This includes Tommy Davidson outside of Arclight Theatres in Hollywood and the four stars I saw at the first Hollywood movie premiere I’ve ever attended. One would think that I’d attend more premieres given that I live in L.A., but I don’t really seek them out. The premiere I attended was for “Cyrus” starring John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill, and Oscar winner Marisa Tomei. I saw the latter two on the red carpet and then again inside the theatre. I also walked by Jason Segel from “I Love You, Man” as I was exiting. He’s friends with Jonah Hill, I guess, as they left together. I think they’re all part of that Judd Apatow crew. The venue was the Regal Theatres at the LA Live complex next to Staples Center where, just the night before, Laker fans had rioted, as expected.

I remember one of the political theory grad students in my department looked down her nose at star-chasers. She told me so at a department welcome event when she first moved to LA. While I’m no star-chaser, generally speaking, I proceeded tell her about all the stars I’ve seen in LA. After that, she immediately turned away and started talking to someone else. We’re friends now, but that was a funny moment.

Seeing stars here and there is, in the grand scheme of things, pretty trivial, but it allows my humdrum existence in LA to have a pulse once in a while. I think I’m going to miss these opportunities when I move away.

Just for fun, I also clicked around on YouTube to see if I could find some recent Dion clips. I love seeing what these stars from the 50s and 60s look like now and what they’re performing. As some of you know, this is what Dion and the Belmonts looked like back in the 1950s:

Much to my surprise, Dion’s new “Belmonts” (of 2004) are vastly different from the original group. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Dion brought on some WWF rejects from 1996 to sing with him. (Are they really singing?) I like that one falsetto singer’s Cowboy look, though. What do you guys think?

Then there’s the case of my friend Rover (not his real name) from Japan.

Rover is about to earn his doctorate in international studies. His spoken English, though better than it was six years ago when he first moved to the United States, is not up to par, in my opinion. Alright, that’s understandable. I’ve known more than one person whose abilities in written English outstripped their abilities in spoken English. If given some time to reflect and compose, they could put down words on paper nearly indistinguishable from those written by a native speaker. At first, I thought Rover was just that kind of person. He had me edit a biographical blurb that was going into a conference program. It was nearly perfect and I was totally dumbstruck. I couldn’t reconcile his mangled spoken English with the bubbly and fluid self-description I had just read. I concluded that Rover must be one of those people who, when it comes to English, had mastered the written word, but not so much the spoken word.

Well, over the next five years, I came to learn a few things: 1. Rover has no interest in improving his English. 2. Rover doesn’t listen to suggestions to improve his English. 3. When Rover gave me something to edit, it had already been looked over by at least one or two other native speakers. 4. Rover must have at least a couple ghost writers because what I’m seeing just doesn’t add up.

I guess this brings me to the real point of this post. I’ve studied 4 or 5 foreign languages over the course of my life (not including English or Thai). When I studied Japanese, I had close friends who spoke Japanese fluently. Sure, sometimes I would have them look over my work, but the thing is that even after they had pointed out mistakes and made some edits to my essays, no one would ever confuse what I submitted with the work product of a native Japanese speaker.

But what if they did? What if my assignments for Japanese class were so heavily edited by native Japanese speakers that my essays and what not were not only indistinguishable from those written by native speakers but also written in complex literary Japanese? Would this be acceptable? Assuming that the ideas included were mine, would it be some sort of misrepresentation? Okay, maybe the example is not precisely on point, but this is what goes through my mind when I think about ol’ Rover who’s about to get his freakin’ Ph.D. from an American university.

I’ll try to make my point by showing you just what I mean. Below is an excerpt from Rover’s written academic work followed by excerpts from his e-mail messages to me. All excerpts are from about mid-2008 and after.

The strategic use of trade policy reinforces alliance connections during both wartime and in peacetime by conveying alliance members’ various security concerns. As to regional trade pacts, I advance an institutional argument by focusing on institutional change, performance, and demise. Implementation of trade liberalization in these pacts depends on the nature of the international context. By this I mean informational uncertainty from market volatility, power distribution, and levels of economic interdependence. A variety of dispute settlement measures (DSMs) are used to promote trade cooperation in regional trade pacts, but their institutional performance is also affected by this international context. I have discovered that when international circumstances lead to trade stimulus and trade liberalization, regional trade pacts are more likely to experience a high degree of institutional change or to become totally inactive because DSM’s are inherently imperfect.

Whether or not you understand the nature of the research, the level of English used is what you’d expect from a Ph.D. candidate in international affairs. Okay, so you say that Rover writes pretty well for someone who I don’t think is very fluent in English. Welp, then take a look at these snippets from his e-mails to me:

1. Hi my friends, Yohei (3rd year graduate) and I am working as a reader position for the IR149. If we have less than 168 students, only one of us or neither of us cannot receive the fall quarter fee remission.

3. I found your falling coin in my car. The passenger seat could not move perfectly because it was stuck by your 10 cent. Fortunately, I picked up your coin though it took a half hour. When you are in my car, please be careful of your coins. I do not want to have the same trouble.

Welp, what do you think? Were these snippets all written by the same person? Yes, I know that people don’t write e-mails in the same voice as they use in academic papers, but shouldn’t there at least be some connection in terms of consistency in English usage and ability? I, and many of my colleagues, find much humor in the disparity between the English in Rover’s e-mails and in his papers. To be sure, the ideas in the papers are Rover’s own, but we think he has a couple of ghost writers. The problem is that we can’t figure out who they are. Another question is about misrepresentation. Is Rover misrepresenting himself somehow in his job applications by using English that he couldn’t reproduce by himself while alone in a room with a pen and paper? In the case of many graduate students who speak non-native English, there’ll be some discrepancies, but I gotta say that this is by far the worst case that I’ve ever seen.

Like I said, Rover is not receptive to suggestions for long-term improvement and fluency in his English, so he doesn’t get much sympathy from me. But maybe I should throw Rover a bone before he gets boned on the job market.

The Graduate Students

1. White male. Contemptuous of minorities and of all affirmative action programs. Misogynist of the highest order who enjoys sex jaunts to third world destinations. Generally speaks in demeaning terms about women of color he slept with. Ran out of condoms on last trip to South America. (Match to 2 jobs below)

2. White male. Misogynist. The type of douchebag who’d stiff a colleague in a secret Santa exchange by taking a gift but not putting one in. Openly hits on female colleagues like he’s in some dive bar. Keeps a strip of condoms in his department office. (For what? Who knows.)

3. White male. Napoleon complex. Loud-talking and generally annoying. One of his areas of study is Africa. Contemptuous of Africans. Before first trip to Africa, asked colleague about prostitutes and likelihood of AIDS transmission for their johns (or potential johns).

4. White male. Uses undergraduate rosters as personal dating pool. Engaged in sexting with a student during course of the term and later “consummated” the relationship. Has dated multiple students. (Match to 2 jobs below)

5. White male. Engaged in inappropriate contact with female student during the course of a class. Ended up dating that student.

The Jobs/Awards

A. Teaching position for a class on public policy in Africa.

B. TA trainer - trains new TA’s before they begin teaching their first class.

C. Teaching Assistant of the Year, 2006

D. Teaching Assistant of the Year, 2007

E. Letters and Science undergraduate minority advisor.

F. Interim TA trainer. Hired for a special one term appointment.

Now, match the jobs to the imaginary graduate students. Answers to follow later.

AND

The 2.5 million year-old fossilized remains of extinct hominid Paranthropus aethiopicus

Brenda is an attorney in a major American city who has been nominated by her medium-sized law firm for a very prestigious legal representation award given by a local bar association. The award comes with a generous prize of about $40,000 and winning it would very much boost Brenda’s future career advancement in her firm and beyond. In assembling her nomination dossier, Brenda solicits and receives a glowing letter of recommendation from Bob, one of her former clients. Brenda helped Bob win a wrongful termination case two years earlier and, by all accounts, did a superb and professional job as his attorney. Bob’s letter is one of ten client letters submitted in support of Brenda’s application.

In fact, Bob is just one of a string of satisfied clients as Brenda has a stellar, unblemished record as a trial attorney and as a legal counselor. Given that, it is of no surprise when the bar association’s awards committee selects Brenda for the prize. She is subsequently showered with admiration and accolades from her colleagues.

Not long after the prize is awarded, the bar association’s newsletter publishes a lengthy write-up about Brenda and her legal career. The writer of the piece quotes extensively from interviews with Brenda’s colleagues and from the praise heaped on her by the writers of her letters of recommendation.

Paula is an attorney who also works with Brenda at the same medium-sized law firm. They are colleagues and friends. She is happy for Brenda and the recognition that Brenda receives from winning the award. One morning, Paula stumbles upon the story about Brenda and her award while reading the bar association’s newsletter. After reading half way through the piece, Paula is shocked to discover that Bob had written a letter of recommendation for Brenda.

Paula has first hand knowledge that while Bob and Brenda initially had an attorney-client relationship, once it was over, their relationship had changed from professional to very personal in nature. In fact, Paula knows for certain that when Brenda solicited the letter from Bob and when Bob wrote his letter, Bob and Brenda had an ongoing sexual relationship. In addition, Paula has hearsay knowledge that Brenda has pushed (and perhaps crossed) the bounds of professionalism by having sexual relationships with clients very soon after the end of their attorney-client relationships.

None of this was ever disclosed to the awards committee. More importantly, no one on the committee knew that Bob and Brenda were lovers. Paula believes that if the underlying conflict of interest had been revealed to the committee, they would have chosen another attorney for the prize despite Brenda’s strong record in court.

1) Do we have a problem here?
2) Was it wrong for Brenda to ask Bob for the letter? Was it wrong for him to agree to write it?
3) In hindsight, did either Brenda or Bob have a duty to disclose their relationship to the committee? Did they both have that duty?
4) What should Paula do, if anything?

Does anyone remember the scene from the movie Stripes when the characters played by Bill Murray and Harold Ramis go to the Army recruiting office? In processing them, the recruiter asks a series of questions one of which is something like, “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” Ramis and Murray look at each other slyly and say deliberately, “Nope, never convicted.” The implication is, of course, that they’ve been charged with felonies on multiple occasions, but that the prosecutors couldn’t prove their case.

Well, when I was visiting my parents not too long ago, I heard a story from my dad that made me think of this particular scene.

As it turns out, my father has an older male friend who was charged with murder for hire back about twenty years ago. (No, not in this country.) He was charged with conspiracy to commit murder and with murder. The prosecutor alleged that he had conspired with another well-connected individual to off a particular civil servant who was taking bribes. Well, this civil servant guy did happen to die in a hail of gunfire directed at his car as it sat in traffic on a bridge.

The police arrested five people in connection with the murder. However, none of these individuals was the actual trigger man. According to the police theory, my dad’s friend and his partner in crime had insulated themselves from the gunman with at least one layer of individuals. These five who were arrested were the ones who, allegedly, knew of the plot against the civil servant. The gunman who did the actual killing, according to the theory, never knew who had hired him. I think the police might have watched Godfather II one too many times.

My dad’s friend was brought in for questioning not long after the first five were arrested. While in police custody, he was apparently threatened with physical harm unless he confessed. The police took him in a van to a very remote place and, while en route, threatened to do very bad things to him once they arrived at their destination. Calling their bluff, my dad’s friend made a move for the van door. He was trying to jump out and kill himself so that the police would be caught with a corpse on their hands. The police knew what he was trying to do and did everything they could to pull him back into the van. Let’s just say that my dad’s friend wasn’t trying to kill himself, but that he has a belly full of guts to beat the police at their own bluffing game. He made it back safely to the station house without confessing anything and was sent off to jail. Not long after, he was charged and posted bail. I know. How does a murder for hire suspect get bail? All I can say is that it wasn’t in the States.

Anyway, back in jail, the five who were arrested were plotting their escape. Lo and behold, they were able to break out of jail not long after they were arrested. What a coincidence that all five made it out! Well, things wouldn’t go well for our five escapees once they had set themselves loose.

Within weeks after their escape, all five had been shot dead mysteriously, one by one. Yeah, Michael Corleone style, bitches. No one knows who did it and no one knows if the murders were related to the case. Well, at least I don’t know who did it or if the five deaths were connected. The bottom line is that those five guys were sleepin’ with the fishes and could tell no tales.

And, of course, without these five key witnesses, the case against my dad’s friend and his alleged partner in the scheme crumbled. All charges were quickly dropped.

I’ve met this particular friend on multiple occasions and I can say that he’s not a bad guy. He is, like me, a lover of Asian cuisines. He shares with me all sorts of secrets about cooking and preparing good food. He is generous to a fault once dropping a c-note on me for driving him around Las Vegas for a couple of hours. He’s also gotten me into the VIP grandstand at the horse track on several occasions and made sure that I was stuffed with food and quenched with drinks while I was there. Oh, and he got me in to observe a session of Parliament when usually no one without official business is allowed inside. When you consider all of that, you almost forget that he brandished a gun at his son’s school teacher a few years back. Hey, no one’s perfect, right?

What, you ask, does this friend do? Well, he’s actually a lobbyist, or so says my dad. The guy sure does very little lobbying for being a lobbyist, though. What’s that they say about “no visible means of support.”

Anyway, before you start thinking that my dad is a bad guy who hangs around with thugs, just know that this friend is kind of special and unlike the others. And, after all, he’s innocent until proven guilty, right?