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Dear Charlie,
I see you’re still a candy-ass dickhead. What a great idea - couldn’t
we all just be a LITTLE LESS ANGRY? Seems like you’ve finally turned
your mamby-pamby worldview into a BOOK. Nice touch with Robert Reich
and the Dalai Lama thing. Did you split your advance so you can all get
new matching calf-skin briefcases? By my count, that makes two Ivy
League trained, rich white guys who summer on Martha’s Vineyard and a
celebrity buddhist who eats meat and gets comped at The Four Seasons.
Oddly enough, the three of you agree with one another.

Gee, since I last saw you (or was caught by your wife doing cocaine off
your master bathroom mirror while a student sat on your lap sipping Vodka
Stingers), the world has had a couple-three genocides, two U.S. lead
wars in the Middle East (one of them still on and now is longer in
length than Vietnam - but you probably don’t know anybody in uniform -
they don’t live where you live), New York City was attacked, an AIDs
pandemic happens, eight years of a presidential administration by
Halliburton has hoovered up tax dollars and any semblance of
transparent government, the price of gas has tripled but Americans
increasingly prefer SUVs and trucks, Big Oil has had record profits,
union membership is at a record low, a regular gal’s wages have
stagnated and the world, at least at this temperature, is sort of
coming to an end.

Oh, yeah, and my people have been villified in every national election
as bringing ruin to family, God and country. Except this year. This
year we apparently hate Latin American immigrants. But not more than
terrorists. Immigrants we round up. Terrorist we torture. But you
know that. One of your good civil liberties pals from Harvard(who
probably has does a nice review bit on the back cover of your book),
wrote early and often that torture is appropriate American policy - you
know, just until the emergency is over.

That, and American adults now win money on television because They Are
Smarter Than a Fifth Grader.

So Charlie, I ask you: how’s it going with that “sustained results
without fiery rhetoric” thing?

Cause we’re dyin’ out here, man. And we’re really fucking angry about
it.

Best regards,

Alicia D. Fagan
(CUNY Law School Class of ’87)

The letter is addressed to Charles Halpern, founding dean of the City University of New York School of Law, and is in reference to a recent New York Law Journal article blogged below:

NYLJ The Back Page
Author: ‘Practice Wisdom’ in Legal Activism
By Thomas Adcock web-editor@nylj.com
December 7, 2007
The notion of wisdom is seldom an element of discourse among
lawyers of the idealistic stripe. So laments Charles Halpern,
founding dean of the City University of New York School of Law, in
the preface to his new book, to be published next month, “Making
Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of
Wisdom.”
With introductions by Robert B. Reich, secretary of labor under
President Bill Clinton, and the Dalai Lama, the book counsels
lawyers who would fight the good fights on how to engage in what
Mr. Halpern envisions as a “new activism . . . more grounded in
compassion and community and less grounded in anger and
divisiveness” powered by “the practice of wisdom.”
Mr. Halpern is not talking here of intelligence born of expensive
education, nor discrimination in the best sense of that word.
Wisdom is “a way of being - grounded, reflective, insightful and
compassionate,” he writes, and therefore the tool of the activist
lawyer whose interest in sustained results eclipses an interest in
fiery rhetoric.
The author’s own career provides example. After graduating from
Harvard College and Yale Law School, the young Brooklyn-born
lawyer’s son became a self-described pin-striped corporate
attorney with calf-skin briefcase at Arnold & Porter in
Washington, D.C. Upon reaching the senior associate ranks, he left
the firm to create the Center for Law and Social Policy in
Washington, thus launching the 1960s-era public interest law
movement.
Mr. Halpern then moved into academia, with professorships at
Georgetown Law Center and Stanford Law School, after which he took
the reins of CUNY Law, dedicated to the nurture of attorneys for
the poor and disadvantaged. After CUNY Law, he became the first
president of the New York-based Nathan Cummings Foundation for
social justice advocacy. Today, he is a visiting scholar at the
Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley.
Throughout the book, Mr. Halpern offers intriguing behind-the-
scenes glimpses of the famous among his acquaintances:
* Of the personal household of late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Abe
Fortas, a partner at the originally named Arnold, Fortas & Porter
until he joined the high court, Mr. Halpern writes:
“Fortas enjoyed the wealth that law practice had brought him. He
and his wife, Caroline Anger, the head of the firm’s tax
department, lived in a mansion in upper Georgetown. Famous for her
misanthropic toughness, she dressed in subtle pastels and smoked
thick cigars. ‘Our swimming pool has two deep ends,’ she said, ’so
that people aren’t tempted to drop by with their small children
for a swim on a hot summer day.’”
* On leaving Arnold & Porter to establish the Center for Law and
Social Policy, Mr. Halpern recounted parting advice from partner
and mentor Paul Porter:
“Paul looked at me for a minute. Then he said, ‘[G]ood luck with
it.’ He took a long drag on his cigarette and added, in his husky
rasp, ‘Go ahead and pursue truth, beauty and justice. You may fail
like everybody else. Just make sure you don’t look too ridiculous
in the process.’”
* On the late Queens Borough President Donald Manes, who committed
suicide by stabbing himself with a butter knife:
. . . a short, heavy man, with thick features, crude manners, and
quick New York-style wit - irreverent and obscene, a political Don
Rickles. His friend Joe Murphy, the former president of Queens
College, told him that he could never run for statewide office
unless he did three things: lose weight, take speech lessons, and
read a book. He never took any of Joe’s advice.
Yet I grew to like Manes. He was funny, lewd, and shrewd, and he
had a keen ability to assess people’s strengths and weaknesses.
When we had an inauguration program for [CUNY Law], addressed by
Governor Mario Cuomo, the room was full of well-dressed women and
men. Manes came in a polyester maroon blazer and a white-on-white
shirt, as if he were going to dinner at a third-rate golf club. I
found this endearing.
Mr. Halpern traces his understanding of the need of practicing
wisdom in those early and frustrating days as the new head of CUNY
Law - days when “more than once, I considered resigning.”
Mr. Halpern found refuge and solace in an informal lunch group
called the Old Farts’ Club, whose members were mostly comedy
writers, playwrights, cartoonists and novelists.
“Laughing for two hours on a Friday afternoon,” he writes, “was a
wonderful way to end the week.”
The Old Farts’ Club taught the teacher that such refuge, such
release, must be sought by idealistic lawyers lest their idealism
dissipate.
“The practice of wisdom can . . . help with the management of
difficult, contentious problems of public policy without falling
back on clichés and stereotyping,” Mr. Halpern concludes. “Even
one person who is committed to the practice of wisdom might shift
the dynamic in a way that creates a space for the emergence of
wisdom.”
- Thomas Adcock may be reached at tadcock@alm.com
.

Posted on December 18th, 2007 by Alicia Fagan
Filed under: All Posts, Commentary, Media, News, Opinion, Politics