3699

The unintended consequences of protecting women

Don Imus and Mike Nifong aren't the only guys with funny names apologizing in stories about women. Now Paul Wolfowitz is doing it for having a girlfriend at the World Bank. And she's Arab. Frankly, what DA Nifong did makes all the others pale by comparison, and is a horrible abuse of power, but since the MSM helped create that lynch mentality (Ladies of the View included), it is being soft pedaled and Imus is getting the play by play. He's expendable.

"Paul Wolfowitz's position as president of the World Bank appears shaky, as the bank's Board of Directors met overnight to discuss what to do about a favoritism scandal he is involved in. . . The World Bank's board released a statement early Friday detailing its review involving Wolfowitz's girlfriend, Shaha Riza. She was given a job at the U.S. State Department when Wolfowitz took charge of the bank in 2005. World Bank rules ban romantic involvement between workers and supervisors." Story here.

As I understand it, you can't supervise a "friend," and if you help her get a job somewhere else on the advice of your ethics committee, you are then violating another rule. Should he have just put her out on the street, or should he keep her as a paid mistress off the payroll of the bank?

This happens all the time in academe, but because salaries aren't the greatest and they don't have much power (and no ties to the present administration), no one objects. Presidents and deans are recruited. But a deal has to be struck to bring along the wife, the girl friend, boy friend or significant other. I remember one time getting a science librarian with no science background but who had a husband recruited for another department in the university. If the wife didn't get the job, he didn't come. If there is no position open at the university that fits her/his qualifications a position miraculously opens up on the art faculty. When he finds a better position at Yale or Brown or in industry marketing pet food, there will be only one position open when he/she leaves.

Bankers and former Bush appointees (there wouldn't have been a problem if he'd been a Democrat from Clinton's reign) need to learn that "me two" excuse that deans and college presidents use.