Deep Daughter's Past Illuminated

Joan Felt is a devotee of an unusual and controversial self-proclaimed guru who, in two California lawsuits and several public statements 20 years ago, was accused of sexual abuse, slavery, false imprisonment, assault and brainwashing that was said to include persuading people to give him all their money.

Asked about the guru today, Joan Felt says, "None of this has anything to do with the Deep Throat story." She won't talk about the guru's group, known as Adidam as well as the Johannic Daist Communion. Nor would she discuss the length and scope of her role within it. Earlier this month, when asked about it in a brief encounter outside her house, she said Adidam was like Buddhism.

The reporter called numerous people who have been involved in Adidam, according to a participant in the online discussion forum where Felt's association with the group was first brought to light.

Although I helped push this story along, I have no idea whether Adidam influenced the decision to reveal Deep Throat's identity. If Joan Felt's study group was active in Santa Rosa, you'd think the Post could have found someone there to discuss her current level of involvement.

Politics · Journalism · 2005/06/13 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

Movable Gripe

What is the Last Book You Bought? The Movable Type 3 Bible by Rogers Cadenhead -- singularly the most useless reference book I've ever bought. I've learned one thing. One measly thing. Put this on your "do not buy" list.

Potential cover blurb for the next edition: "singularly the most ... I've learned."

Publishing · 2005/06/10 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

Unsolved Disappearances at Sea

This may be a statistically improbable thing to care about, since 10 million people cruise each year and around 12 have gone overboard during voyages in five years.

However, each incident affects thousands of people, because the ships turn back to participate in searches, and some may involve foul play rather than suicide or accident.

There also can't be many more grim tragedies to endure than a loved one who disappears off a ship in the middle of the ocean, never to be found. Seven years after Amy Bradley was lost on the Royal Caribbean Rhapsody of the Seas, her family still has no answers for what happened to the 23-year-old.

Florida · Jacksonville · 2005/06/10 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

When Reporters Attack

The press chorus then devolved into a cacophony of competing screams. (And Dean knows screams!) After several seconds, a booming voice cut through the noise. It belonged to Brian Wilson, a Fox News correspondent who was standing in the middle of the crowd. He asked Dean "if people are focused on the other things that you've said about hating Republicans, about Republicans being dishonest and then this latest comment about the Republican Party is full of white Christians. You say you hate Republicans -- does that mean you also" hate white Christians?

Dean didn't respond and Reid talked about having a "positive agenda." Wilson was so insistent that at one point, Durbin asked, "Does he run the press conference?"

... An aide to Reid announced that the photo op was over.

"We'll decide when we're ready," Wilson said. Later, Durbin would recount the scene with some exasperation. He chided the media for avoiding important issues in favor of trivial matters. "Please, for a minute, get to the substance," he said to a group of reporters. "You guys should be ashamed of yourselves."

The article's more interesting when you learn that Wilson and Leibovich got into a journalistic sissyfight after the event:

Wilson was apparently wearing no credential of any kind (that wasn't a red flag to anyone) and behaving "bizarrely angry" so the Washington Post's Mark Leibovich asked who he was.

We hear that Wilson "went nuts," responding to the Post reporter (whose credentials were clearly on display):

"Who the fuck are you?"

I hope that Leibovich had the good sense to give the correct answer to that question.

Journalism · Politics · Television · 2005/06/10 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

Getting a single picture on a Leave a Legacy monument costs around $35, and I've always regarded it as a very moving tribute to Disney's ability to separate millions of dollars from their original owners.

However, on my last trip I glanced over a few of the portraits, spotting one next to a woman and child with an inscription "Cesar Alviar 9-11-2001."

Alviar was a Marsh & McLennan accountant who died in Tower One of the World Trade Center.

Florida · 2005/06/09 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

Tracking an IP Address

... you have the gall to talk about not finding anything pure to drink in India other than Coke? Even our cows' urine is more pure than your drinks.

As I checked the IP address to see if Ranveer was really posting from India, I thought the links might be useful to others. Here's what I do when playing Scooby Doo Internet detective:

• The IP address to host name service reveals the name associated with an address, if one has been defined.
• A traceroute service identifies each hop from a chosen server to the address.
• Three WHOIS registrars -- APNIC, ARIN, and RIPE -- can tell you what company controls an IP address.

The WHOIS registrars cover different regions, so for any IP address, one provides a definitive answer and the others offer generic information covering the entire IPv4 Internet (the range 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255).

For example, ARIN identifies that the address 207.46.130.108 belongs to Microsoft, while APNIC and RIPE come up with bupkiss.

The only thing that worked on Ranveer was APNIC. He posted his comments from an address owned by REACH, a global Internet provider that specializes in Asian connectivity and has offices in Mumbai.

2005/06/09 · 18 COMMENTS · Link

Another Reason for Tower's Cabinet Defeat

In a story on secrecy in Washington, Post writer Sally Quinn drops a bomb on the late Sen. John Tower:

... John Tower, the powerful Republican senator from Texas, was nominated to be secretary of defense, a job he badly wanted. Tower had a reputation as a serious womanizer. It was a poorly kept secret on the Hill, but most women wouldn't talk. Only one or two had the guts to speak up. Tower, who was a friend of my father, had attempted to sexually assault me when I was 18 and a college freshman. Embarrassed and ashamed, I had kept this story a closely guarded secret for years.

One day, during Tower's confirmation hearings, two FBI officials showed up at my front door and asked me to tell them about the incident. I refused to confirm it. "But you don't understand," one of them said to me, "this will be totally confidential." I burst out laughing. "Are you kidding?" I said. "Where do you think The Washington Post gets its stories? From guys like you who leak."

As it turned out, there were enough stories like mine to deny Tower his confirmation. And later, Anita Hill made a mistake I did not, when she agreed to testify "confidentially" about Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

Tower, who died in a 1991 plane crash, had a reputation as a drunken womanizer that helped defeat his nomination by the first President Bush to be Defense Secretary -- the first Cabinet choice rejected by the Senate in 30 years.

Tower's never been accused of attempted rape before, based on my search of news accounts. When his treatment of women was scrutinized during the 1989 confirmation process, the public only heard about Benny Hill-style shenanigans like chasing a secretary around a desk. In 1998, Washington Times columnist Suzanne Fields even wrote that he was rejected "because he was seen putting a hand on the knee of a woman under the table at a restaurant."

Tower's entire FBI file was shared confidentially with senators. If any sex-assault allegations were included, that detail didn't make the press, according to the Los Angeles Daily News in 1997:

While the raw FBI files contained words like "extremely inebriated" from unnamed witnesses, and the final report apparently concluded that Tower had once had a drinking problem, the White House concluded that the FBI did not corroborate the most serious charges against him.

The Senate has had its share of notorious horndogs in recent decades, including Bob Packwood, Strom Thurmond, Gary Hart, and Ted Kennedy. Tower once said of Thurmond, imagining his future funeral, "they'll have to beat his pecker down with a baseball bat to close the coffin lid."

If Tower's behavior with women reached a point that his fellow senators took offense, there had to be some horrible stuff in that FBI file.

Politics · 2005/06/07 · 6 COMMENTS · Link

Read More Entries