To: Globe and Mail

Date: May 2, 2007

First we have Lord Black and his trouble with money; now we have Lord Browne, "outed" for a relationship; with a Canadian, also having trouble with money; now we also have Paul Wolfowitrz, whose heterosexuality got him into the same kind of trouble with money at the World Bank that Browne got into at BP. It's a shame that one's sexuality must figure so prominently in the front pages, especially private lives. But, of course, there are no private lives any more, only commodities, of value in relation to the notoriety of the individual in question. All powerful men now must re-read the Italian-born British man of letters, Humbert Wolfe, who wrote:

You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British journalist.
But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there's
no occasion to.

Things have not changed a whole lot since the 1930s.

Geoff Smith

Kingston, ON