the eXile - Other Shite

Issue #22/103, November 9 - 23, 2000

Other Shite

Suitably Unsubstantial

A little over a month ago, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston ended years of suspense by finally filing a civil suit against former Harvard University hotshots Andrei Shleifer and Jonathan Hay. The two eggheads, eXile readers may recall, once headed the now-defunct Harvard Institute for International Development (Shleifer was the head of the whole institute; Hay was the chief of the Moscow office), the organization which in its day had been charged with distributing much of American aid money to Russia. Both were fired from HIID in 1997 after they were allegedly caught investing in Russia through Shleifer’s wife, Nancy Zimmerman, and Hay’s then-girlfriend, Beth Hebert.

For almost three years, sourpusses like us folks at the eXile eagerly awaited news of a criminal indictment. But when the feds finally made a move, it was to file a civil suit, not a criminal case. And the suit they eventually filed was, to put it mildly, a joke. We got a copy and read through it in less time than it takes to polish off a bowl of granola. About a page and a half long, it offers virtually no specifics of the case, mentioning only that Hay and Shelifer were accused of investing in “Russian oil companies” (which oil companies?) and in “firms which they had helped privatize” (which firms?). We asked around and virtually everyone who saw the case agreed; they had never seen a thinner civil complaint filed at any level.

We did a word count and compared the Hay-Shleifer criminal complaint, at just under 1000 words, to a number of other great literary documents. Here is a list of ten very short things which are nonetheless longer than U.S. vs. Hay, Shleifer, Zimmerman, Hebert, and Harvard University:

1. Nixon’s resignation speech

2. The lyrics to side 1 of the Sex Pistols “Nevermind the bollocks, here’s the Sex Pistols” LP

3. Pizza Hut’s nutrition information (entire menu)

4. The text to Al Gore’s gun control agenda

5. The Last Will and Testament of Jerry Garcia

6. Microsoft.com’s statement of privacy

7. Length of average email hoax, including headers

8. Clinton’s apology for the Tuskegee studies

9. History of Round Top, Texas, pop. 81

10. Putin’s Judo manual