etc. The whole nine yards

The other thing is (and I think this speaks well of bad girls) bad guys are pretty much two dimensional. They have two positions: on and off.

Bad girls are a bit more complicated. They can do on and off of course, but they can also idle for an indefinite period of time, conveying ambiguity, emanating a sort of low hum – such as one would hear from a rheostat, installed in a boiler room.

I’d say there’s more mystery in a bad girl’s middle position than most bad guys can handle.

I would think that’s a tremendous and as yet unexplored advantage. I would imagine in that more reflective state, bad girls have much more power to ruminate about sexual peccadilloes in a push/pull sort of way – not to mention many other provocations. Plus, I just read the other day a new controversy has, er … erupted, among some scientists about whether there really is a “G” spot. A female British columnist has pointed out the current research was hammered out by a mostly male crew, and she wondered if these guys put too much emphasis on drawing conclusions from dry mechanical data and evasive female research subjects, instead of a somewhat deeper emotional interpretation. Hmmm …

I don’t know what to make of that. More digging may be required.

Well… if you were going to include women, I’d have to nominate Linda Tripp, the epitome of what it means to have an older female friend who betrays her younger friend… not to win a man away from her, or to beat her out of a job, but simply to achieve a political agenda, the over-turning of a presidential election. [Major FAIL!]

Call me sexist, if you will, but I really think it was just too bad that Tripp didn’t get that makeover before she met Monica. Maybe there was a bit of sexual jealousy mixed in there, too…

Consider how much harm that episode also did to mother/daughter relationships. If Monica’s mother could be expected to testify against her daughter, so could any other mother in America. One wonders how many mothers forbade their daughter, after that saga, from confiding in them.

Fortunately, that line of exploitation has not been explored further, since powerful men seem to prefer making war, rather than dicussing sexual pecadilloes… but it could have been.

Does anyone ever read the list of names on the Civil War memorials which you can still find in almost every middle sized town east of the Mississippi, or wonder who all those young men might have been?

I happened to see a news clip (CNN, I think) that showed a burial ceremony at Arlington. The report noted that there are more than 100 burials there each week.
I didn’t know that and your observation made me think–how many are aware of the names of these men and women, killed days ago (presumably), apart from their families?

i reely think kruthammer goes threw life with a hard on because4 he got hurt an now want to punish people no mattr woo they r.

i also think the furst 911 troofer shud be on teh list.

One of those “traitors” is Wade Boggs.

Boggsie, a man of ritual and superstition, who always ate fried chicken before a game, had some glory years with the Sox early in his career, and all things considered, was a man who possessed one of the purest of swings. He had a hitter’s stroke.

His image in Beantown however was not tarnished by his penchant for fried chicken during pre-game in the clubhouse. At one point during his career in Puritan Boston, he ran afoul of the fans’ affections when it was reported that he was having an affair with a woman “not his wife.” Her name is not recalled now (she could have been Fanny Foxe for all I know); and it really doesn’t matter (actually it was Margo Adams, and in the kerfufflle of it all, Boggs eventually endured an interrogation by Barbara Walters), except that he was soon traded to the Yankees, the evil empire. Like Roger Clemens, another “traitor” to the cause of the Olde Towne Team, Boggs became a member of a World Series-winner in New York, well before the Sox finally won the Series in 2004, thus ending an 86-year drought.

Boggs finished his career with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and there notched his 3,000th MLB hit – a home run.

Wade Boggs became a bad guy in Boston, but he was a true hitter, whether in the batter’s box at Fenway, or anywhere else.

He is a Hall of Famer (2005), also receiving dispensation of a sort in Boston when the team put him its pantheon (2004). Boggs’ lifetime stats: .328 BA, 3,010 hits, 118 HR, and 1,014 RBI. He appeared in 12 straight All Star games as an A.L. third baseman, third in that stat behind Brooks Robinson and George Brett.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxz_4z0pW2s