Cantor the rising meteor

CURRENT EVENTS

Glenn Thrush and Patrick O'Connor at Politico need to re-read Orwell:

But the GOP’s meteoric star has slipped a bit this month — and his enemies couldn’t be happier.

Astronomers and copy editors should agree that stars cannot slip. My reflex rewrite would read that subject Eric Cantor's "ascent has slowed" or his "rise has been checked," but even that would miss the point. Anything meteoric is by definition brief and, even more to the point, a fall, not a rise. (Incidentally, their story's headline--likely written be a copy editor--got it right: "Budget, Britney dim Cantor's star.")

But Thrush and O'Connor are not the first to forget their astronomy. A "meteoric rise to fame" is quite the well-tongued phrase. Perhaps it is time to bid it goodbye?

Crisis watch

CURRENT EVENTS

From today's WP:

Liddy said he asked Financial Products employees who received at least $100,000 in bonuses to relinquish some of the money. But from the testy mood in the House hearing room, to the White House and the New York attorney general's office, it was plain that AIG's strategy was not containing the crisis.

We are in the midst of a financial crisis, but it is overheated to call the AIG affair a crisis. 'Not dampening the anger' or 'not deemed a sufficient response' would both work, but there is no crisis, just a public relations disaster.

By the way, do you understand that whole sub clause? "...to the White House and the New York attorney general's office..." Maybe the Washington Post team just hasn't been sleeping enough.

Bernie Madoff from all sides

CURRENT EVENTS

Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty yesterday--and provided a sterling example of the value of multiple national newspapers. I normally wouldn't read every account, but the night before I made it through Mark Seal's long Vanity Fair chronicle of the Madoff victims, and I was hungry for more dirt.

Far and away the most complete was the WSJ's write-up, which even got the details on Bernie's new accommodations: "Mr. Sussman said typical cells at the corrections center house two inmates and are 7 feet by 8 feet with a bunk bed, sink, desk and toilet." More importantly, the paper systematically reviewed contradictions between the prosecutors' and Madoff's accounts--whether the fraud started in the 1980s or early nineties, whether the whole business relied on the Ponzi scheme's profits--differences most other papers omitted. (Perhaps the Journal is trying to make up for christening Madoff "the broker with the Midas touch," as the WP reports.)

The NYT's otherwise pedestrian (and poorly copy edited: "lost most everything") piece managed to muse on the absence of Bernie's wedding ring in the lede, but then never said another word about it. It did helpfully note that Ruth, his wife, will be battling to retain some $65 million, but did no speculation.

In truth, the wedding ring anecdote was simply the most prominent of a theme all papers played with but offered no real elaboration. "No relatives stepped up to say goodbye" before Bernie was lead away, noted the LAT. "His wife, Ruth, an employee with his firm, did not appear at the hearing," wrote the WSJ. And...?

I found the LAT's rapid background--"A onetime chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market, he was viewed as a reformer whose electronic stock-trading firm competed with the entrenched New York Stock Exchange and helped reduce trading costs for investors."--the best, but perhaps that was because I hadn't been following the story too closely till today.

While the rest of the press herd crowed about the guilty plea, the Washington Post offered up an atmospheric, outside-the-courtroom look at the mess, using the day's events as merely an entree into reviewing Madoff's methods. For those who haven't spent an afternoon working their way through Seal's 12,000-plus word behemouth, it is a treat.

Most disappointing to me was the apparent misunderstanding of Ponzi schemes by all the papers. All put ink into wondering where all the money went, neglecting to note that it is possible--not definite, but possible--that almost all those billions were ultimately paid out to feed the new investors. Only the LAT tempers the questions with some real thinking, courtesy of an expert:

"I wonder practically whether there's money squirreled away all over the world," said Steven D. Feldman, an attorney at Herrick Feinstein in New York. "If there was, why wouldn't he have run off to a country where the United States doesn't have an extradition treaty and lead the good life? Instead of retiring to Florida, he would have retired to the Swiss Alps."

Chairman Maxine Waters

EXTRA CREDIT

From Thursday's WSJ:

The financial-services committee on which Ms. Waters sits oversees banking issues, and the lawmaker is a potential future chairman.

It is Ms. Waters, so shouldn't it be chairwoman? The AP Stylebook lists both chairman and chairwoman, so I think that is a yes, thought maybe the WSJ has a house style. I personally like chairperson, as I feel the sex of the chair- or spokes- or whoever-, is irrelevant. After all, we have switched to firefighter instead of adding firewoman, police officer instead of adding policewoman, and postal worker or letter carrier (the AP's suggestions) instead of adding either postwoman or mailwoman. When chairs are involved, however, AP vetoes that option. "Do not use chairperson unless it is an organization's formal title for an office." I do grant that chairperson is a clunker, but when did you last ask 'Has the postal worker come yet?'?