TUESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2010 ANNE APPLEBAUM


Take your medicine, Tom


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veryone remembers the white- washing scene in “The Adven- tures of Tom Sawyer.” But how


many recall the scene that precedes it? Having escaped from Aunt Polly, Tom is “playing hooky” and teaching him- self to whistle when he spies a “new- comer” in his village — a newcomer with “a citified air.” Their conversation unfolds like this: “I can lick you!” “I’d like to see you try it.” “Well, I can do it.” “No you can’t, either.” After that, the encounter deterio-


rates further (“Can! Can’t!”) until final- ly the two boys are wrestling in the dirt. Tom wins the battle — the citified newcomer is made to shout “Nuff!” — but returns home late and is thus com- manded to whitewash the famous fence. After this incident, the reader’s sym-


pathies are meant to lie with Tom. But try, if you can, to strip away the haze of nostalgia and sentiment through which we generally perceive Mark Twain’s world, and imagine how a boy like Tom Sawyer would be regarded to- day. As far as I can tell, that fight is not just “inappropriate behavior,” to use current playground terminology, but is also one of the many symptoms of “op- positional defiant disorder” (ODD), a condition that Tom manifests through- out the book. And Tom is not merely ODD: He clearly has attention deficit hyperactiv- ity disorder (ADHD) as well, judging by his inability to concentrate in school. “The harder Tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his mind wandered,” Twain writes at one point. Unable to focus (“Tom’s heart ached to be free”) he starts playing with a tick. This behavior is part of a regular pattern: A few days earlier in church (where he had to sit “as far


Got an urge to lick the kid with the ‘citified air’ or light out for the territory? There’s a treatment for that.


away from the open window and the seductive outside summer scenes as possible”), Tom had been unable to pay attention to the sermon and played with a pinch bug instead. In fact, Tom manifests many dis- turbing behaviors. He blames his half- brother for his poor decisions, demon- strating an inability to take responsi- bility for his actions. He provokes his peers, often using aggression. He de- liberately ignores rules and demon- strates defiance toward adults. He is frequently dishonest, at one point even pretending to be dead. Worst of all, he skips school — behavior that might, in time, lead him to be diagnosed with conduct disorder (CD), from which his friend Huck Finn clearly suffers. I am not being entirely sarcastic here: I have reread both “Tom Sawyer” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” several times in recent years, precisely because Twain draws such fascinating portraits of children whose behavior is familiar, even if we now de- scribe it differently. As a mother of boys, I find this weirdly reassuring: Al- though ADHD and ODD are often dis- missed as recently “invented” disor- ders, they describe personality types and traits that have always existed. A certain kind of boy has always had trouble paying attention in school. A certain kind of boy has always picked fights with friends, gone smoking in the woods and floated down the river on rafts. In previous eras, such behavior was just as problematic for adults as it is to- day. Poor old Aunt Polly — how many times does she “fall to crying and wringing her hands”? To cope with Tom, she seeks names for his disorder —he is “full of the Old Scratch,” mean- ing the devil — and searches for ways to control him (“Spare the rod and spile the child,” she tells herself). But if the behavior or actions of the children and the parents are familiar, the society surrounding them is not. Tom Sawyer turns out fine in the end. In 19th-century Missouri, there were still many opportunities for impulsive kids who were bored and fidgety in school: The very qualities that made him so tiresome — curiosity, hyperac- tivity, recklessness — are precisely the ones that get him the girl, win him the treasure and make him a hero. Even Huck Finn is all right at the end of his story. Although he never learns to tol- erate “sivilization,” he knows he can head out to “Indian territory,” to the empty West, where even the loose rules of Missouri life won’t have to be followed. Nothing like that is available to chil- dren who don’t fit in today. Instead of striking out into the wilderness like Huck Finn, they get sent to psychol- ogists and prescribed medication — if they are lucky enough to have parents who can afford that sort of thing. Every effort will rightly be made to help them pay attention, listen to the teacher, stop picking fights in the playground. Nowadays, there aren’t any other options.


applebaumletters@washpost.com


KLMNO


R


A17


A path forward for an open Internet


by Eric Schmidt and Ivan Seidenberg W


e have spent much of the past year trying to resolve our differences over the thorny issue of “network


neutrality.” This hasn’t been an easy proc- ess, and Google and Verizon are neither regulators nor legislators. But as leaders in our respective fields, we have searched for workable public policies that serve consumer interests and create a climate for investment and innovation. What has kept us at the table and moving toward compromise was our mutual interest in a robust Internet and our recognition that progress would occur only when players from across the Internet space work together. The proposal we outlined Monday as a


LARRY DOWNING/REUTERS


Thad Allen briefs reporters at the White House last week. EUGENE ROBINSON


Thad Allen’s ‘battle space’ The gulf spill’s point man on lessons learned


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lying back to Washington from Pensacola, Fla., on June 15, Presi- dent Obama and the man he put


in charge of handling the gulf oil spill, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, had a come-to-Jesus talk. The adminis- tration was getting hammered for a slow and disorganized response to the environmental disaster, and the presi- dent wanted to know, then and there, what resources Allen needed to get the job done. Obama made clear, in Allen’s words, that “there would be no do- overs.” That conversation aboard Air Force One marked what Allen, in a recent in- terview, told me was the “pivotal point” in the effort to contain the biggest spill in U.S. history. Allen said he told Obama that his most urgent problem wasn’t with anything that was taking place un- derwater or along the Gulf of Mexico coastline, but in the sky. Helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft were buzzing above the oil spill in an uncoordinated swarm, accomplishing little of value and barely managing not to crash into one another — there had already been eight near-miss incidents. What he desperately needed, Allen told the president, was military control of the airspace. Obama gave the order to make it so. “We needed to manage the situation as a three-dimensional battle space,” Al- len recalls. “I got up at four the next morning and wrote an e-mail explain- ing to everyone that we were going to move away from a traditional spill re- sponse and go to 3-D battle manage- ment.”


Allen said this change made all the


difference. With a command center at Tyndall Air Force Base near Pensacola coordinating all air traffic in the area, Allen could stop worrying so much about possible accidents and deploy his ad hoc fleet of military and civilian air- craft more effectively to find the widely dispersed sheets and ribbons of oil. With vastly improved observation from above, Allen said, it was possible to better deploy the thousands of ships that were plying the waters of the gulf, looking for oil to burn, skim or contain with floating booms. These included the many “vessels of opportunity” — shrimp boats, pleasure craft and the like — that were not well equipped to find the patches of oil on their own. “As the oil gets closer to shore, it’s harder to find,” Allen said. “You had to be able to tell a ship, ‘You’re almost there, but just


RICHARD COHEN


They are cogent and snappily written, and they often deal with books that I don’t find reviewed elsewhere. An exam- ple is a forthcoming biography of one of contemporary Islam’s most important thinkers, Sayyid Qutb. The book gets a good review. It’s more than I can say for the Economist itself. Qutb was hanged in 1966 by the Egyp-


The Economist’s unforgivable silence I


always read the Economist magazine. I like many things about it, but I par- ticularly cherish its book reviews.


tian government of Gamal Abdel Nasser after the customary torture. He had been the intellectual leader of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and a man of copi- ous literary output. One of his efforts was called “Our Struggle with the Jews.” It is a work of unabashed, breathtakingly stupid anti-Semitism, one of the reasons the New York Review of Books recently char- acterized Qutb’s views “as extreme as Hit- ler’s.” About all this, the Economist is odd- ly, ominously and unforgivably silent. This is both puzzling and troublesome.


After all, it’s not as if Qutb was some mi- nor figure. He is, as a secondary headline on the Economist review says, “the father of Islamic fundamentalism,” and it is im- possible to read anything about him that


does not attest to his immense contempo- rary importance. Nor was Qutb’s anti- Semitism some sort of juvenile madness, expressed in the hormonal certainty of youth and later recanted as both certainty and hairline receded. It was, instead, the creation of his middle age and was pub- lished in the early 1950s. In other words, his essay is a post-Holocaust work, writ- ten in full knowledge of what anti-Semi- tism had just accomplished. The mass murder of Europe’s Jews didn’t give him the slightest pause. Qutb was undaunted. But so, apparently, are some others who write about him. In his recent and well-received book, “The Arabs,” Eugene Rogan of Oxford University gives Qutb his due “as one of the most influential Islamic reformers of the [20th] century” but does not mention his anti-Semitism or, for that matter, his raging hatred of America. Like the Sept. 11 terrorists, Qutb spent some time in America — Greeley, Colo.; Wash- ington, D.C.; and Palo Alto, Calif.— learn- ing to loathe Americans. He was partic- ularly revolted by its overly sexualized women. Imagine if he had been to New York! The Economist’s review is stunning in its omission. Can it be that a mere 65


go one mile to the west.’ ” The adminis- tration announced with fanfare last week that of the estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil that gushed out of the Deepwater Horizon well, three-fourths of the total had been captured, skimmed, burned or dispersed — or had simply evaporated — before it could de- spoil the coast. Some experts have called this assessment overly optimistic, and serious questions remain about the possible long-term environmental ef- fects of the oil that remains in the gulf. There are also questions about the ul-


timate impact of the chemical dis- persants that BP applied in unprec- edented quantities. Allen acknowledges that how much oil remains in the gulf, and what effect the oil and dispersants are having on marine life, will not really be known until scientists have the chance to conduct further studies. Also yet to be known is how the im- provised technology that was ultimately used to cap the gusher will change the way the oil industry operates in the gulf. Before the blowout, Allen said, there was no protocol for handling such an event. By cobbling together some tech- niques and equipment used in the North Sea and others used in the Atlan- tic off the coast of Angola, engineers found ways to capture some of the oil, creating, in effect, “an oil production system that did not exist in the Gulf of Mexico.”


Allen, 61, was commandant of the Coast Guard when Obama put him in charge of handling the oil spill, but he retired his commission several weeks later. He has agreed to stay on the job until it is certain that the crisis is over. Asked if he knew when the president would release him, Allen said, “I’ve asked for a parole hearing. But I know that my departure has to be conditions- based.” Much of his focus now is on contain- ing and cleaning up the oil that remains — and on doing his best to ensure that the knowledge gained from dealing with the Deepwater Horizon spill is put to good use. “It would be adding a crime to a


crime,” he said, “if we didn’t make this one of the great learning laboratories in the history of this country.”


The writer will answer questions at 1 p.m. today at www.washingtonpost.


com. His e-mail address is eugenerobinson@ washpost.com.


suggested policy framework for lawmak- ers translates these principles into a fully enforceable broadband Internet policy. In developing this framework, we were guid- ed by two principles: our commitment to an open Internet, and the need for contin- ued investment in broadband infrastruc- ture, which is critical to U.S. global competitiveness. First, our policy framework states that consumers should be able to choose any lawful content, services or applications they want; in other words, they can choose whatever Internet service they want, go to whatever legal Web sites they want, and use whatever software or applications they want. Our companies have long sup- ported the FCC’s openness principles toward wireline broadband, and we also believe that blocking and degrading Inter- net traffic is antithetical to the principle of openness and to consumers’ expectations. Consumers also should be able to access


the Internet free from discrimination that is harmful to users or competition. Our proposed policy presumes that prioritiza- tion of Internet traffic — such as slowing down delivery of one video file so an- other’s arrives more quickly — is harmful. Further, we agree that transparency with users is key and that all broadband provid- ers, including wireless providers, should be required to share with their customers in concise, plain language information that explains the kinds of Internet access services they are receiving and the provid- er’s traffic management practices. But Internet service providers should also have a fair amount of flexibility to manage their networks and the opportunity to provide additional services — such as tele- work applications, health monitoring ser- vices or optimized gaming — so long as


THE PLUM LINE


Excerpts from Greg Sargent’s blog on domestic politics and debate on the Hill: voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line


A GOP ‘credibility


problem’ on deficits Most everyone discussing the lively ex-


change between NBC’s David Gregory and GOP leaders John Boehner and Mike Pence on “Meet the Press” Sunday fo- cused on the fact that the two Republican leaders, under persistent questioning by Gregory, refused to say how an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich would be paid for. No question, that’s noteworthy, and Gregory deserves credit for pressing the issue. But the most interesting aspect of the exchange was that Pence, the chair- man of the House Republican Confer- ence, admitted that the GOP has a “credi- bility problem” on tax cuts and the def- icit.


Gregory said: “But, congressman,


you’re asking Americans to believe the Republicans will have spending disci- pline when you’re saying extend the tax cuts that aren’t paid for and cut the def- icit. How is that a consistent, credible message?” Pence replied: “Well, I understand the credibility problem, David. You know that during the first six years of this decade, I


spent most of my time fighting against runaway spending under Republicans. I opposed No Child Left Behind, I opposed the Medicare prescription drug bill, I op- posed the Wall Street bailout.” And so on. Notice that while Pence said he spent


years fighting “runaway spending” under the Bush administration, he was clear that Republicans have a “credibility prob- lem” on this issue because the GOP ran up the deficit during the Bush years. Pence’s admission seemed to be in- tended as part of a larger GOP strategy. Republicans have made systematic ef- forts to achieve separation from George W. Bush and the GOP Congress of the pre- vious decade by acknowledging that the previous GOP leadership was out of con- trol and claiming that the new leadership is very different. That’s what Pence seemed to be driving at.


But from a messaging perspective,


Pence’s formulation seems ham-handed. It wouldn’t be surprising if Democrats adopt it as a talking point for the coming showdown over the deficit and tax cuts, which promises to be central to the mid- term elections. The line writes itself: “Even the No. 3 in the House GOP leader- ship says his party lacks credibility on this issue.”


these services do not affect consumers’ ability to simply access their favorite sites over the open Internet offerings that this framework would protect. With respect to wireless broadband net- works, we agree that the rapidly evolving wireless Internet is a different kind of net- work, with unique technical and opera- tional challenges, demanding different consideration than wireline networks. No- tably, the 4G network that Verizon also is building on the recently auctioned 700 megahertz spectrum is already subject to open Internet rules. This nascent market- place for wireless broadband should be al- lowed to develop further before applying a new set of rules. That said, we believe that wireless providers should be fully trans- parent about their practices, and Congress should regularly evaluate the state of the wireless market to protect consumers’ interests.


Since the April court ruling that ques- tioned the FCC’s right to penalize Comcast for slowing Internet traffic, the FCC’s au- thority over broadband service providers has been unclear. Our policy proposal spells out clear FCC authority for enforce- ment against bad actors. We propose a case-by-case adjudication model for deter- mining harm to users or competition. The FCC should be authorized to stop bad practices, such as slowing Internet traffic or blocking legal applications or services, and to hit knowing violators with in- junctions and substantial fines. At the same time — consistent with the Internet’s long history of self-governance — our framework would encourage parties in dispute to first consider using a nongov- ernmental resolution process to resolve their differences. We believe this public policy framework empowers an informed consumer, ensures the robust growth of the open Internet and provides incentives to strengthen the networks that carry Internet traffic. There are hundreds of millions of Inter-


net users in the United States, and no two companies should be so presumptuous as to think they can solve this challenge alone. It is up to policymakers to establish broadband policy for the country. We are eager to work with Congress, the FCC and other interested parties to get this right. We hope that our proposal provides some concrete ideas to move this process forward.


Eric Schmidt is chief executive of Google. Ivan Seidenberg is chief executive of Verizon. Google and Verizon Wireless have partnered on devices, including mobile phones, that use Google’s Android software platform.


years after the fires of Auschwitz were banked, anti-Semitism has been relegated to a trivial, personal matter, like a prefer- ence for blondes — something not worth mentioning? Yet, Qutb is not like Richard Wagner, whose anti-Semitism was repel- lent but did not in the least affect his mu- sic. Qutb’s Jew-hatred was not incidental to his work. While not quite central, it has nevertheless proved important, having been adopted along with his other ideas by Hamas. Qutb blames Jews for almost everything: “atheistic materialism,” “ani- malistic sexuality,” “the destruction of the family” and, of course, an incessant war against Islam itself. Obviously, this is no minor matter. Crit-


ics of Israel frequently accuse it of racism in its treatment of Palestinians. Some- times, the charge is apt. But there is noth- ing in the Israeli media or popular culture that even approaches what is openly, and with official sanction, said in the Arab world about Jews. The message is an echo of Nazi racism, and the prescription, stat- ed or merely implied, is the same. The Economist and Rogan are insuffi- cient in themselves to constitute a move- ment. Yet I cannot quite suppress the feel- ing that the need to demonize Israel is so


great that the immense moral failings of some of its enemies have to be swept un- der the carpet. As Jacob Weisberg pointed out recently in Slate, the “boycott Israel” movement is oddly unbalanced — so much fury directed at Israel, so little at countries like China or Venezuela. Can it be that the French philosopher Vladimir Jankelevitch was prescient when he sug- gested years ago that anti-Zionism “gives us the permission and even the right and even the duty to be anti-Semitic in the name of democracy”? The line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, a de- marcation I have always acknowledged, is becoming increasingly blurred. Because the Economist’s book reviews are unsigned, it’s impossible to know — and the Economist would not say — who’s at fault here. So the magazine itself is ac- countable not just for bad taste or unfath- omable ignorance but for disregarding its own vow, published on its first page, “to take part in a severe contest between in- telligence . . . and an unworthy timid ig- norance obstructing our progress.” Dur- ing the week of July 15, it didn’t just lose the contest — it never even showed up for it.


cohenr@washpost.com


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