Best Appointment of this Administration

Maybe a better appointment than Richard Cordray. Damn close, anyway. And as it doesn't require Senate confirmation, I'm going to put it in the (nearly empty) container of evidence that Barack Obama might actually govern more liberally if he had a Democratic Congress.

Anyway, I have been a supporter of Partners in Health for years, and I'm here to tell you that anyone strongly connected with PIH is a Good Egg.

From PIH Founders Paul Farmer & Ophelia Dahl:

It gives us great joy to share the news that our Partners In Health co-founder and dear friend, Dr. Jim Kim, has been selected by President Obama as the United States’ nominee for the Presidency of the World Bank.

Jim is an inspired choice to lead the World Bank. Having seen him work in settings from inner-city Boston to the slums of Peru, from Haiti to Rwanda to the prisons of Siberia, we know that for three decades Jim has committed himself to breaking the cycle of poverty and disease. This has been his goal as a physician, a teacher, a policy maker, and a university president; it was ever his goal as a founder and director of Partners In Health, which now operates in more than a dozen countries.

Click here for more information on Dr. Jim Kim and Partners In Health.

Jim has worked in rural villages and squatter settlements, just as he has worked in the halls of power and privilege. Again and again, we, his friends and colleagues, have seen Jim imagine a better future, one that harnesses new technologies and older but sound notions of justice and equity, and links this vision to much more than talk and reports and studies.

Jim is all about delivery and about delivering on promises often made but too seldom kept. We can think of no one more able to help families, communities, and entire nations break out of poverty.

As poverty continues to claim lives, and as inequality deepens, the Bank -- and other institutions charged with lessening poverty -- need bold and experienced leaders and implementers like Jim Kim. Today is a proud day for us at PIH, and it is a great day for the poor and all who serve them.

Even superb World Bank president candidate Jeffrey Sachs says Kim is the best candidate and backs him 100 percent. This isn't a slam dunk. This is a full-court shot, nothing but net, at the buzzer to win the NCAA championship.

When the Sex Matters

For the record: I am perfectly fine with any sex act between consenting adults, as long as it does not violate any criminal statutes or harm other adults, children, animals or antique furniture.

However, Christopher Hitchens' defense in Slate of Paul Wolfowitz' - Hitch resents the term "girlfriend," so let's call her his paramour - is just a bit much, even for The Hitch.

Hitchens apparently knows her personally, and thinks she's just peachy, therefore the media types criticizing her boyfriend are a bunch of meanies.

"(T)his is the nastiest and dirtiest and cheapest campaign of character assassination I have ever seen."

Really?

Nastier than discussing in detail the appearance and characteristics of the president's penis?

Dirtier than speculating on the First Lady's sexual proclivities?

Cheaper than taping a distraught young woman's private confessions and broadcasting them to the world?

Worse character assassination than attacking that young woman for falling for a powerful older man and making fun of her weight?

Adultery (Wolfowitz is separated, but still married) is far more common than any of us likes to admit. I have worked in almost two dozen different places in my life, large and small, and at every single one of them there was at least one affair going on.

Some were fairly harmless co-worker gropings. Others were boss-subordinate couplings that led to scream-fests, hysterical scenes, plummeting morale, destroyed productivity, mass resignations, firings, divorce and lawsuits.

It may be true, as Hitchens claims, that Shaha Riza was supremely qualified for her position at the World Bank and the one she eventually got at the State Department, that she did an outstanding job and that she earned every penny of the enormous salary Wolfie arranged for her.

But the only "character assassination" she has suffered is the revelation of her affair. I don't believe publication of the truth constitutes "character assassination."

Wolfowitz is a public figure, and has been for many years - since long before their affair began. Riza is by all accounts an intelligent, highly competent, sophisticated woman of the world. She knew, or should have known, that she was one resentful employee away from exposure.

If she wanted to maintain her privacy, she should have either insisted that Wolfowitz decline the World Bank job so she could keep hers (the I Am Woman option), quietly resigned from the World Bank and found another job on her own without Wolfie's help (the Stand By Your Man option) or ended the affair (the Good Girl option.)

That she arrogantly insisted on being treated as a professional while accepting special favors from her lover opened the door to both exposure and ridicule.

Both richly deserved.