Name check

This evening I tagged along while Jaron Lanier accepted a Goldsmith Award for his latest book “Who owns the internet?” It was fun to see Jaron honored for making a thoughtful contribution to an important political conversation. There is far too little thoughtfulness these days in political conversations.

The evening’s keynote speaker was Candy Crowley, who was receiving the Goldsmith career award for excellence in journalism. She’s the CNN reporter who, among other things, famously fact-checked Mitt Romney when she was moderating the third 2012 Presidential debate. Romney had insisted that it had taken the President days to call the Benghazi attacks an “act of terror”. In fact Obama had used that exact phrase at a news conference the day after the attacks.

That kind of forthright candor has made Crowley a hero among journalists. She has a wonderful way of seeing the complexity of people in the public sphere — an ability to not reduce them to cartoons — regardless of their politics or ideology.

At some point the moderator asked her “What do you think about Rand?”

The moderator’s question was about Rand Paul, the rising young libertarian star of the Republican party. But as Crowley started answering his question, there was some debate at our table.

“I thought he meant the other Rand,” somebody said, and I nodded in agreement.

“Ayn Rand” they continued, and suddenly I realized that no, we were not at all in agreement.

“I was assuming,” I said, looking around the table, “that he was talking about the Rand Corporation.”

There was an awkward pause. I think my innocent comment had caused a little intellectual culture shock.

It could have been worse. I could have said I thought the moderator was talking about the C++ random number generator.