The New Cruiser!
Jay Leno

From The London Times
There are 400 police chases every year in Los Angeles, and here everything stops during a police pursuit. People will watch one for three, four hours on the TV. It’s basically the same chase every day and they all end the same way: the person runs out of gas, they run out, fall on the ground and the cops come and handcuff them. It’s never that exciting but for some reason people think it is. OJ Simpson was the first to make them popular and now it’s become a local phenomenon. The greatest was the guy who stole the tank in San Diego, crushing road signs and vehicles before being stopped. I guess it makes the whole job of being a traffic cop look exciting.
Historically, there’s been quite a difference in police cars, at least here in the States. You always had a couple of types: the slowest was almost certainly the three-wheeled Harley-Davidson Servi-Car. It was technically a motorbike but they called it a car. They used those in the Fifties and early Sixties, mostly for ticket writing and downtown duties like that. They were powered by a flathead V-twin. You didn’t have too much trouble outrunning them!
Then police forces would have one or two high performance cars, like the chief’s car. A lot of them were six-cylinder Fords or the small V8 Fords with a stick shift, no radio, no air-con, no nothing. The most feared police cars, at least when I was a kid, were the ones the “Staties” had. By Staties I mean the Massachusetts state troopers.
They usually ran big Dodges, like the Polara. It had the big 440 (cubic-inch) motor in it and it ran 145mph. In the Sixties and early Seventies it was the fastest police car. Actually, the fastest of almost any American car, with the exception perhaps of the 427 Corvette.
In those days the cops had a two-way radio, a shotgun and sidearm. There would be some flares in the trunk, but that was it. It’s not like today where they carry so much equipment, which makes the cars much more cumbersome. And these Polaras were big, fast cars and pretty hairy to drive. The early ones were mostly drum brakes all the way around. Not much stopping power, then. The rule of thumb was, when the cop got out of the car to come after you, since they had no air-conditioning, if he was all sweaty and you could see the stain on his shirt, you were getting a ticket. Because he’d just worked way too hard to catch you.
When we were kids, if you were stopped by a cop in an air-conditioned car, he would usually just say: “Slow down, take it easy, son.” But when they had to work, forget it. Remember, a lot of these cars had no power steering, no power brakes. It really was, and I know this sounds terribly sexist today, just a man’s car. They really were he-man cars. It took a lot of heft and weight to fling them around. They had the big push bar on the front and they were black and white; they looked pretty macho.
There was a TV show here in America called Highway Patrol, which starred Broderick Crawford. The show always started with this very dramatic music and a voiceover saying: “When the laws of any state are broken, a group of trained men go into action. Sometimes they’re called the militia. Sometimes they’re called the state police. We call them the highway patrol!” And then more dramatic music.
Then the horns would blow and big, fat Crawford would pull up in a 55 Buick and he would slide it in the dirt. And even though it was on dirt you’d hear “screeee”, as the tyres screeched. And he would always pick up the two-way radio and bark something like: “We’ll have this town locked up so tight, a kiddie car couldn’t get through it!”
And of course the criminals are always named Legs Somebody or Mugsy. It was a half-hour cop show that always involved a chase. And if you watch some of the early episodes you get to see a young Clint Eastwood playing a punk trying to outrun Crawford and the highway patrol, which of course nobody could do.
In those days the cop actually had to clock you and had something called a telltale speedometer to give him the evidence necessary to pull you over. I’ve got a 1931 Henderson four-cylinder motorcycle that was a police pursuit bike. What happened was the officer would set the speedometer to zero and when he chased you there were two needles, a red needle and a white needle. They would sweep concurrently, equally. The red needle would stay at the highest speed needed to catch you. So consequently, if you were going 80, the officer would pull you over and you would deny you were going 80. Then he would take you over to his bike and show you the red needle on 80, and that would be his proof.
Most cops, then and now, are pretty good. If you’re not drunk and you’re not belligerent, they’ll cut you a deal. Maybe they’ll knock off a few miles per hour or send you to traffic school or something.
I’ve never had a cop car, so having Dodge’s new Charger police car for a few days has been a hoot. It’s quite fun driving this around because it’s fun to watch other people. On the freeway, if you’re going 70, suddenly everyone around you is doing 65, even though it says Dodge City Police on the side and has a big sign saying “Out of service”. Nobody actually reads the badge on the car. Then they spot me in it and they wave, or give me the finger.
It drives really nicely. It’s tight and feels stable. In the early days, police cars would just have a heavy-duty package. Basically, the same car with heavier springs, stiffer shocks and better brakes.
In the late Sixties, early Seventies, a police cruiser and their civilian equivalent might have got a motor that would have an exemption sticker on it which meant it wasn’t subject to smog restrictions because it had a bigger cam or something like that. So you got an unstrangled version of the ordinary motor.
When my dad bought his Ford Galaxie, unbeknown to him I ordered the police pursuit package with the bigger motor, bigger radiator and no mufflers. When my dad went to pick up the car he started it and it went: “Urrnnghaaa! Urrnghaaa!” And my dad goes: “There’s no muffler! There’s no goddamn muffler on this car!” And they say: “But Mr Leno, you ordered the ‘delete muffler’ pack on your order.” And he says: “Why would I not want my muffler?”
“But Mr Leno, here’s your order. Muffler delete.” My father was so furious.
When we were kids and you bought junk cars out of the junkyard you always tried to buy ex-police because you knew you were getting a big motor. It might be worn out but you could fix that. When we were kids, for $500 you could get a car with a black body and white doors and no numbers or markings on it that would be only two years old with 280,000 miles on it. But they were fun. Just drive them around all day until you blew them up.
The new Charger isn’t as big as the old police cars. They were enormous and were based on the big Chrysler chassis that was in the Chrysler 300 and the New Yorker and all those. In fact I have just taken it to Burbank police station for the officers to check it over and the one comment most of the police had was that it was small. It looks small to them because if you’re carrying a couple of felons and a trunkful of gear you need something that’s a pretty good size. They liked the cupholders and places to stash doughnuts, though.
This one is a pretty good choice for a police car. The Ford Crown Victoria is an old platform and has been around for a long time. By comparison with the current Crown Vic, the Charger is compact, but that’s cars in general. It’s not small. The space inside is better used than a car 20 years old. Other ways have been used to make it more efficient. In the past, cars had the big, high lights up in the roof, which cut about 10-15mph off the thing. Now you have those low bars, which are pretty aerodynamic.
The Charger has got four-wheel disc brakes and handles and stops probably better that any police car in history. It’s just more of a balanced package. In the old days they would increase power to the engine by 75-100% and everything else, including brakes, would be increased by 10-15%.
European cars are not used in the States for police cruisers. But as far as European cars go, any of the big Mercs or Audis would be good. But you don’t really need four-wheel drive in California.
The handling of the Charger seemed pretty good. For a big American sedan it handled well. I think the Charger benefited from the union between Daimler and Chrysler. Obviously they picked up a few suspension tricks from Mercedes. It feels solid and the brakes seem impeccable. The acceleration seemed quite good too. I think it would be a great high-speed pursuit car. It was tempting to flick on the lights and siren.
Even without the light and “whoop whoop” on, it had the desired effect. After a while I sort of forgot I was driving something that looked like a police car. There was one guy across the street that looked sort of like a criminal and he didn’t actually look at the car. He didn’t make eye contact, which I thought was weird. I guess he thought it was a police car and I was a real cop.
You know, this could get addictive.
Vital statistics
Model Dodge Charger Police Package
Engine 5654cc, eight cylinders
Power 340bhp @ 5000rpm
Torque 390 lb ft @ 4000rpm
Transmission Five-speed automatic
CO2 n/a 0-60mph: 6sec 148mph
Acceleration
Top speed Price $26,930 (£13,423)

Merv Griffen Is Dead at 82
Nicole Bengiveno / New York Times
The cause was prostate cancer, the statement said, according to the A.P. Mr. Griffin had traded in singing for acting in movies, served as game-show host and filled in for Jack Paar on late-night television when, in 1962, NBC gave him his own show, “The Merv Griffin Show.” It started the same day that Johnny Carson began hosting “The Tonight Show,” and although Mr. Griffin’s reviews were initially better, he quickly faded. The show was canceled in less than a year.
But Mr. Griffin had secured an agreement with NBC to allow him to set up a production company. Never one to wallow in setbacks, Mr. Griffin turned to a game-show idea where the contestants would be given answers and would have to come up with the question, losing money — an anomaly at the time — if they were wrong. “Jeopardy” ran for 11 years, then was revived nearly a decade later.
After “Jeopardy,” Mr. Griffin came up with “Wheel of Fortune,” which has run continuously since 1975, making it the longest-running game show on syndicated television. Most recently, Mr. Griffin has been active in the development of “Crosswords,” a new game show based on his passion for crossword puzzles that is scheduled to premiere on Sept. 10.
Mr. Griffin still was not finished with talk shows, however. In 1965, two years after being cancelled, “The Merv Griffin Show” was revived as a syndicated program sold directly to local stations.
The program was a free-wheeling amalgam of interviews with celebrities who, their lips loosened by backstage cocktails, let down their guard at Mr. Griffin’s deceptively probing questions, and installments focused on sexual and criminal themes that anticipated all manner of talk shows that followed, from Oprah Winfrey to Jerry Springer. The show survived, in various formats, until 1986, when he sold Merv Griffin Enterprises to Coca-Cola for $250 million.
By that time, Mr. Griffin was already an astute investor, having started buying radio stations and other media outlets more than 20 years earlier. Among them was Teleview Racing Patrol, which he built into the leading source of closed-circuit broadcasts of horse racing to off-track betting and inter-track wagering sites in the country.
Mr. Griffin later expanded into hotels and casinos, jousting with Donald Trump and taking over Mr. Trump’s Resorts International property in Atlantic City and the Trump casino on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. But the deal came with a heavy debt burden that ultimately swallowed much of his investment, and the company was forced into bankruptcy in 1989.
When it emerged, Mr. Griffin began a program of upgrading the properties while also staging public tryouts for game-show contestants in the hotels, which also attracted customers for the casinos. In 1993, he sold much of his casino interests to Sun International.
Mr. Griffin similarly bought and refurbished the Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills, turning it into a preferred spot for Hollywood awards shows and opening a nightclub, The Coconut Club, modeled after the famed Coconut Grove, where Griffin sang early in his career. He sold the hotel in 2003.
From all those ventures, Mr. Griffin emerged a billionaire, though he maintained that he really didn’t know how much he was worth because if he did, it “would keep me from sleeping at night.”
With his easy smile and low-keyed manner, he seemed always the eternally jovial Irishman; few of those around him, much less his fans, thought of him as the entrepreneur he was. “I was buying things and nobody knew,” he said. “I never told anybody, because I noticed that when you walk down the street and everybody knows you’re rich, they don’t talk to you.”
Mr. Griffin’s life, it seemed, was dedicated to finding things to do that were exciting, using his penchant for entertainment to overcome a pudgy physique that drew taunts in childhood and resulted in large weight swings later in life. Growing up in San Mateo, Calif., a suburb of San Francisco, he organized weekly shows on his back porch, “recruiting kids as either stagehands, actors, or audience — sometimes all three.”
“I was the producer, always the producer,” he said.
Mr. Griffin was born on July 6, 1925, the son of Mervyn Edward Griffin Sr., a successful stockbroker, and the former Rita Robinson. Buddy Griffin, as he was called, showed little interest in sports as a child and instead gravitated to the piano, on which an aunt gave him lessons.
He was interested at first in classical music but concluded that popular music would be more rewarding: playing it enabled him to earn money at weddings, funerals and parties. As a teen-ager, he added singing to his piano playing and kept his hand in the classics by playing organ at his church.
After high school, he attended San Mateo Junior College and then the University of San Francisco but dropped out without getting a degree.
Though he never stopped wanting to be an entertainer, his father talked him into becoming a bank teller. The first day on the job, he learned that the teller working next to him had been there for almost three decades and was still paid a pittance. To his father’s dismay, Mr. Griffin quit immediately. From there, it was nearly all show business.
Years later, show business returned the favor. In 2005, he received a lifetime achievement award at the Daytime Emmys and a similar award from the Museum of Radio and Television. “There really has been no one who has managed to have his type of success in front of and behind the camera,” Stuart N. Brotman, president of the museum, said at the time. “He is a one-man conglomerate, and I can’t think of anyone else who has had that reach.”
Mr. Griffin and his wife, the former Julann Wright, were divorced in 1976. They had a son, Anthony, who survives him. Over the years, he squired many Hollywood actresses, including Eva Gabor, and he was close friends with Nancy Reagan, introducing her to Joan Quigley, the San Francisco astrologer.
But he was also dogged by sex scandals and insinuations that he was gay. In 1991, he was sued by Denny Terrio, the host of “Dance Fever,” another show Mr. Griffin created, for sexual harassment. The same year, Brent Plott, a longtime employee who worked as a bodyguard, horse trainer and driver, filed a $200 million palimony lawsuit. Mr. Griffin characterized both lawsuits as extortion; ultimately, both suits were dismissed.
Mr. Griffin consistently evaded questions about his sexuality. In a 2005 interview with The New York Times, he said: “I tell everybody that I’m a quarter-sexual. I will do anything with anybody for a quarter.”
What he was rarely reluctant to talk about was his success, particularly those ventures that produced significant portions of his wealth. When he was creating “Jeopardy,” he realized the show needed some music to fill the time while contestants were puzzling out a question. Sitting at a piano, he plunked out a few notes, then a repetitive melody, and within about a half hour had the show’s familiar theme music. He retained the rights to the song even after selling the shows, and royalties from the ditty “made me a fortune, millions,” he said in 2005.
How much?, he was asked. “Probably close to $70-80 million.”

For the Love of Xenu; Scientology!
By Mark Oppenheimer Scientology, the controversial religion whose adherents include John Travolta, Tom Cruise, and Jenna Elfman, can't seem to stay out of the news. Sometimes the church would rather not have the publicity, as when Germany, which considers Scientology a cult, recently refused to let Tom Cruise shoot scenes for his new movie in government buildings. Other times, Scientologists court the attention—as when the same Mr. Cruise brought his Scientology-influenced anti-psychiatry crusade to the Today show in 2005. Some Americans may consider Scientology perhaps a cult, maybe a violent sect, and certainly very weird. And, like many, I find the Church of Scientology odd, to say the least. But Scientology is no more bizarre than other religions. And it's the similarities between Scientology and, say, Christianity and Judaism that make us so uncomfortable. We need to hate Scientology, lest we hate ourselves. But reaching such a conclusion, as I have discovered, isn't bound to win a religion writer any friends. I recently wrote an article (subscription required) for the New York Times Magazine about Milton Katselas, the acting teacher of Giovanni Ribisi, Anne Archer, Tom Selleck, George Clooney, and many other stars. Katselas is a Scientologist, and there are those in the acting community who steer clear of his school because of its perceived connection to Scientology. (Although, to be fair, Elfman broke with Katselas because he wasn't Scientologist enough.) I also posted a podcast interview with John Carmichael, president of the Church of Scientology in New York. We talked about church founder L. Ron Hubbard, the church's hostility to the psychiatric profession, and Carmichael's own conversion, among other topics. I did not have time to ask him about many of the controversies surrounding the religion, including allegations of financial improprieties and cultlike behavior. (These charges have been aired most extensively in a Rolling Stone article that I found very persuasive, as well as in series in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.) Having decided that I'd failed to air these charges sufficiently in my article or my Carmichael interview, the anti-Scientologists pounced. The podcast, in particular, brought me heaps of scorn, eliciting posts like: "This interview was a complete abomination. … [Y]ou are ... gullible and naive. … [T]he rest of us will pay for these weaknesses," and "This is really an infomercial. You are a two-bit wanna-be entertainer & butt kisser and John Carmichael knows one when he sees one." My podcast and article were not meant to attack Scientology. Not every article about a Catholic mentions the church's pederasty scandals or its suborning of fascism under Hitler and Franco. An article about Yom Kippur observance in Hackensack need not ask Jews for their views of illegal West Bank settlements. All religious groups have something to answer for, but religion writing would be quite tedious, not to mention unilluminating, if every article were reduced to the negative charges against some co-religionists. But when it comes to Scientology, there's a hunger for the negative. I suspect that's because Scientology evinces an acute case of what Freud called the narcissism of small differences: We're made most uncomfortable by that which is most like us. And everything of which Scientology is accused is an exaggerated form of what more "normal" religions do. Does Scientology charge money for services? Yes—but the average Mormon, tithing 10 percent annually, pays more money to his church than all but the most committed Scientologists pay to theirs. Jews buying "tickets" to high-holiday services can easily part with thousands of dollars a year per family. Is Scientology authoritarian and cultlike? Yes—but mainly at the higher levels, which is true of many religions. There may be pressure for members of Scientology's elite "Sea Organization" not to drop out, but pressure is also placed on Catholics who may want to leave some cloistered orders. Does Scientology embrace pseudoscience? Absolutely—but its "engrams" and "E-meter" are no worse than what's propagated by your average Intelligent Design enthusiast. In fact, its very silliness makes it less pernicious. And what about the "Xenu" creation myth anti-Scientologists are so fond of? Scientologists have promised me that it is simply not part of their theology—some say they learned about Xenu from South Park. Several ex-Scientologists have sworn the opposite. Given his frequent conflation of science fiction, theology, and incoherent musings, I think that Hubbard may have taught that eons ago, the galactic warlord Xenu dumped 13.5 trillion beings in volcanoes on Earth, blowing them up and scattering their souls. But I'm not sure that it is an important part of Scientology's teachings. And if Xenu is part of the church's theology, it's no stranger than what's in Genesis. It's just newer and so seems weirder. Religions appear strange in inverse proportion to their age. Judaism and Catholicism seem normal—or at least not deviant. Mormonism, less than 200 years old, can seem a bit incredible. And Scientology, founded 50 years ago, sounds truly bizarre. To hear from a burning bush 3,000 years ago is not as strange as meeting the Angel Moroni two centuries ago, which is far less strange than having a hack sci-fi writer as your prophet. That's not to say that all religions are "equal" or equally deserving of respect. I'm no more a Scientologist than I am a Swedenborgian or a member of the Nation of Islam, and I do have two criticisms of Scientology that one rarely hears from Xenu-obsessed detractors. First, while the introductory Scientology costs are not outlandish (for example, a member may pay about $200 for a dozen sessions of "auditing," to start out), the fees increase as adherents gain new knowledge through advanced course work (going "up the bridge to total freedom," in Scientology-speak)—and it does make the religion resemble a pyramid or matrix scheme. More than one Scientologist explained to me that they don't have the financial resources of the Catholic Church that come from thousands of years of donations. They have to charge. Well, that's not the whole truth. The secrecy surrounding Scientology's higher levels of knowledge has no apparent analog in the Abrahamic faiths, and the steep financial outlay to get higher knowledge seems also unique. Catholicism doesn't charge people to become learned, nor does Judaism. In fact, the greatest scholars in those faiths are often revered paupers: penniless rabbis and voluntarily poor priests, monks, and nuns. Poverty is not Scientology's style, to say the least. That leads me to my second criticism: bad aesthetics! I have never been less religiously moved by ostensibly religious spaces than in Scientology buildings. Whether the Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles, the New York church off Times Square, or the local branch down the street from my house, Scientology buildings are filled with garish colors, flat-screen TVs showing silly, dull videos, and glossy pamphlets recycling the legend of the overrated L. Ron Hubbard, whom Scientologists revere as a scientist, writer, and seer of the first rank. In my opinion, Hubbard's books are bad, the movies they inspire are bad, and the derivative futuro-techno look that Scientology loves is an affront to good taste on every level. It's a religion that screams nouveau–Star Trek–riche. For those of us who seek mystery, wonder, and beauty in our religions, Scientology is a nonstarter. But good taste, as art critic Dave Hickey says, is just the residue of someone else's privilege. Catholicism has its Gothic cathedrals, Judaism its timeless Torah scrolls. Scientology is brand-new, but it has played an impressive game of catch-up. In its drive to be a major world religion, it will inevitably go through a period when its absurdities and missteps are glaringly apparent. But someday it will be old and prosaic, and there may still be Scientologists. And when some of those Scientologists embezzle, lie, and steal—as they surely will—they'll seem no worse than Christians, Jews, or Muslims who have done

Inmate found guilty in masturbation trial
By ROBERTO SANTIAGO AND JENNIFER LEBOVICH
rsantiago@MiamiHerald.com
A Broward prisoner accused of committing a sex act while he was alone in his jail cell was found guilty Tuesday of indecent exposure.
Terry Lee Alexander, 20, unsuccessfully fought the charge, which had been brought by a female Broward Sheriff's Office detention deputy who saw him perform the sex act in his cell in November.
In reaching the guilty verdict, jurors found that an inmate's jail cell is ''a limited access public place'' where exposing oneself is against the law.
The judge sentenced Alexander, of Lauderdale Lakes, to 60 days in jail, on top of the 10-year sentence he is currently serving for armed robbery.
The sole witness in the case, BSO Deputy Coryus Veal, testified that Alexander did not try to hide what he was doing as most prisoners do. Veal saw him perform the act while she was working in a glass-enclosed master control room, 100 feetfrom Alexander's cell. There was no video tape or other witnesses.
Alexander's attorney argued that the prison cell was a private place and that what Alexander was doing was perfectly normal.
''Did other inmates start masturbating because of Mr. Alexander?'' McHugh asked Veal. ``Did you call a SWAT team?''
''I wish I had,'' Veal answered.
Veal, who has charged seven other inmates with the same offense, insisted that she was not against the act itself -- just the fact that Alexander was so blatant about it. Most inmates, she testified, do it in bed, under the blankets.
Veal said this was the third time she caught Alexander, and she had had enough.
In the end, it took a jury of four men and two women only 45 minutes to find Alexander guilty. Broward County Judge Fred Berman sentenced Alexander to 60 days in jail.
''It was pretty straightforward,'' said juror David Sherman. ``The prosecution's case was clear, and the defense did not dispute any of the major elements.''
Sherman said jurors determined that a prison cell, which is owned and operated by the government, is neither public nor private but is a ``limited access public place.''
He also said that none of the jurors had a problem with the sex act, per se.
The case drew snickers in the courtroom, especially during jury selection, when prospective jurors were quizzed about their own habits.
Defense attorney Kathleen McHugh faced 17 prospective jurors and asked point-blank who among them had never done that particular sex act.
No hands went up.
While most prisons deal with such an offense internally, Broward Sheriff Ken Jenne -- and Miami-Dade Corrections officials -- are hoping to curb the practice among inmates by prosecuting them.
Janelle Hall, a spokeswoman for Miami-Dade Corrections, said that while no charges have been brought against inmates, the department is working with State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle's office to discuss prosecution of such ''egregious'' cases in the jail.
''It has been a hot topic so to speak in our department,'' Hall said. ``In those cases that are egregious, where there is some sort of intent to deliberately expose themselves, those cases will be reviewed further in the courts.''
A spokesman for Broward State Attorney Michael Satz said prosecution is warranted when an inmate exposes himself in plain view of the detention staff or others.
''Female detention deputies are human beings, too. Why should they have to view such vulgar and indecent behavior in their place of work?'' said Satz spokesman Ron Ishoy.
Prosecutors filed charges in all seven of Veal's other cases, Ishoy said, but later dropped the charges in one of those cases to allow the defendant to begin his sentence in the state prison system on a more serious, unrelated charge.
Four of the defendants pleaded guilty to the charge of exposure and were sentenced to time served. Charges against two inmates are pending.
The state attorney's office did not have the number of cases involving inmates charged with indecent exposure in BSO jails.
And there was no information on whether similar charges had been brought against female inmates.
''When an inmate exposes [himself], it's up to the deputy's discretion how to handle it,'' said Elliot Cohen, a BSO spokesman. ``It can be a verbal reprimand to the filing of criminal charges.''
Teri Barbera, a spokeswoman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, said jail inmates there are written up for violating jail rules and subject to internal punishment ranging from loss of visitation privileges to solitary confinement.
Barbera said she is not aware of any cases where criminal charges have been brought against an inmate.

Tammy Faye Messner dies of cancer

HUSTON CHRONICLE
RALEIGH, N.C. — Tammy Faye Messner, who as Tammy Faye Bakker helped her husband, Jim, build a multimillion-dollar evangelism empire and then watched it collapse in disgrace, has died. She was 65.
Messner had battled colon cancer since 1996 that more recently spread to her lungs. She died peacefully Friday at her home near Kansas City, Mo., said Joe Spotts, her manager and booking agent.
A family service was held Saturday in a private cemetery, where her ashes were interred, he said.
She had frequently spoken about her medical problems, saying she hoped to be an inspiration to others. "Don't let fear rule your life," she said. "Live one day at a time, and never be afraid." But she told well-wishers in a note on her Web site in May that the doctors had stopped trying to treat the cancer.
In an interview with CNN's Larry King two months later, an emaciated Messner — still using her trademark makeup — said, "I believe when I leave this earth, because I love the Lord, I'm going straight to heaven." Asked if she had any regrets, Messner said: "I don't think about it, Larry, because it's a waste of good brain space."
For many, the TV image of then-Mrs. Bakker forgiving husband Jim's infidelities, tears streaking her cheeks with mascara, became a symbol for the wages of greed and hypocrisy in 1980s America.
She divorced her husband of 30 years, with whom she had two children, in 1992 while he was in prison for defrauding millions from followers of their PTL television ministries. The letters stood for "Praise the Lord" or "People that Love."
Jim Bakker said in a statement that his ex-wife "lived her life like the song she sang, 'If Life Hands You a Lemon, Make Lemonade.'"
"She is now in Heaven with her mother and grandmother and Jesus Christ, the one who she loves and has served from childbirth," he said. "That is the comfort I can give to all who loved her."
Messner's second husband also served time in prison. She married Roe Messner, who had been the chief builder of the Bakkers' Heritage USA Christian theme park near Fort Mill, S.C., in 1993. In 1995, he was convicted of bankruptcy fraud, and he spent about two years in prison.
Through it all, Messner kept plugging her faith and herself. She did concerts, a short-lived secular TV talk show and an inspirational videotape. In 2004, she cooperated in the making of a documentary about her struggle with cancer, called "Tammy Faye: Death Defying."
"I wanted to help people ... maybe show the inside (of the experience) and make it a little less frightening," she said.
More recently, Tammy Faye kept in the public eye via her Web site.
"I cry out to the Lord knowing that many of you are praying for me," Messner wrote in a July 16 post in which she indicated she weighed 65 pounds. "In spite of it all, I get dressed and go out to eat. ... I crave hamburgers and french fries with LOTS of ketchup! When I can eat that again, it will be a day of victory!"
In 2004, she appeared on the WB reality show "The Surreal Life," co-starring with rapper Vanilla Ice, ex-porn star Ron Jeremy and others. She told King in 2004 that she didn't know who Jeremy was when they met and they became friends.
Messner was never charged with a crime in connection with the Bakker scandal. She said she counted the costs in other ways.
"I know what it's like to hit rock bottom," she said in promotional material for her 1996 video "You Can Make It."
In the mid-1980s, the Bakkers were on top, ruling over a ministry that claimed 500,000 followers. Their "Jim and Tammy Show," part TV talk show, part evangelism meeting, was seen across the country. Heritage USA boasted a 500-room hotel, shopping mall, convention center, water-amusement park, TV studio and several real-estate developments. PTL employed about 2,000 people.
Then in March 1987, Bakker resigned, admitting he had a tryst with Jessica Hahn, a 32-year-old former church secretary.
Tammy Faye Bakker stuck with her disgraced husband through five stormy years of tabloid headlines as the ministry unraveled.
Prosecutors said the PTL organization sold more than 150,000 "lifetime partnerships" promising lodging at the theme park but did not build enough hotel space with the $158 million in proceeds. At his fraud trial, Jim Bakker was accused of diverting $3.7 million to personal use even though he knew the ministry was financially shaky. Trial testimony showed PTL paid $265,000 to Hahn to cover up the sexual encounter with the minister.
Jim Bakker was convicted in 1989 of 24 fraud and conspiracy counts and sentenced to 45 years. The sentence was later reduced, and he was freed in 1994. He said that his wife's decision to leave him had been "like a meat hook deep in my heart. I couldn't eat for days."
While not charged, his then-wife shared during the 1980s in the public criticism and ridicule over the couple's extravagance, including the reportedly gold-plated bathroom fixtures and an air-conditioned doghouse.
There was even a popular T-shirt satirizing her image. The shirt read, "I ran into Tammy Faye at the shopping mall," with the lettering on top of what look like clots of mascara, traces of lipstick and smudges of peach-toned makeup.
In a 1992 letter to her New Covenant Church in Orlando, Fla., she explained why she finally was seeking a divorce.
"For years I have been pretending that everything is all right, when in fact I hurt all the time," she wrote.
"I cannot pretend anymore."
In the end, there wasn't any property to divide, her attorney said. The Bakkers lost their luxury homes in North Carolina, California and Tennessee, their fleet of Cadillacs and Mercedeses, and their vintage Rolls-Royce.
Her autobiography, "I Gotta Be Me," recounts a childhood as Tammy Faye LaValley, one of eight children of a poor family in International Falls, Minn. Her biological father walked out. She was reticent about her age, but a 2000 profile of her in the Star Tribune of Minneapolis said she was born in March 1942.
She recalled trying eye makeup for the first time, then wiping it off for fear it was the devil's work. Then she thought again.
"Why can't I do this?" she asked. "If it makes me look prettier, why can't I do this?"
She married Bakker in 1961, after they met at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis. Beginning with a children's puppet act, they created a religious show that brought a fundamentalist Protestant message to millions.
A secular TV talk program, the "Jim J. and Tammy Faye Show" with co-host Jim J. Bullock, lasted just six weeks in early 1996. Shortly after it went off the air, she underwent surgery for colon cancer.
She said afterward that she endured bleeding for a year because she was embarrassed to go to a male doctor. And she wore her makeup even in surgery.
"They didn't make me take it off," she said. "I had wonderful doctors and understanding nurses. I went in fully made up and came out fully made up."
Survivors include her husband and her two children, Jamie Charles Bakker of New York City and Tammy Sue Chapman of Charlotte.
Spotts said that the family is considering a public memorial service for the coming weeks, but that nothing had been finalized Saturday.

the highbrow

The Croc Epidemic

How a heinous synthetic shoe conquered the world. By Meghan O'Rourke (SLATE)

In the demi-monde of footwear, the term croc was once synonymous with elegance—the reptile skin covering a pair of stiletto sling-backs. Today, it's synonymous with an entirely different—and altogether vegetarian—phenomenon. In just a few years, the exquisitely ugly shoes known as "Crocs" have spread around the world like a Paris Hilton sex tape, giving rise to an epidemic of croc babies and their more egregious counterparts, croc parents. The shoe looks adorable on sun-kissed toddlers, but, alas, the fad did not stop there. For such a modest item (a typical edition sells for $29.99), the Croc has traveled in high places, disgracing the extremities of such celebrities as Mario Batali (who prefers the bright orange variety) and George W. Bush (who paired them with shorts and dark socks).
As fans will tell you, Crocs aren't just footwear; they're the closest thing to religion that the foot has experienced. The company's stock has skyrocketed in value over the past year, and Crocs is now poised to launch a new product line this fall. Yet Crocs are heinous in appearance. A Croc is not a shoe; it is a Tinkertoy on steroids. How did this peculiar shoe-manqué achieve ubiquity—and can it possibly stick around?
In the interest of science and as a defender of fashion, I went to Paragon Sports in New York to buy my first pair of Crocs—the shoes were a bright patch in a sea of sportswear. A woman with petite feet may discover that the smallest size in a popular edition, such as "Cayman" (the Crocs aesthetic is eco-beach), will not fit her; instead, she will have to head to the kids' section—piling ignominy upon ignominy. The Crocs palette tends toward the bold: orange, primary green, bright blue, periwinkle. Having selected a periwinkle pair, I was approached by a young salesclerk, who had noticed my skeptical look. "These styles are very popular," he said reassuringly. "Can I help you with anything?" Yes. Would he be kind enough to reveal if he would ever wear a shoe like this? "Me?" he said, stepping backward. "Nah, they're too ugly. The flip-flop, maybe—but these go too far for me."
A first-time Crocs wearer will indeed find that the shoes are springy and light, as their fans aver, and cushion the feet with what some have called a "marshmallow fluffiness." On a muggy New York day, the holes punched in the toe box allow for a soothing breeze to cool the sweating foot. Even so, the ratio of shame to comfort was extreme. When everyone else on the avenue is garbed in proper footwear—even something as unpretentious as flat sandals or ballet flats—an adult, it seemed to me, must blush at the sight of her bulbous feet. But those who wear Crocs all day long swear that the springy material holds up like nothing else; one painter reported that his chronic shin splints disappeared after he began wearing Crocs. Thus was born what one blogger has labeled the "Croc conundrum": Crocs make you look absurd, but they can change your life.
Comfort and function were always the main Crocs pitch. The shoes' original home was Boulder, Colo. The early Crocs customer was probably a Pacific Northwesterner who liked to boat or garden—this was a niche shoe, after all. He or she was drawn in by the "no slip" grip on the sole, by the aerating holes, and by the featherweight heft of the thing (a pair weighs a mere 6 ounces). The clunky look was not a drawback (this is the region, after all, that brought us grunge), and many customers were pleased that the shoe was made of a proprietary nonplastic resin formula (known as Croslite)—it was, as one testified, "vegan." Because the material is soft, bacteria-resistant, and has a strangely "natural" feel, the Croc fits in with the Northwest's typically green and mildly counterculture ethos. Soon nurses, doctors, cooks, painters, and other workers who stand on their feet all day had discovered Crocs and found them to be life-changing. The company is careful to play up its shoes' supposed orthotic benefits, to the distress of some skeptical podiatrists; a new line for diabetics is in the works.
In the meantime, the company cleverly positioned itself as an eco-conscious no-frills-attached corporation. Crocs was conceived by three friends—Scott Seamans, George Boedecker, and Lyndon Hanson—on a trip in the Caribbean, when Seaman showed his friends the extraordinary slip-resistant clog he was wearing; learning that it was made by a Canadian company called "Foam Creations," the friends spotted an opportunity. Soon they had licensed and were trying to "develop" the shoe (by adding a strap to the back); the name was the first thing that had to go. They realized the tops looked like crocodile snouts from the side. Presto! Crocs was born. In 2002, the company earned a gross profit of $1,000 from sales in America. By 2006, following a series of strategic licensing deals (you can now get NASCAR and Disney Crocs, for example), it was earning more than $200 million a year from sales in 40 countries. (I even spotted knockoffs called Rockies in Jerusalem's Muslim quarter.) Nor have consumers' appetite yet been whetted: During the first quarter of 2007, the company's sales had increased 217 percent from the same period the previous year.
In moving from a niche shoe to widespread wear, Crocs capitalized on its several strengths. The first is that the shoes are ideal for kids, who like their brightness, their lightness, their squishiness, and the strange holes in the front, in which charms can be placed. (Perhaps the only thing uglier than a Cayman Croc is a Croc adorned with "Jibbitz," as the charms are called.) Meanwhile, their parents like that they are dishwasher-safe, waterproof, and odor-free. Their amorphous shape may be an aesthetic crime, but it lends the shoes a jovial quality that appeals to the knee-high and the anti-bourgeois everywhere. (One Slate contributor and early Croc-adopter reports that when she went to her daughter's school dressed in Crocs, the kids all wanted to know why she wore "clown shoes.") And the Croc fad, like the Ugg fad, benefits from the shoe's appropriation of an ethnic look (in this case, the Dutch clog) that one could deem "authentic." Ugly is OK, it would seem, as long as it's imported; then it's considered "practical" and earthy. In a classic cultural inversion, Ugly becomes Good: It represents an authentic critique of the marketing and branding that surround us every day. (Think of Ugly Dolls.) And so Crocs even ran ads in Rolling Stone proclaiming "Ugly can be beautiful." Finally, whereas Uggs were embraced by the fashion world, and became a status symbol, Crocs are a bottom-up brand, embraced by ordinary Americans everywhere. It is a democratic purchase. It looks painful to wear—like something you might find in the rock-bottom bins at Kmart—but is actually soft and high-tech, defeating class-based assumptions.
Footwear has always been particularly susceptible to fads, as the fashion authority Colin McDowell observes in Shoes: Fashion and Fantasy. Shoe fashion tends to swing dramatically on the pendulum from practical to beautiful, largely because shoes are even more utilitarian than clothes—and stylish clothes are rarely as uncomfortable as stylish shoes. Since everyone needs shoes, they are particularly susceptible to the tipping point phenomenon: When enough people are wearing ugly but comfortable shoes, others jump eagerly on the bandwagon, thrilled to be released from the bondage of straps and buckles. And so Crocs represent a kind of rebellion—a vanguard of the comfort movement. As footwear retailers reported this spring, shoe sales are unpredictable this year, with one exception: what retailers call "fashion comfort" styles—including ballet flats, shoes like Geox (which are popular among businessmen), and, of course, Crocs. One retailer called them "a category of their own."
The popularity of Crocs has also led to the inevitable backlash. Croc-mocking is rampant. The Web site Ihatecrocs.com chronicles its proprietors' attempts to destroy Crocs (using fireworks, scissors, and lighter fluid). According to Maclean's, some hospitals have decided to ban Crocs, citing the fact that they do not protect against infection (the toe box has open holes). Meanwhile, there are reports of mysterious "Crocs shocks" shorting out crucial medical equipment; allegedly, the resin formula doesn't just keep out bacteria, it stores electricity. This sounds like urban legend, but one nurse who was skeptical of such accounts did tell Maclean's that when she started wearing Crocs she began giving her patients small electric shocks. Tales have come in from Crocs-haters in Sweden about children whose Crocs melt on escalators or get otherwise stuck in the cracks between steps; the most horrific of these involves a little boy whose toe got "pulled off" when his Crocs got stuck. A crock? Probably.
What is more certain is that some podiatrists are alarmed by their patients' fanatical embrace of Crocs; most Crocs, doctors point out, provide only moderate support. "I'll get people with strained arches because they've been running around in Crocs for five days," said Arnold Ravick, a doctor of podiatric medicine in Washington, D.C., and a spokesman for the American Podiatric Medical Association. "When it comes to shoes, people mistake comfort for support. Comfort is fool's gold—a soft gushy shoe that makes your arches collapse," he told me. "Crocs are popular because they're inexpensive and interchangeable. For people with certain problems, they can be a good shoe. Are they good for your foot, in general? No."
Crocs may be popular, but it's the rare Croc lover who considers them fashionable. As Kim France, the editor in chief of Lucky, the shopping magazine, told me, "Uggs I can make an argument for. Jellies also had their moment of being cute and cool. Crocs are just a pox." The first time she saw a male friend in them, she recalls, she asked him, "Are you really going to make me walk down the street with you?" And so today, the company is at a crossroads. The public's affection for shoe styles is notoriously fickle. (Remember earth shoes?) In June, 50 percent of Croc's shares were sold short by short-seller investors who think that the company's stock will plummet soon. Though the company has made a series of strategic licensing deals and partnerships with subsidiaries, it is still largely dependent on its signature clogs and now flip-flops. Striving to position itself for a fall-off in demand, Crocs plans to launch new clothing and shoe lines this fall that will depart from its signature resin formula and will feature pieces costing between $70 and $100. Who knows whether this strategy will succeed, but at Paragon, one employee was waiting eagerly for the shipment of new flip-flop styles. "I hate the way the old Crocs look," he said. "But they are comfortable."
History suggests that Crocs are more likely to be a passing fad, like Dr. Scholl's, than a true innovation, like the sneaker. The very thing that has made them such a huge hit, after all—their ugly duckling distinctiveness—is also likely to make it hard for the company to go mainstream in any enduring sense. On the other hand, the trademarked Croslite material is an ace in the hole: If the traditional Croc clogs I tried on felt too confining on a summer day, the Croc flip-flops were delightfully springy. The company's sporty Sassari wedge suggests that when it comes to summerwear its designers may be developing at least some aesthetic sense.* But for now, my old platform flip-flops will do.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

A Reprieve for Net Radio
The music industry won't impose higher royalty rates on Webcasters—yet. Stay tuned, though
by Olga Kharif
Web radio will keep playing, rather than play dead, come July 15. The music industry won't impose higher royalty rates, which were to take effect that day, but the good news for Webcasters may prove fleeting.
The reprieve came July 12 when some 20 representatives of music labels, traditional radio networks, and Webcasters met on Capitol Hill, with industry royalty collector SoundExchange agreeing to hold off on the new fees while negotiations continue. The higher rates, approved in March by the Copyright Royalty Board (see BusinessWeek.com, 3/7/07, "The Last Days of Internet Radio?"), are so much higher than those currently paid that many Webcasters claimed that they will be forced out of business.
The music industry, by not sticking firmly to the deadline, appears to be giving credence to that dire declaration. "SoundExchange is in the business of generating revenues, and it's not going to help them if a good chunk of the industry goes out of business," explains Paul Palumbo, research director for AccuStream iMedia Research.
Large-Scale Talks Planned
SoundExchange also agreed to cap a new minimum royalty fee at $50,000 per station per year in place of a $500-per-music-"stream" fee mandated by the CRB, says Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora, a customizable online radio station. That marks a huge win for Webcasters because with online radio technology, each individual Web user can create a custom stream.
Webcasters had struck an adamant stance on the issue, refusing for months to respond to compromise proposals issued by SoundExchange. "We weren't going to do any kind of a proposal until that fee was gone," Westergren says, pointing out that Pandora, with more than 7 million registered listeners, would have owed millions of dollars in royalties. With that settled, "we are absolutely committed to figuring out solutions," he says.
SoundExchange and Webcasters are now expected to gather for a large-scale negotiating session early in the week starting July 16, says Westergren, who was present during the July 12 meeting. At the heart of next week's discussions: the exact royalty rates Webcasters will be required to pay.
Devilish Details Remain
The Webcasting side now believes a compromise can be reached, and fast. "Our plan is to come to the negotiating table and be very reasonable," says Ian Rogers, general manager of Yahoo! (YHOO) Music. Rogers says the parties may ax the per-song fee in favor of a revenue-sharing agreement, which would allow the music industry to benefit as Net radio's sales grow. Web radio listening is expected to balloon as wireless broadband technologies such as WiMAX spread, enabling Web radio to become a mainstay in cars.
Alternatively, the two sides could hammer out tiered royalty rates, charging different fees to Webcasters of different sizes, says Dave Van Dyke, an analyst with consultancy Bridge Ratings. Perhaps nonprofit stations would pay different, lower fees as well. Whatever the compromise, if one is reached at all, Webcasters "are still going to have to pay the piper very shortly," Van Dyke says. While the minimum-fee compromise has appeased many large Webcasters, a deal on royalties is critical for smaller stations. "You may still see hundreds, if not thousands, of Webcasters go out of business," he says.
The Net radio business is not yet all that lucrative, generating just tens of millions in ad revenue per year, Palumbo estimates. "The industry is immature in what it can withstand in terms of royalty payments," he says.
Yet even if the talks collapse, just as illegal music sharing persists despite being outlawed, the Wild West of Web radio won't disappear overnight. "There are still a lot of Webcasters who are going to continue to broadcast no matter what," says Tom Webster, an analyst with consultancy Edison Media Research.
Kharif is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com in Portland, Ore.

science (SLATE)
Bee Not Afraid The disappearance of the honeybees isn't the end of the world.By Heather Smith

Posted Friday, July 13, 2007, at 3:55 PM ET
When the honeybees disappeared this winter, the thought of losing such a fuzzy and adorable animal inspired dismay. The fact that bees might also be useful drove us to despair. The first official reports of "colony collapse disorder" began to surface in October of 2006; seven months later, USDA officials were calling CCD "the biggest general threat to our food supply," and newspaper columnists nervously joked about the impending "bloody wars not for oil or land or God but over asparagus and avocados." Experts pointed to the $14.6 billion worth of free labor honeybees provide every year, pollinating our crops. With a full quarter of them AWOL, presumed dead, who would make sweet love to the $1.6 billion California almond harvest? More precisely, who would help the almond harvest make sweet love to itself?
Few people realized that the honeybee apocalypse was already over. We may continue to associate them with childhood sugar rushes and chubby-cheeked fertility metaphors, but in real life honeybees have been virtually extinct in North America for more than 10 years, their absence concealed by a rogue's gallery of look-alikes. The stragglers have been kept alive only by the continued ministrations of the agricultural giga-industry that needs them.
It used to be that it was hard to eat a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich without a honeybee showing up and doing a little dance around your head. Hives (literally) grew on trees until 1987, when a mite called varroa destructor turned up in a honeybee colony in Wisconsin. Even for a parasite, varroa is less than charming. It looks like a microscopic baked bean, with sharp fangs used to slurp tiny droplets of blood from the abdomens of unsuspecting honeybees. Since these bites also transmit disease, like deformed wing virus and acute bee paralysis virus, an infested colony is kaput within four years. By 1994, an estimated 98 percent of the wild, free-range honeybees in the United States were gone. The number of managed colonies—those maintained by beekeepers—dropped by half.
The honeybees may have been especially vulnerable to the varroa epidemic. When the honeybee genome was sequenced a few years ago, researchers discovered fewer immune-system genes than you'd find in other insects. This despite the fact that the honeybee lives in tenementlike conditions, anywhere between 15,000 and 30,000 of them crammed into a hive the size of a filing cabinet. To make matters worse, a weakened hive often becomes the target of honey-raiders from healthier colonies, which only helps the parasites to spread.
It's possible that if the American honeybees had been left to their own devices, they would have died off in epic numbers and then evolved natural defenses against varroa (like more effective grooming), as they did in Asia. But crops had to be pollinated and no one had the time to sit around and wait.
Beekeepers opted to keep their colonies on life support with selective breeding, and by sprinkling them with medicine and insecticides aimed at the invading mites. This was no longer a hobby for amateurs. The only honeybees left—i.e., the ones that started disappearing in October—had become the cows of the insect world: virtually extinct in the wild, hopped up on antibiotics, and more likely to reproduce via artificial insemination than by their own recognizance.
If anything, it's impressive that the honeybee has hung on in America for as long as it has. The commercial hives spend half the year sealed and stacked in the back of 18-wheelers, as they're schlepped down miles of interstate to pollinate crops around the country. During this time, they get pumped up with high fructose corn syrup, which keeps the bees buzzing and lively, but it's no pollen. And if a bee happens to get sick on the road, it can't self-quarantine by flying away from the colony to die. (In the wild, a bee rarely dies in the hive.) Add to the above the reduced genetic diversity resulting from the die-offs in the 1990s, and you have an insect living in a very precarious situation—where a new pathogen, even a mild one, could spell honeybee doom.
So what brought on this recent scourge of colony collapse disorder? Early news reports on CCD listed a plethora of suspects: pesticides, parasites, global warming, chilly larvae, ultraviolet light, not enough pollen, not enough rain, cell phones, and alien spaceships. Given the present state of the honeybee, any or all of these could have been the culprit. (Well, except for the cell phones and spaceships.)
It's even possible the mystery disease has already shown up in years past. An 1897 issue of Bee Culture magazine mentions the symptoms of something that sounds remarkably like CCD, as do a few case studies from the '60s and '70s. Before bees fell victim to varroa and the ensuing stresses of modern life, these afflictions would have been easy to bounce back from. Today, the same causal agent could have more serious effects.
But is CCD such a tragedy? The honeybee may be the only insect ever extended charismatic megafauna status, but it's already gone from the wild (and it wasn't even native to North America to begin with). Sure, it makes honey, but we already get most of that from overseas. What about the $14.6 billion in "free labor"? It's more expensive than ever: In the last three years, the cost to rent a hive during the California almond bloom has tripled, from $50 to $150.
Good thing the honeybee isn't the only insect that can pollinate our crops. In the last decade, research labs have gotten serious about cultivating other insects for mass pollination. They aren't at the point yet where they can provide all of the country's pollination needs, but they're getting there. This year the California Almond Board two-timed the honeybee with osmia ligneria—the blue-orchard bee: Despite CCD, they had a record harvest.
But these newly domesticated species are likely to follow in the tiny footsteps of the honeybee, if they're treated the same way. Varroa mites have already been found on bumblebees, though for the time being they seem not to be able to reproduce without honeybee hosts. And bumblebees used in greenhouse pollination have escaped on several occasions to spread novel, antibiotic-resistant diseases to their wild counterparts. If things keep going like this, we may soon be blaming spaceships all over again. Heather Smith (e-mail) is a writer living in San Francisco.

Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

AYN RAND and ISRAEL

(Jerusalem Post Article)
Anyone who has heard Dr. Yaron Brook lecture on foreign policy would likely call him a militant, unflinching champion of Israel. His loyalty, however, does not derive from his Jewish or Israeli background. He's a proud atheist, who admits to not knowing - or really caring - when the Pessah Seder falls. He relentlessly defends Israel and the West because he puts his faith in the rational, free, individual soul.
Brook is the president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) in Irvine, California, an educational institute and resource center entrusted with spreading Objectivism, the formal name of the philosophy of the controversial 20th-century novelist-philosopher.
"We view what happens in Israel as an indicator of what will happen in the rest of the world. To the extent America abandons Israel, it abandons itself. Israel is a beacon of civilization in a barbaric, backward area," Brook said on a recent trip here to visit family with his wife, also an Israeli expatriate, and their two children. "Israel represents, despite its flaws, the values of the West: individual rights, free speech, freedom of the press, equality before the law and the rule of law."
Objectivism upholds values generally associated with Western culture - individualism, reason and science - but its distinctive development is a moral ideal of "selfishness," whereby someone's own happiness is a moral responsibility. The home page of ARI presents Rand's mantra: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."
ARI was founded in 1985, after Rand's death, by her intellectual heir, Leonard Peikoff, to pave the way for a philosophical and cultural renaissance in the US and to reverse what ARI sees as anti-reason, anti-individualism and anti-capitalist trends in today's culture. It concentrates on American domestic issues, but Israel figures prominently in its lectures, essays and editorials.
"Ayn Rand herself commented that Israel was one of the few causes she ever voluntarily supported," Brook said. "The West turning against Israel - which she saw occurring in the late 1960s and early 1970s - was the West committing suicide."
Those familiar with Rand's disdain for religion and socialism might find her sympathy for Israel surprising. "[Rand] said Israel has problems, as all countries, but Israel is still West," Brook said. "It respects individual rights, reason and science. She could separate out essentials from non-essentials. If Israel abandoned all its Western values, it wouldn't deserve support."
BORN ALICE ROSENBAUM in 1905 in St. Petersburg to a secular, middle-class Jewish family, Rand fled to the US from the Soviet Union in 1925 because she saw America as the best model of a free country. The new communist regime had already confiscated her father's pharmacy.
Rand maintained no Jewish affiliation throughout her life and shunned religion because it was based on faith as opposed to reason. At 29, she wrote in her philosophical journal: "I want to fight religion as the root of all human lying and the only excuse for suffering." She observed no Jewish holidays, but kept Christmas as an American holiday celebrating life and human productivity. Her only acknowledgment of her Jewish identity came in the face of anti-Semitic remarks, as a retort to racism.
She married an American named Frank O'Conner and deliberately had no children so she could give birth to fictional characters who upheld her vision of a hero. Her trademark character is Howard Roark, the intransigent architect of The Fountainhead, who refuses to bend his architectural vision to society's irrational standards. Her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, dignifies the villain of socialist artists - the industrial capitalist - through a futuristic depiction of a collectivist America. From the 1950s until her death in 1982, she led an intellectual movement based on Objectivism, although some critics have dubbed it a cult. Brook thinks her popularity is now at its highest, with more than 750,000 of her books sold annually.
Historically, American academia has been dismissive of Ayn Rand, but in recent years her work is increasingly being included in mainstream curricula. According to the Ayn Rand Institute, which works to raise her profile in academic circles, more than 30 professors teach Rand in leading American universities, with the number continually growing.
Rand remains an obscure figure in Israeli academia, even though many Israelis read her novels in their teens and 20s, including Prof. Elhanan Yakira, head of the philosophy department at the Hebrew University. "I don't know anyone with us that really teaches her philosophy," he said. "There could be people that deal with her, but I don't really know. Sometimes people mention her name, but not a lot." He can't comment on whether her lack of representation stems from any antipathy to her ideas.
In the 1970s, a capricious philosopher named Moshe Kroy taught Rand's philosophy at Tel Aviv University, but he eventually abandoned rational egoism for Scientology, and later, Indian mysticism, which may have contributed to the perception that her philosophy is a fad. Rand's philosophy is no longer taught at Tel Aviv University.
When asked what he thought of Rand, Joseph Agassi, professor emeritus of philosophy at Tel Aviv University and York University in Toronto, reacted with sharp dislike, calling her a "fool" and her philosophy unserious. "It's very low quality," he said. "It's extreme right, although not religious right."
He'd rather teach someone like Khalil Jibran, a Lebanese-born inspirational philosopher. "He's much more friendly; I just like him more, but I wouldn't teach him either." He adds that Rand's philosophy is generally easy to study independently and doesn't require a university course.
Prof. Noah Milgram, who attended Brook's lecture, would not be surprised if Israeli professors shy away from her. "The socialist bent of many Israeli-born and Israeli-trained academicians is such that if they read Ayn Rand's novels, they'd probably dismiss them as inhumane stories about egoism," said Milgram, dean of graduate studies at the College of Judea and Samaria and professor emeritus in psychology at Tel Aviv University.
Milgram first heard of Rand in the early 1950s, when The Fountainhead was on the reading list of a course on American intellectual thought he took as a student at Harvard. The course was taught by the eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Milgram remained an admirer of her works, and his daughter, Shoshana, a professor at Virginia Tech University, does biographic and literary research on the life and work of Rand.
"In America there is more respect for the notion that the goals of individuals are more important than the goals enforced upon him by society," he said. "Admittedly, American universities also have a slant toward liberal and left-leaning thinking, but her ideas are more acceptable in American philosophical and political thought, precisely because they are in accord with the American ideal of the individual acting in accord with his conscience, conquering the frontier and advancing from the log cabin in which he was born to the White House."
Unlike in the US, where there are many campus clubs dedicated to Objectivism and several independent organizations that systematically study and discuss Rand's work, there are few organized outlets in Israel for Rand scholars and admirers. Over the years there have been attempts to create campus clubs and fan networks here, but none of them stuck.
BOAZ ARAD, an Objectivist who runs his own company selling mobile computers and accessories, started a magazine dedicated to Objectivism in 1987. In 2005 it evolved into Anochi.com, the only comprehensive Hebrew Web site dedicated to Rand's ideas and which received the blessing of ARI. ("Anochi" means "I" in archaic Hebrew, as a reference to Rand's virtue of "selfishness.") According to Arad, the site's number of visitors is on the rise, reaching several thousand a month. He estimates there are about 100 Objectivists in Israel and about 1,000 ardent Rand admirers.
Arad developed an interest in Rand after reading The Fountainhead as a teen. He and Brook met in their late teens, united by their interest in Rand's ideas, and it was Arad who organized Brook's lecture.
While the Jewish state may lack serious representation of Rand scholarship, in the US, many leaders of the Objectivist movement are Jewish.
"Most communists are Jewish. Most professors are Jewish. Jews are intellectuals, so they dominate any intellectual movement," Brook commented. "Jews dominate the anti-Zionist movement. I wouldn't be surprised if Jews head up Holocaust denial. Jews are intellectual; they gravitate towards ideas. Why that is, that's a deeper question. I think they'd certainly gravitate towards a set of ideas that make sense." In fact, many of the writers and fellows at the Ayn Rand Institute are Jewish.
Arad said the lack of crossover of Rand's ideas to modern Israel is not terribly surprising. "Israel had very strong leftist roots historically, especially among the intellectuals, and they felt very intimidated by Ayn Rand ideas, but this didn't cancel the fact that many Israelis read and love Ayn Rand and consider her books to be very moving and inspiring. Not as many applied her ideas to their lives and pursued the philosophy behind the books."
He related how he recently received a call from an elderly lady who said she was a fan of Ayn Rand. "She never knew there was any activity related to Ayn Rand, whom she always liked since she was young. I'm sure there are many more like her around."

Why the Great Plains Are Dying
By Steven Conn
Mr. Conn is an associate professor in the history department at Ohio State University and a writer for the History News Service.
Much of the western United States has been experiencing a severe drought for nearly a decade, and the future only looks drier. One of the conclusions of the new United Nations study on global climate change is that wet places on the planet will probably get wetter and dry places, like much of the American West, will become even more parched. John Wesley Powell is rolling over in his grave.Powell isn't a household name any more, but in the era after the Civil War he was among the most prominent American scientists and explorers. His expedition down the Colorado River became the stuff of heroic legend in the late 19th century.But Powell was not simply an adventurer. Between 1881 and 1894 Powell directed the United States Geologic Survey. Based on his research he concluded that there were really two Americas, one wet and one dry, divided almost exactly down the middle, roughly at the 100th meridian. That unalterable fact of the climate, Powell warned, would force limits on the way Americans settled the West.Americans don't like to be told that there are limits. The very idea rubs us the wrong way and it did in Powell's day as well. Yet then as now scientists were telling us that we faced real environmental constraints. Then as now the question was whether we were prepared to face those limits, restrain our use of resources, and re-imagine our national aspirations so that they were more environmentally sustainable. Powell's career serves as a reminder of what it ultimately costs if we stick our heads in the sand.In 1878 Powell wrote and submitted to Congress his Report on the Arid Lands of the United States. It was a blockbuster as scientific reports go. Powell told Congress that if the West was going to be settled at all, the region would require an extensive plan for water management and allocation.It was not what Congress wanted to hear, any more than Congress wants to hear that message today, especially not the expansion-minded politicians from the West who rashly predicted that their states would some day be home to as any as 180 million Americans. Rep. Thomas Patterson of Colorado denounced Powell as "a charlatan in science and intermeddler in affairs of which he has no proper conception." The bill to reconfigure the use of public land in the West that resulted from Powell's report died a slow procedural death.Events proved Powell right, of course, though being right has never been a path to political success in America. Americans have a long and rich tradition of shooting the messengers bearing bad news. Drought hit the arid lands in the 1880s, creating the first large-scale farm crisis in the nation's history. "In God we trusted, in Kansas we busted," so the expression went at the time.The rains stopped again in the 1930s and created the environmental disaster of the Dust Bowl. Look at a map of the areas most devastated by the drought and wind of the "dirty '30s" and you'll notice they hug that 100th meridian -- exactly the region that Powell worried would be under-watered and over-farmed.After World War II, farmers on the plains dealt with the natural cycles of rain and drought by pumping water from the Ogallala aquifer, a vast underground lake, to irrigate their fields. It's the agricultural equivalent of paying your mortgage with a credit card -- the bank catches up with you eventually. In this case the water table under the Great Plains is now dropping dramatically, as much as five feet in a single year, and to what end? The plains are being depopulated; the nation's poorest county is now in Nebraska.Meanwhile, suburban regions in the west continue to sprawl without restraint. It makes even less sense to water lawns and golf courses in the Las Vegas desert than it does to farm intensively on the plains. Yet they continue to sprout up, surreal, unnatural green dots on a tan and tawny landscape.In the West, the region Powell spent a lifetime studying, no quantity of boosterism, or political grandstanding or individual will can create more water where there isn't enough. Denying a problem doesn't make it go away. Oklahoma's Sen. James Inhofe, who still insists in 2007 that climate change is a "hoax," is simply the successor to Rep. Patterson in 1878.Climate change is no more a hoax now than Powell was a charlatan. We have paid a grievous environmental price for our failure to take Powell's warnings about water seriously. Perhaps we can learn from that failure and face the challenges posed by climate change by pulling our heads out of the sand.

The Ranch House AnomalyHow America fell in and out of love with them.

By Witold Rybczynski SLATE MAGAZINE
In his new book, Last Harvest: How a Cornfield Became New Daleville, Witold Rybczynski follows the design, construction, and marketing of a new residential subdivision over the course of several years. In the process, he explains how modern homes and communities are built. In yesterday's excerpt, the first of three, Rybczynski examined why we live in houses. Today's excerpt explains how Americans fell in and out of love with the ranch house. Wednesday's slide show follows the evolution of New Daleville step-by-step, from cornfield to subdivision.
The construction of a typical house requires thousands of board feet of lumber, hundreds of sheets of plywood, and many cubic yards of concrete, square feet of exterior siding and wallboard, bundles of insulation, gallons of paint, reels of wiring, and lengths of copper piping. A builder not only coordinates a dozen different trades to put all this together in a timely and efficient manner but must put it together in a way that is attractive—and affordable—to buyers. He must also judge to what extent buyers are open to innovation. Houses are the largest investments that most families will ever make, and as prudent small investors, they tend to be conservative and to avoid unnecessary risk. While architectural critics frequently disparage the uniformity of housing, that is precisely what buyers demand; they don't want to be stuck with an odd or dated house at the time of resale. Contrarians don't do well in the housing market.
But houses are not only investments, they are homes, and hence sources of personal pleasure and pride. Like clothes, they convey status and social standing; like cars, they tell people something about their owners. Thus, the decision to buy a house is emotional as well as financial. I understood this the first time my wife and I went house-hunting. There were houses that we knew, from the second we saw them, were not for us; we didn't need to go inside. Of course, one doesn't buy a house just because of its curb appeal, but the view from the curb is important. It's what we see every time we return home.
The schizophrenic house buyer is both a status seeker and an investor. In addition, he or she is a consumer. Renovating a kitchen, for example, is done with one eye on convenience and one eye on resale, as well as a glance at the attractive advertisements in the latest issue of House & Garden. The house buyer is not immune to fashion. Although the desire for novelty is generally tempered by an inclination to the safe bet, there was one period when buyers let their hair down. Buoyed by the post–World War II boom, optimistic about the future, and gripped by the idea of Progress, Americans embraced innovation as never before, in the way they traveled, the way they brought up their children, in their manners—and in their homes. The hallmark of that period was the ranch house. It is said to have been invented in 1932 by Cliff May, a self-taught San Diego architect, but it also owed a debt to Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian houses, and to Alfred Levitt's popular "Levittowner." Today the suburban ranch house is considered the epitome of conservative taste, but at the time it represented a radical departure from tradition. To begin with, all the rooms were on one floor. The layout was open and casual, with wood paneling instead of wallpaper, and room dividers instead of interior walls. The exterior was unabashedly contemporary and did away with steep roofs, dormer windows, and porches.
The casual, spread-out ranch house (it was also known as the California ranch and the rambler) had enormous appeal and by 1950 accounted for nine out of 10 new houses. In hindsight, the rancher's most striking feature was its diffidence. Low to the ground, it lacked traditional domestic status symbols, such as porticoes and tall gables. Its one extravagance was a large window facing the street—the picture window. As far as I have been able to determine, picture windows made their first appearance in Levittown, Pa. Alfred Levitt had already used floor-to-ceiling walls of Thermopane glass to open the house up to the backyard, but in the "Levittowner" he put an 8-foot-square* kitchen window facing the street. The common criticism that picture windows offer neither privacy nor a view misses the point. Picture windows are meant not for looking out but for looking in. They are displays—for Christmas ornaments, Halloween skeletons, and Thanksgiving Day wreaths. Opening the house up to the street—something that neither Wright nor modernist architects did—is a curiously disarming gesture. "Feel free to look in," the picture window announces, "we have nothing to hide."
Another design innovation of the '50s was the split-level house, which mated a ranch house with a two-story section, half a flight up and half a flight down. The split-level originated in California as a way of building on slopes, but it also provided useful solutions to two new domestic problems. One was where to put the television. The first televisions, which were designed like pieces of furniture, stood in the living room. As television watching became increasingly popular—especially among children—to preserve the living room for formal entertaining, the set was moved to its own special room: the recreation, or rec, room. The rec room was usually in the basement, but in a split level, this was only half a flight down, less drastically separated from the rest of the house. The other problem was where to put the car. Using the lower floor of a split level as a garage was an inexpensive alternative to the attached carport. By 1970 four out of five new houses were either ranchers or splits.
When I was growing up in Canada, my friends and I lived in new, ranch-type houses. Ours was not large. It contained a living room, an eat-in kitchen, three bedrooms, and a bathroom, all in less than 800 square feet. This would have been a tight fit for the four of us, except that we also had a large basement, which accommodated my train set, my parents' collection of National Geographics, and a laundry area. There was also a rec room—my first design project. I nailed sheets of textured plywood to the walls, laid vinyl tile on the floor, and stapled perforated acoustical tile to the ceiling. I built a small bar in the corner and a Mondrian-esque room divider. I was 18, and I thought it the height of chic.
Housing has always been governed by a simple rule: As people become richer, they spend more money on their homes. Historically, this has meant using more expensive materials—varnished mahogany instead of painted pine, marble instead of brick—updating the décor, or adding technological refinements, such as gas lighting, indoor plumbing, or central heating. In addition, spending more money has usually meant making the home bigger. This happened in Renaissance Italy, 17th-century Holland, and 19th-century England. It also happened in the prosperous second half of the 20th century in the United States. Some statistics: In 1950 the median size of a new house was 800 square feet; by 1970 this had increased to 1,300; 20 years later it had grown to 1,900; and in 2003 it stood at 2,100. More than one-third of new houses built today exceed 2,400 square feet.
My childhood bedroom was about 8 feet by 10 feet, just big enough for a bed, a desk, and a chest of drawers. My younger brother's room was smaller. The most generous space in our home was the garden, where my father grew gooseberries and crab apples. Our 60-feet-by-100-foot lot was small for the time. My best friend, whose father was a local grandee—the manager of Woolworth's—lived nearby in a larger ranch house, which occupied a much bigger lot. That's the thing with ranchers; as they get larger, they stretch out and need more space. A 2,000-square-foot ranch house with a two-car garage, for example, needs a lot at least 120 feet wide.
By the 1980s, buyers wanted larger houses, but California's widely copied Proposition 13, which required developers to pay for their own infrastructure, had made land much more expensive. The builders' solution was to return to two-story houses, which don't need such large lots, and which are up to 30 percent cheaper to build because of smaller foundations and roofs. Today, more than half of all new houses have two stories. But that is only one change. No one builds ranch houses or split-levels anymore. Picture windows and carports are gone, and so are breezeways. Home buyers' affair with modernistic design is over. When I leaf through a directory of one big home builder's current models, I notice that all the houses have similar architectural features: pitched roofs, gables, dormers, bay windows, keystones, shutters, porches, and paneled doors. Americans' fondness for such conventional imagery is characterized by some critics as nostalgic and retrograde. In fact, it represents a long domestic tradition that extends to colonial New England and Virginia. In that history, the brief fling with the rancher was an anomaly.

Wireless power pulls plug on cables
Mark Henderson, Science Editor The Australian
June 08, 2007
POWER cables and plugs may soon become obsolete because scientists have developed a way to wirelessly charge electrical devices from a distance.
WiTricity can already power a lightbulb over a distance of 2m, and its inventors believe that within three to five years the system would be able to charge mobile phones, laptops, MP3 players and other electronic devices. The appliances would only need to be within range of a WiTricity transmitter to work. Professor Marin Soljacic, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that wireless electricity could eventually replace most power cables, in the same way that mobile and cordless phones had supplanted landlines. “Once, when my son was about three years old, we visited his grandparents’ house,” said Professor Soljacic, whose results are published in the journal Science. “They had a 20-year-old phone and my son picked up the handset, asking, ‘Dad, why is this phone attached with a cord to the wall?’ “That is the mindset of a child growing up in a wireless world. My best response was, ‘It is strange and awkward, isn’t it?’ Hopefully, we will be getting rid of some more wires, and also batteries, soon.” Professor Soljacic’s inspiration for WiTricity grew out of his frustration at having to find a plug to charge his mobile phone. “It was probably the sixth time that month that I was awakened by my cell phone beeping to let me know that I had forgotten to charge it. It occurred to me that it would be so great if the thing took care of its own charging.” While there are already wireless devices that can charge batteries by electromagnetic induction – as used in most electric toothbrushes and pads on which mobile phones can be placed – these work over only very short distances. Standard electromagnetic fields, which are used in wi-fi networks to send data, could feasibly transmit power too, but they spread radiation in all directions so most of the energy would be wasted. Lasers can be used to focus energy in one direction, but an uninterrupted line of sight is needed. For WiTricity, Professor Soljacic turned to the concept of resonance, which allows the efficient transmission of energy between objects that resonate at the same frequency. The principle is the same when a soprano sings a loud single note – the note can make wine glasses vibrate and even break, so long as they are filled to a level that makes them resonate at the same frequency. The WiTricity system consists of two copper coils, one sending power, the other receiving it. The receiver is designed to resonate at the same frequency as the magnetic field generated by the transmitter. Professor Peter Fisher, a colleague of Professor Soljacic, said that the system worked efficiently and automatically, and did not require a clear line of sight between the transmitter and the electronic appliance. “As long as the laptop is in a room equipped with a source of wireless power, it would charge automatically, without having to be plugged in,” he said. “It would not even need a battery to operate inside such a room.” At present, the system uses fairly large coils, which are unsuitable for mobile devices, but Professor Soljecic said that it should be possible to miniaturise the system for commercial use within three to five years. “One would like the distance between the source and the device to be a bit larger – four to five metres – the sizes of the coils to be somewhat smaller, to fit into a laptop, and the efficiency to be a bit higher. We have promising ideas as to how to achieve this so now is a good time to start seriously thinking about commercialisation.”

Britain's gay Prime Minister It was only forty years ago
Has Britain already had a gay Prime Minister - only a few decades ago? The answer now seems to be yes. Brian Coleman, a Tory member of the London Assembly, finally pushed the rumours into the public domain last month when he said it was "common knowledge" in Tory circles that Edward Heath, Conservative resident of Number Ten Downing Street from 1970 to 1974, was gay. Coleman claims Heath had to be warned warned by police to stop cottaging in 1955, when he ascended to the Cabinet. There were splutters of denial from some of the old Tory establishment to the allegations. Heath's successor as Tory MP for Old Bexley and Sidcup, Derek Conway, snapped: "Ted was absolutely wedded to politics. He didn't have a great deal of personal companionship in his life but there are people who are capable of getting on without companionship."But people who knew him well said Coleman was broadly right. Matthew Parris, a gay Tory MP-turned-columnist who knew Heath, thinks he "probably was" gay. He explains: "Ever since, as a young MP, I escorted his car into my constituency, leather-jacketed on my motorbike, I used to notice the twinkle in Ted's eye... Ted simply loved male company. He like to be teased, even twitted, by younger men. Women at his table - and there were few - tended to be ignored unless they stood up for themselves."Yet gay people have been strangely reluctant to embrace the news that Heath was (to borrow a phrase from his arch-enemy, Margaret Thatcher) One of Us. Julian Clary asked: "Must we? Aren't there some grounds on which he can be disqualified? I do hope I didn't inadvertently pleasure Ted Heath all those years ago. Please God, I feel nauseous just thinking about it."So who was this lost gay Prime Minister? Edward Heath was the first Tory leader in modern times from a poor background. His mother had been a maid in Broadstairs, Kent, and he climbed from grammar school to Oxford into the Tory ranks. He seems to have sublimated his sexuality into obsessive ambition, becoming a champion sailor, a concert-level conductor, and the leader of the country. At the time, the rival Labour politician Barbra Castle looked at these achievements and said: "We do not know if Mr Heath is a repressed homosexual or a repressed heterosexual. All we can say is that he is a repressed something." He seemed so sexually unusual that his biographer John Campbell records a rumour that swept across London during his Premiership. Every Friday night, it was said, a black limo was pull up outside Number Ten and he would be whisked to Regent's Park. The gates to London Zoo would silently swing open and Heath would be led to the panda den - into which he would descend for a long fuck-session with the Chinese bears.This ridiculous fantasy nonetheless captures something. Heath seemed to the outside world to be a notoriously cold, odd man. His Prime Ministership is usually considered to be a disaster, since he was forced to turn out the lights in Britain and reduce the country to a three-day working week in the face of industrial action. But he had one towering passion and achievement: he brought Britain into the European Union, the cause to which he dedicated his life. As a young man, he cycled across Europe, even feeling Hitler brush past him at a Nazi rally where he gaped at in horror. After serving as a soldier in the war, he became determined that the only way to prevent Europe from consuming itself once more in fire and blood was to build a united continent.This was only one of the issues on which Heath became bitterly divided from the woman who came to dominate the last years of his life: Margaret Thatcher. As PM, Heath was reluctant to promote Thatcher to the Cabinet because he presciently guessed that "if we do, we'll never bloody get rid of her." But he did - and Thatcher knifed him, siezing the Tory leadership from him in 1976. For the rest of his life, Heath famously sunk into "the longest sulk in history", refusing to accept he had been deposed and damning Thatcher (usually for good reasons) at every opportunity. When she finally fell from power in 1991, he said just one word: "Rejoice."Although he kept it secret, at no point was Heath a hypocrite about his sexuality. He supported liberalizing the country's anti-gay laws. It's true that, as Chief Whip in 1958, he had to sack the Foreign Office minister Ian Harvey in 1958 after he was caught sucking off a 19 year-old Guardsman in Hyde Park - but that was for stupid indiscretion, not his sexuality. If Harvey had been caught performing cunnilingus on a 19 year old girl in a park, he would have suffered the same fate.But should we care? Does this submerged history matter? Peter Tatchell thinks it does. He says that the gay rights movement has been "fighting a great liberation struggle handicapped by an almost total lack of knowledge of our own past. Our minds are colonised by a straight version of history, where we gay people are invisible. Our existence has been erased from the historical record. Apart from Oscar Wilde, the only gay people who come to attention in the history books are mass murderers, spies, child abusers and men entrapped by the police in public toilets."Heath probably was not our first gay Prime Minister either. Pitt the Younger was famously attached to a young male friend, Tom Steele, who he would take to Brighton (then, as now, a gay haunt) on long holidays and write fawning letters to him. At the time, people compared Steele to the gay men who had influenced kings. Pitt would go with straight friends into brothels, but never touched a woman. His biographer William Hague - who faced gay rumours himself until he married - says "we have no sure evidence that Pitt was homosexual" but the most likely answer is that "Pitt had homosexual leanings but supressed any urge to act on them for the sake of his ambitions."Showing that there were gay people in every crevice of history - even at the apex of power - shows how normal and ordinary and ineradicable homosexuality is, and always will be. It's not about "role models". It about our sheer, unexciting ordinariness.And it's revealing that the people most keen to scorn these revelations about the gay Prime Ministers in our past are the people who would be most hostile to gay Prime Ministers in our future. Andrew Roberts, a far right historian, sniped in the Daily Express that discussing the sexuality of dead figures is "a baleful phenomenon" which "adds to a new terror to death - that someone can be accused of performing then-criminal acts such as cottaging." He insisted Heath was suffering from "a rare for of thyroid complaint" that made him "asexual".A gaggle of ugly right-wing commentators has declared that Britain will never again tolerate a gay leader. Simon Heffer of the Daily Telegraph says it is "undesirable" that "political parties or governments should have an unrepresentative number of homosexuals in their upper ranks. As the present Labour administration has demonstrated, it is difficult for ministers to grasp problems affecting the family if you don't have one." Glossing over the bizarre idea that gay people don't have families - does he think we hatch from an egg? - he continued, "The obsessive nature of politics that so absorbs homosexuals may also deny them a sense of perspective, and deny them a hinterland in which to retreat."Similarly, Bruce Anderson - a colleague of mine at the Independent, who once charmingly called me "an uppity little queer" during a drunken rant - says, "A homosexual who seemed to be a contender for the premiership might be subjected to the most intense scutiny. Though homosexuals may be the beneficiaries of increasing tolerance, this would not extend to an attempt to adopt children. 'Jonny lives with Bob and Jerry' - possibly, but not in Downing Street."If we want to prove these bigots wrong, we have to show that gay people have always been around power (and everywhere else too) - and we always will be. The only difference is that now we are no longer going to supress our sexuality, as poor sad Ted Heath did, to appease their rancid bigotry.