Olympic Anti-Doping an Uphill Battle

Not to mention the specter of Nazi-style eugenics: There have been no bounty offers yet for short Hispanic women. And egg purchasers beware: You don’t always get what you pay for.

“You can have retarded babies born to rocket scientists,” notes Dr. Carl Herbert, medical director of the San Francisco Fertility Centers.

Parental fitness is a ticklish subject in the assisted-fertility community. What’s the alternative to laissez faire? Government-licensed moms and dads? But will a couple who paid $80,000 hoping for a science whiz be happy with a dumb lunk destined to pump gas at the corner filling station?

Until the first egg-donor Mommie Dearest, we’ll probably never know.

“The people offering the big money, it’s not that much money to them . . . and they don’t want to be studied,” says Herbert.

Political News You May Have Missed

While some have questioned Dianne Feinstein’s commitment to the working men and women of California, the Weekly has never doubted that DiFi would get down with the workers whenever she could. Indeed, only her burning proletarian zeal could possibly explain her headlong Labor Day topple.

According to her Senate spokesman Howard Gantman, Feinstein, who’s up for re-election this November, delivered some speeches in Los Angeles on the Friday before Labor Day, then traveled for a weekend’s vacation to her home in Aspen, Colorado, where she fell down the stairs and fractured her leg. Gantman released no further details, but the Weekly can only imagine what was going through DiFi’s mind in the moments before her abrupt descent: My God, what am I doing in Aspen? There isn’t a worker within 200 miles of this place, except for the servants and that guy who fills up the Lear jets. And it’s Labor Day! Shouldn’t I be out in Oakland or someplace marching with workers? They make Lear jets in Oakland, don’t they? Dick, have someone start the car! I gotta — my, that young lady who buffed the stairs did a fine job — gooooooo!

Whatever DiFi’s Aspen layover tells us about her sense of class solidarity, it also makes clear just how seriously she regards the threat to her re-election from the candidacy of Republican Tom Campbell. She may be breaking a leg, but she ain’t breaking a sweat.

And on another front: Among the 300 right-wing economists who endorsed George W.’s presidential campaign last week was Nobel laureate Myron Scholes, who won the prize for developing mathematical models for pricing the spreads on securities. Scholes took those models with him to Long-Term Capital Management, the hedge fund where he became a partner, and all went swimmingly until one Friday two years ago when the firm lost $553 million in a single day, though Scholes’ models had said no loss larger than $35 million was even possible. The firm threatened to go under, dragging down every other financial institution within a 12,000-mile radius, until the Fed stepped in to arrange a bailout/takeover. W.’s campaign has yet to confirm reports that Scholes will be placed in charge of privatizing Social Security.

—Harold Meyerson

Edited by Gale Holland