News and Views

Stay, Mr. President: President Obama is going to Louisiana today to get another first hand look at the oil spill catastrophe. My advice—stay there until the gusher (it’s ludicrous to call it a leak) is plugged.

Though Obama and his aides profess his total engagement in this crisis, and late yesterday announced postponement of a planned trip to Asia this month, nothing will convey his attachment as much as his physical presence in the Gulf Region throughout the rest of this disaster. Yes, it’s a PR ploy, but this is not just about governance. It’s about politics and perception; the populace often is swayed by visuals. FDR’s fireside chats. JFK’s press conferences. Clinton at Oklahoma City. Bush II’s bullhorn moment at Ground Zero. Obama needs to show he is on the case, literally and figuratively. He needs to take charge of the narrative. He needs to emote more, to connect with people whose way of life, whose livelihood, have been tarnished, possibly forever.

It’s not as if the business of government would come to a standstill if he sojourned in Louisiana. Wherever a president travels or vacations the White House goes with him. He would be tethered to any government agency, here or abroad, through modern communications. Anyone who has to meet with him can travel to Louisiana. Obama needs to stop burnishing his image with photo ops like the one for Paul McCartney Wednesday night and have more pictures taken with workers cleaning up the BP mess. How much better would it have been if McCartney had received his Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song at a ceremony in New Orleans and later sang for a group of workers engaged in the cleanup instead of a select White House audience?

So prepare to stay for the duration, Barack. Order up some gumbo. Some beignets from Café du Monde. If you feel too confined in Bobby Jindal’s back yard, mosey over to Alabama or the Florida panhandle. Just stay in the Gulf. Your Gulf War is with BP. Let’s win this one faster than it’s taken to master that other war half a world away.


Summer Intern: News that a Dutchman, Joran van der Sloot, is in custody in connection with the murder of a Peruvian woman in Lima, Peru, hit home. Van der Sloot was a prime suspect in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, an Alabama teenager, vacationing in Aruba in 2005. Holloway is presumed dead, her body never found.

Two or three years ago I was reviewing résumés of potential summer interns. Among the three or four I found interesting was one from a young woman from the South. I googled her name, a common reference practice. Up popped stories about Natalee Holloway. Turned out she was one of Natalee’s friends, with her on that ill-fated trip to Aruba, and one of the last people to see her alive.

I didn’t bring her in for an interview, choosing instead to go with a more local candidate.


Jefferson High: The chairman/CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, grew up in East New York, one of the toughest neighborhoods of Brooklyn, a few blocks from where Gilda lived from the time she was eight till 14. Once a bedrock Jewish community, the neighborhood rapidly devolved in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Gilda escaped to upper Ocean Parkway just as she was entering high school. Instead of attending East New York’s Thomas Jefferson High School, Gilda went to Erasmus, one of the borough’s best.

Nearly six years younger than Gilda, Blankfein went to Jefferson. By then the community had become even more depressed. He was valedictorian of his 1971 class. No disrespect, but even I might have been able to be valedictorian of that school at that time.


Summer Camp: Heard a radio ad for an upscale summer sleep-away camp on the radio the other day—seven weeks for $10,000. Wow!

When I started shipping out to sleep-away camp in 1956, my parents paid $600 for an eight-week season. Camp Massad wasn’t upscale—no horseback riding or other exotic features. Not even a swimming pool, just a lake. Today, that $600 price point would translate to an inflation-adjusted $4,683.37.

We sent Dan and Ellie to Camp Laurelwood in Madison, Conn. It wasn’t upscale, either, but the kids really liked it. For seven weeks, Laurelwood today costs $5,500.