Newsweek Copies Slate

The Scrapbook knows more than a few former lacrosse players, including a couple here on staff. So when we read Dave Jamieson's "brief sociological account" of the sport, published on April 7 in Slate, we found ourselves nodding (and laughing) in agreement.

"They can be spotted driving SUVs with 'LAX' stickers affixed to the rear windows," Jamieson wrote of lacrosse players. "Many grow addicted to dipping Skoal and wearing soiled white caps with college logos on them."

Newsweek's Susannah Meadows and Evan Thomas must have enjoyed Jamieson's piece, too. Or maybe one of the five reporters and researchers who contributed to their May 1 cover story on the Duke scandal did. For when Meadows and Thomas tried their hand at a bit of sporting sociology, here's what they came up with in their depiction of lacrosse players:

"They can often be seen driving in SUVs with LAX decals, their dirty-white college ball caps turned around, a pinch of Skoal in their mouths."

The Scrapbook thinks Mr. Jamieson's version, besides being first, was better written. Small wonder someone at Newsweek chose to borrow it. Pity they didn't give Jamieson credit.

Patrick, We Know Ye All Too Well

Everyone has an off day now and then. But Rhode Island congressman Patrick Kennedy has had an off 20 years, going back to his cocaine-addiction rehab stint in 1986. The Overshadowed Kennedy--son of Ted, nephew of Uncle Jack, cousin of Maria--never fails to unimpress, if that's a word (and if it's not, it's one the malaprop king has probably

Who--besides the Rhode Island electorate that mysteriously returns him to office--could forget Patrick trashing his chartered yacht, or announcing that "I am on a lot of different medications, for among other things, depression," or shoving a female airport security guard when she tried to make him check his bag.

Fresh off of a career high-point earlier this month, in which Patrick was hit in the mouth with a hammer while watching a demonstration of Impact Gel shock-absorbing material at a trade show (he got six stitches and didn't even cry!), Kennedy has again handed his bête noire Howie Carr, a Boston Herald columnist and radio host, fresh material.

On April 15, Patrick's car was T-boned as he hurriedly pulled across an oncoming lane into a CVS pharmacy in Portsmouth, R.I. Carr was particularly taken with Patrick's handwritten account in the Portsmouth Police Department report. Not for what the mostly illegible one-sentence explanation said, but because of how it was written (see below).

While the officer on the scene reported Kennedy "appeared normal," such as it is, Patrick's handwriting looks like it was scrawled on a cocktail napkin at an open bar in a Gravitron. Or as Carr delicately put it, "It looks like it was written by a chimpanzee, or a 2-year-old. Or a Kennedy."

At least, writes Carr, it was only a fender-bender by Kennedy standards. "Not only did a single blonde not die, no one was even paralyzed or raped."