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Pastimes : The Justa & Lars Honors Bob Brinker Investment Club -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lars who wrote (10013)	11/21/1999 11:27:00 AM
From: Ian@SI	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15132

Lars, If you want to check it out directly, it's at interactive.wsj.com And for those, who prefer "0" clicks to see the scathing attack by Abelson on Rukeyser: ... Speaking, as we just were, of lack of couth brings to mind Louis Rukeyser, the prattling panjandrum of Wall Street Week. We must confess that normally we don't watch the program, since we go to press just about the time it comes on the air. We also think it's pretty boring. As it happens, we have viewed the Wall Street Week installment that surfaced on the tube a couple of Fridays ago. And we were happy to find nothing much had changed. The host was still doing his interminable opening spiel and still smirking at his own feeble jokes. But what occasions this little blurb is less the merits of the program (the most prominent of which is that it's only a half-hour) than Mr. Rukeyser's treatment of Gail Dudack, who watches the market for Warburg Dillon Read (all three of them) and also has done long service for him as one of the forecasters who make up something insipidly called the Elves Index. Full disclosure compels us to note that over the years, Gail has appeared in this magazine a number of times as investment pundit, invariably acquitting herself admirably and to our readers' advantage. We've known her for a long while, followed her stuff with interest and can say that, in every sense, she's first-rate. For most of the 'Nineties, she was right on the money in her market calls and then, in mid-1996, she changed her stance from stalwartly bullish to warily bearish. She thought the risks were starting to outweigh the potential rewards. Obviously, she was wrong, if not about the risks, certainly about the rewards. And her continuing reservations provoked Mr. Rukeyser's disapproval. So two weeks ago -- are you prepared for the shock -- he defrocked her as an Elf! No argument that, as pasha, he has a perfect right to populate his program and his silly index as he wants. Our quarrel, though, is the nasty way he bounced Gail, portentously and publicly chastising her for the mortal sin of bearishness and casting her out from Elfdom. As a result, in that Edenic little piece of the Rukeyser redoubt, blessed unanimity and upbeatness reign once again, and nary a discouraging word is heard about the stock market. But we haven't yet gotten to the uncouth part of the story. That has to do with Mr. Rukeyser's failure to inform Gail of her pending removal ahead of time. She was sent an e-mail telling her of her expulsion as an Elf Friday evening just before six p.m. She only discovered the missive sometime Monday and after receiving a number of consoling phone calls from friends and strangers who had seen Mr. Rukeyser's egregious performance. We guess that's what's known in show biz, which is the biz Mr. R is in, as a class act. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ IMO, all Lou did was replace Dudack with someone that the viewers might find more exciting than a broken watch; and explained his reasons for doing so. It's his program. He's entitled to run it the way he wants. Professional courtesy dictates that the polite behaviour would have been to advise Gail well in advance of the broadcast even if that meant keeping her as an elf for an extra week. He could have consulted with her about how the replacement would be announced if he wanted to go out of his way to show respect for one of his regular guests. But Abelson crossed the line in a significant fashion. For one journalist to attack another publicly with the meanspirited drivel that came out of Alan, IMO, is completely uncalled for. If I ever get off the fence on this one, I'll be sure to let you all know. ;-) Ian.