UA's DNA: More than benign alphabet soup

WHAT COULD the University of Akron Board of Trustees possibly have had in mind (if anything) when it approved a policy permitting the University to subject new job applicants to DNA testing? As if the Board and the University didn't have enough on its plate with the Jack Morrison case and several staff image problems, the DNA issue caught fire across the country with predictable alarm from CBS, conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan, the ACLU and countless disapproving voices. Some suggested that anyone thinking about settling down on the UA campus ought to think at least twice. Not good.

The University's official response was that it hadn't asked anybody to submit to the test yet but would find the policy useful if it wanted to. Right. Whatever the rationale, the policy will be trashed on November 21 by a Federal law barring employers from requiring DNA testing by employes.

Too late. The damage has already been done by an indefensible policy lapse rooted in the Board's (and University's) legal counsel, Ted Mallo. He's been around for a long time and should have known better before it inherited this mess. More than a local mess. It sent a terrible message to academia that UA had broken ground as the first American university to turn to possible DNA testing. Such tests, of course, can open up a person to all sorts of problems, including access by health insurance companies on the prowl for finding a preexisting health condition. Even the DNA of prehistoric skeletons can reveal much about the owners.

The CBS reporter went to the trouble of contacting UA constitutional and criminal law professor William Rich for his reaction. It wasn't complimentary to the Board. Noting that the Faculty Senate had not been consulted about the new policy, Rich said: "I think it goes far

far beyond any imaginable justification for requiring DNA samples from job applicants, and I wonder just what the rationale for it was."

If there are a lot of red faces about this issue, there should be. It will take the entire University some time to recover from the nationally reported damage to its claimed image as a progressive institution of learning.

OSU, New Mexico St: Big payoff for a loser

ALTHOUGH YOU don't have to look that far to find travesties in the scheduling of college football games, rising to the top of the current culture is Saturday's game between the forever Olympian Ohio Sate Buckeyes and a forlorn team called the New Mexico State Aggies , which had lost its last two games by a cumulative score of 79-10. You couldn't have missed it. It was on all of the sports bar monitors as patrons toyed with their swizzle sticks or thumbed their cell phones. For their efforts in agreeing to a hopeless scrimmage in Columbus as 44-point underdogs, the Aggies were paid $850,000 - plus, you would hope, second helpings from the visitors' buffet. By the end of the third quarter, the home team was up 45-0 with the game's radio analyst exclaiming "45-0, 45-0, how about that Buckeye fans?" (It occurred during the 2 minutes that I tuned in.) Mercifully, the score didn't change as the Buckeyes decided not to pile it on their guests. That was about $19,000 a point. I went for a walk wondering whether people really paid for their tickets.

Portman et al: Bush, the invisible ex-prez

AFTER FOUR recent visits to Akron stages by Republicans from hither and yon, may we now conclude that the story line is firmly in place for the November 2010 elections? Merge the speakers' texts, and there are no surprises:

• President Obama is making an outrageous mess of the economy.
• The nation's salvation lies in cutting taxes.
• Health care reforms will be ruinous to the greatest health care system in the world.
• George Bush doesn'texistdoesn'texistdoesn'texist, the ex-president who isn't there.

I refer to the three earlier speakers: Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, U.S. Senate candidate Tom Ganley, one of the two Republicans with an eye on succeeding retiring Sen. George Voinovich, and, yesterday, the other GOP senatorial candidate, Rob Portman. From the standpoint of political harmony, it could qualify as a barbershop quartet.

Portman, former Ohio congressman and Bush's budget director who was regarded as a cabinet member with close ties to the Oval Office, reiterated much of the GOP message on how to influence people and win elections. Ohio, he said, needs a path to prosperity now that Gov. Strickland had overseen the loss of 336,000 jobs; too many Ohioans are running out of money; we've got to stop the hemorrhaging; the death tax has got to be eliminated.

Allow me to stop right there. The death tax (DT) used to be called the estate tax until the GOPers in Washington decided to change its name into something funereal to encourage us to hide our piggy banks from the IRS until long after Judgment Day. Today the DT's do not apply to 99.75 pct. of the people and allow a $3.5 million exemption - double that for a couple. Just thought I would throw that in inasmuch as I doubt there was more than one person in the audience who would be affected by a DT. On the other hand, there was a time when Bernie Madoff would have to be concerned about it. Many Wall Streeters still worry about it. Do the math, all of you exempt middle classers.

But Portman's biggest problem at his coming-out visit to he Akron Press Club in the Martin Center was not his ideology but his surprisingly flat delivery that lost the attention of some of the 90 or so guests. The largely Republican audience stocked by Summit County Chairman Alex Arshinkoff was quite subdued as he looked downward to his text and read as though he were giving a 30-minute invocation with an unbroken tone and cadence. Ok, he droned.

That's not what I've come to expect after attending two trillion political speeches over the years. Steele and Barbour, for example, appealed to the crowd to go out and help them win elections for their party. Ganley demanded a chance to sock-it-to the Democrats, Tea Party style. A couple of Republicans told me afterward that they were disappointed by Portman's delivery.

For all of the Republican condemnation of the Obama Adminstration's economic policies, there's a dynamite gamble by their candidates that the economy won't be moving upward by the next election. In short, Democrats need the economy to brighten; Republicans need it to fail. At this point, who can predict?

The Beacon Journal reported Portman's dismissive response to a question about his former Bush connection. "I'm talking about the future - how can we get out of this mess.?"

But when the campaign goes head to head next year, I would be surprised if the subject doesn't come up once or twice again.

Robertson's CBN demonizes Halloween

IT USED TO be so simple. As Halloween approached in my little town, we looked to the annual Volunteer Fireman's parade up Main Street for kids to compete for prizes for the best costumes. Our parents stood on the sidewalk gesturing to us to hang on as we trudged to the top of the hill, self consciously looking from side to side. The parade ended there in suspense among the motley participants. We waited for the judges' decisions. Since you didn't have to be a costuming genius, I chose as a nine-year-old to dress as a football player with no shoulder pads. I won anyway and was awarded a shiny new frying pan, one of the many prizes donated to the event by townspeople. My mother was proud and bragged to the neighbors. (Trick or treat night came the next night and nobody died from the experience.)

That was it. We enjoyed the evening and thanked the firemen. Not so simple today. Beyond all of the scary seasonal ghosts and goblins, kids are being warned that Halloween is a witch's brew that will destroy their lives. This sort of dark talk arises every Halloween and so it is here again today. The Huffington Post reported that Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network has posted an alarm that Halloween is not good for the soul. According to the frightful message,

"During this period demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings. For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference."

I think that if somebody had said that to my mother, she would would have hit 'em with her new frying pan.

.

.

Hume: Not all pirates are from Somalia

FROM A READER comes this bloody ship-to-shore warning from a Fox News guy:

Brit Hume tells the Los Angeles Times of the Fox battle mentality:

We may be No. 1, but there is sort of an insurgent quality to Fox News. And that's kind of our attitude: "Hoist the Jolly Roger, pull out our dagger and look for more throats to slit."

(Sort of, kind of, not. The place is a breeding site for cutthroats. Even Brit thinks so.)

Joe Lieberman: The Senate's Zelig is back

Attaboy, Joe. ( Lieberman, not the plumber.)

The always-evolving Independent senator from Connecticut seems forever inspired by his own smarmy political pieties and will again cross the congressional Rubicon to support a Republican filibuster against an opt-out health care reform bill. Joe has been a master of such happy-face gamesmanship on the Hill, pretending that he is holding a full house against the other side's four-card flush. So with his characteristic rubbery smile and reassuring bedside manner, Joe has again set himself up as the conscience of those honorable pols who rise to the defense of the nation (except, of course, those souls who have no health insurance.)

As a hawkish senator who avoided military service himself, he was once a Democrat who then charged into his friend John McCain's presidential campaign with spear and shield to wipe out Iraq, help the Republican candidate with Jewish voters and perhaps get a tidy vice presidential nod from the GOP. Having failed on all counts, Joe proudly retained his independence, but deftly played his hollow hand to literally blackmail unthinking Democrats into allowing him to caucus with the victorious party - a party, by the way, that mindlessly counted on his vote to override any Republican filibusters in the Senate! (How ironic!) They gave him his very own committee chairmanship and sheepishly said nice things about him.(Democrats may not be the party of sleeve-worn religion, but they do turn the other cheek to their own peril. )

His mercurial tactics may drive his old party to despair but it has made him one of Fox News iconic foster children, for whom he once described his political philosophy. Get this:

"I'm a Harry Truman, JFK, Scoop Jackson, Bill Clinton Democrat."

That there were varying degrees of difference among that quartet illustrate Lieberman's own warmed-over waffles, depending upon the moment. Let it be said that Lieberman's bizarre political initiatives are not totally ideological - not when he has received more than $1.6 million from the health care industry, including the invasive well-provided pharmaceuticals. He's been family-deep in the hands of health reform opponents. His wife Hadassah was on the lobbying payroll of companies for which Lieberman has bartered his soul. That's the short version.

Benignly concerned Joe is now in the front of the line, hardly as an independent thinker but as the leading teeter-totter in the Senate - a former Democrat, a happy-go-lucky cheerleader of the Republican presidential candidate, and now an Independent with a Democratic chairmanship and a valued Republican ear. For a Zelig of his skill, you can't do much better than that.

Attaboy, Joe. You can even boast to friends and family that you had been the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 2000, albeit again on the losing side. When the painful filibuster debate arrives, you may even be offered your own show on Fox News. Keep smiling.

.

The balloon boy: the televised version

FRANK RICH, the New York Times magisterial op-ed essayist, observed Sunday that America's fascination with the "balloon boy" episode reflected a media-driven society with a willing audience seduced by the latest hoax du jour. TV hustles spectacles. Millions of unthinking viewers buy into them. Think not? Oh? If you weren't among the glazed viewers watching an empty saucer-shaped balloon wafting for miles with voice-over, there was something nagging you that Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" was a put-on that, in one form or another, still exists in the tawdry tourist shops along the New Jersey boardwalks not that far from where the Martians landed.

Fantasies are the lifeline of television, from escapist reality shows to the soberly empty helicopter coverage of celebrities heading to the courthouse for still another hearing. That we were hustled by the balloon boy's dad was no more cynical than the meteoric rise of Joe the Plumber as a man hawked as a spokesman for the millions of unrepresented citizens (as well as a handy crowd-pleaser for John McCain.) And as some Americans wanted to believe, Sarah Palin's family was the moral equivalent of Ozzie and Harriet. (Some males went still farther and fantasized about Sarah.)

The fantasies never stop for today's Thumb Generation. Aim the remote at the screen and you may soon find an 800 telephone number that will end your labors and worries. Pyramid schemes abound with the fantasies of overnight riches. We go to war in the Middle East being told that the end of Saddam Hussein will take no longer than a few weeks or a few months - at most. The empty balloon made more sense.

Talk about gullibility. There's also a fellow named Arthur Ray, a mega-promoter of a fantasy that he calls" vision quest" that for upward of $10,000 he will literally roast you with heated rocks in a tent in Sedona, Ariz., to purge you of toxic invaders of your mind and body. His latest venture ended with three deaths among the 21 persons rushed to the hospital by emergency crews. Did some really believe they would survive the ordeal to help them overcome claustrophobia? You bet.

Also, despite the proven lies from the right-wing megaphones, there are still a sizable number of gullible folks who do not hesitate to believe that the earth is flat or that melting icebergs do not affect sea levels. The fiction may be stranger than the truth, but it sells to a wider audience, which is how decisions are influenced in the media. The once sacred network evening news reports are now limited to 22 minutes, some of which are superficially dedicated to whatever fantasies we are expected to believe. (Two minutes for the latest jobless figures? Ninety seconds for the hokum that health care reform is either dead or now ready for passage, depending on which lobbyist source is dishing it out?) And the Sunday morning panels have little more depth than boring coffee klatches. I confess: I don't think George Will, Cokie et al are ready for their own compelling reality show.)

The latest Audit Bureau of Circulation figures upstage the fantasy hours on TV with harsh numbers: Newspaper circulation from April through September this year fell 1o.6 pct. from a similar period in 2008. While news rooms are shrinking, we must await the next made-for-TV journey into la-la land, or at least to the breaking "news" arriving in Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room. Some situation! But I don't expect any attitude adjustments. As Norman Lear pointed out on the Huffington Post, the balloon boy's parents were seduced by the networks into believing that "they are - even if what they dream up to qualify is a hoax - entitled to their 15 minutes."

With today's coverage of fantasies, it seems more like weeks.. During the Halloween season, at least we have long known that Linus's "great pumpkin" was harmless child's play.

.

Poison, suicide, quackery and servility

RECENT DECREES by the two reigning high priests of what was once the Republican Party:

GLENN BECK: Nancy Pelosi should be poisoned.

RUSH LIMBAUGH: (In a rant against New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin): "Mr. Revkin, why don't you just go kill yourself and help the planet by dying?"

And they continue to be defended by the servile pols in the GOP. As Columnist Elizabeth Drew observed in the latest New York Review of Books:

"Lacking any real leaders now, the Republicans' vacuum has been filled by the likes of talk-show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, whose job it is to be outrageous, and before whom Republican politicians quaver. "

Curiously, the party of superhawks that led us into Iraq's quicksand is a different breed at home, cowering before a couple of out-of-control media quacks who have taken over the substance and tone of the GOP.

Heeeeeeerrs George W, Bush!

IS THERE A SLIGHT chance that the Get Motivated producers have taken a cue from the Balloon Boy (the latest vanishing sensation since Joe the Plumber) by paying George Bush to return to the stage as a speaker at its all-day spectacle in Ft. Worth Monday night? Guaranteeing that the media and late night-comics will be watching, Bush will be paid an estimated $100,000 for a one hour motivational (!) talk. The splinters are already flying about the odd choice for an inspiring pep talk for anybody aspiring to make a new career with a desk on the carpet. As the New York Daily News sized up his scheduled appearance:

"Former Republican President George W. Bush, last seen inspiring millions to vote Democratic - has a new gig as a high priced motivational speaker."

To put the event in context as Bush shares the program with such other luminaries as Zig Ziglar, Terry Bradshaw and Rudy Giuliani, it should be remembered that since he returned to his ranch in Texas with a 22 pct. public approval rating, there has been a serious effort by Karl Rove and others to rehab his ex-boss's dismal record in the image of Knute Rockne's winning strategies or Davy Crockett's heroics at the Alamo. There is even an instant rebuttal to the comics and critics by noting the Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton gave high priced speeches after leaving office. Trouble with that argument is Reagan and Clinton left office with decent numbers.

Get Motivated's web site boasts that its programs are "energizing, action-packed, star-filled and fun-filled. " Jon Stewart would not argue about the fun-filled bit. Just wait.

As for me, I'll go back to what I've said before about Dubya. It's the epitaph written by Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II for himself:

"Here lies Joseph II, who failed in everything he undertook."

.

Bachmann: Is her non-pro really anti?

ON MY WAY to the dump this morning, I happened to pick this item:

Rep. Michele Bachmann, who continues to upstage Sarah Palin with her loopy comments on

Fox , assailed former GOP Senate majority leaders Bob Dole and Bill Frist for asking their party to be a bit more civil in the attacks on a health-care bill. Bachmann accused them of being, eh...

"non-pro-freedom." Non-pro? Is that like anti? Does it mean that if somebody disagrees with her, the person is therefore pro-non-pro freedom? In response, it would leave her no choice but to charge that her disagreement with that person could be described as non-pro-non-pro freedom, redundant though it might be. It does get confusing, doesn't it, even for a politician?

As the people from her home state of Minnesota have been heard to comment...You betcha!