Good research on your part, but it still leaves some unanswered questions. M. Thomas Eisenstadt just posted another blog that looks deeper into Callahan and found some intriguing connections between him and King Abdullah II of Jordan. Maybe you guys can find out what really happened at the Phi Delt house in '83-'84? The rabbit hole is getting deeper....
He then links to this post by Eisenstadt. Quite Frankly, this whole thing seems rather ridiculous to me. Point by Point:
- Does Hart spell E R-H’s name right in the book? We’re still - at best - left with a Dartmouth English professor who neither cites his sources, nor even spells the name of his subject correctly. If an Ivy League English prof. can’t check the spelling of one of his esteemed colleague’s names correctly, it begs the question about the value of a Dartmouth education.
- Was Hart actually a student of E R-H? (we know he taught at Dartmouth, but the DR [sic] says he and E R-H probably didn’t overlap). In and of itself, this doesn’t corroborate that the Citizen quote was widespread, only that Hart used it more than once. The trick is to find someone else who remembers the quote.
- If he wasn’t a student, what’s his original source for the ‘96 quote? The DR [sic] can just ask him.
- The DR [sic] now puts the blame squarely on Callahan and/or Birzin, suggesting that they copped from Hart. Fair enough, but then I ask again, why would the Callahan quote be such a personal one “from his father?” If a man lies so cavalierly about his own father, what else is he lying about? His own resume? His own trackrecord at Dartmouth? Do we really want this guy representing us at the State Department working in anti-terrorism? We’ve been asking around the National Security community, and indeed, Callahan has a stellar record protecting America (and yes, even contributing to Bush/Cheney in 2004). If Hollywood was to depict a handsome, daring, athletic, patriotic, articulate diplomat, they couldn’t do better than Callahan. To read the Birzin piece in particular, the guy is one part Tom Cruise and one part Matt Damon (minus, of course, the Sarah Silverman thing).
- ….But, what happened at the Phi Delt house? The Birzin profile spends considerable time talking about Callahan’s experience cleaning up his frat, Phi Delta Alpha (not to be confused with Dartmouth’s Alpha Delta Phi [sic], the inspiration for the film Animal House):
Just before he took the reins as president, Phi Delt was put on social probation by the administration for a series of behavioral incidents and infractions by its members. Callahan was faced with the difficult task of finding a way “to reconcile the house’s objectives with the legitimate concerns of the Administration.”
What’s interesting is that the general dates of that time period coincide with Jordan’s then-Prince (now King) Abdullah hanging out at the frat:
Royalty visited Phi Delt in the 1980s. Prince Abdullah of Jordan hung out at Phi Delt in 1983, while visiting close friend George ‘Gig’ Faux ’84.
Best as we can tell, Callahan took over as Phi Delt president from Gig Faux the next year and had to clean up “the mess.” I have no reason to doubt Callahan’s loyalty to his country, but should a high-ranking State Department expert on counterterrorism be old frat buddies with the King of Jordan? As one of our strongest allies in the reason, maybe that’s a good thing. But it begs the further question of if the young Prince had anything to do with the “behavioral incidents” at the Phi Delt house and what exactly did Callahan do to “clean it up”?
- Has anyone tracked down Birzin, Callahan or Hart to get to the bottom of this?
7 comments:
Who the hell is this Eisenstedt fellow and why is he so hellbent on upholding Callahan (whom I've never heard of) and the white house chap as heros? And why does he claim to have any understanding of social dynamics at Dartmouth?
Amusingly enough, this post is already the #4 hit for "Eli Perle" on google.
Anfin, I'm already having second thoughts and suspecting that the above post is some kind of breach of the commenting policy or unwritten code of blog etiquette against name calling. Feel free to delete the above comment or remove the hyperlinks.
Wow, Eli Perle is pretty annoying. The #4 link for Eli Perle, you say?
I've been barely paying attention as I read this stuff, but it seems like the plagiarism case is pretty weak.
E-R-H is fairly obscure, it appears that people know him chiefly for 1 or 2 things, and his first name is one letter off from a common first name.
For example, Dwyane Wade is one of the best basketball players in the NBA, yet his name is misspelled frequently. Not everyone who spells it "Dwayne" is in a plagiarism conspiracy together.
...or perhaps they are?!?! Mr. Eisenstadt should do some research and have Eli Perle inform us if he finds anything intriguing.
If Mr. Eisenstadt has ever used Microsoft Word, a copy editor, or a keyboard, he can probably appreciate that not all spelling errors are directly traceable to one's alma mater.
Anonymous March 07, 2008 7:05 PM
—7:26 is correct, I've copied the text of the post here but removed the hyper-links.
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