This is one of the craziest stories I have ever read: "The Most Gullible Man in Cambridge/A Harvard Law professor who teaches a class on judgment wouldn’t seem like an obvious mark, would he?" (New York Magazine). I have no idea how accurate this one-sided account is, but my inclination to feel sorry for Hay went to hell halfway through the story. I am not going to try to summarize. Please read it for yourself. It's really strange, but I warn you, it's annoying. When he got into this Maria-Pia and Mischa intrigue, Hay was living with his children and his ex-wife, and the suffering visited on the professor's family is mind-blowing. I'll just quote the sentence where my sympathy for Hay took flight:
After her confrontation with the women, [Hays's ex-wife Jennifer] Zacks realized she had to be more active in protecting herself and her children — especially after Hay told her about Shuman and Haider’s various proposals for selling their home and Zacks found on his desk an application for a $500,000 home-equity loan.
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174 comments:
Not to make Hay of this man's unfortunate circumstances, but I was hoping it was Harvard Prof Larry Tribe.
Wow. Just wow. I am made speechless by the idiocy of this guy, Hay. And that of Zacks for not jettisoning him right away. Wow.
Must add that the world I travel in does not include people and stories such as this one. Make of that what you must.
Early in the story it's off:
Since moving back in with his ex-wife in 2004, he says, their relationship had been mostly platonic, and the two had an understanding that if either of them wanted to see other people, they’d have to move out.
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He and Zacks first met at Harvard Law in 1987. They married two years later and had a son before separating in the mid-’90s. After Hay moved back in, they had two more children together.
He would accrue over $300,000 in legal bills
That's a choice. It also ought to be a lesson in how the so-called elite law firms have no problem with ripping people off.
Those who cannot do, teach.
I would run away from anyone who wants to be called Maria Pia.
My mentally-ill (to be charitable) late step-monster turned my father into a doormat and squandered most of his life savings, his father's, and a third of my mother's. When she died, they were living hand to mouth on his Navy pension and SS with everything mortgaged, including 9 life insurance policies on him. He'd been treated like a prince by all the women in his family and then my mother, so her madness and bossiness was completely alien to him. Six years later, and she can still rile me up.
The Most Gullible Man in Cambridge/A Harvard Law professor who teaches a class on judgment wouldn’t seem like an obvious mark, would he?
Of course he would. Most marks are arrogant in their ignorance. Like those that think they can outsmart a 3 card monte hustle because they have an Ivy League education.
Read the linked article first. Then read Hay's Salon hit piece on Justice Scalia.
Instant karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you right on the head
I started reading the article twice, but couldn't get very far. There were so many red flags, and he ignored them all.
Farmer: What an absolutely pathetic excuse for a man.
Well you would know.
Picked on any crippled kids today?
What Fen wrote, plus one.
I'm surprised there are enough brain cells rattling around in professor Hay's skull to allow him to walk upright, let alone teach. A powerfully stupid man.
There's a sucker born every minute and two to take him.
"It was a story about love, deception, greed, lust and…unbridled enthusiasm."
He's what's known as an "expert". A highly educated, intellectual. Hay's stupidity and lack of wisdom is not at all an exception among those with his credentials. The process of getting those credentials is exactly what robbed him of his common sense, and the respect they got him only made him more vulnerable and less self-aware. The predators seen him coming like a blind three-legged deer.
I too have been ripped off big time, though nothing like this. It's pretty hard to tell true friend from foe, and I'm starting to learn that you just have to protect yourself at all times regardless. Some of the people you treat the best will stab you right in the back. Obviously, the dangerous ones never look dangerous, because that would tip off the prey.
What a pack of creeps.
This is why I say that it’s you who’s the extremist, Althouse.
This deliberate, cultivated sexual creepiness of academia was always there, but it’s only intensified and putrefied since my years on campus, thanks to feminism and gay worship.
You don’t even seem to regard the creepy perversion as remarkable.
That in itself is astonishing.
You’ve been living in a world in which people carefully cultivate their perversion and creepiness. And you spent years with your colleagues talking seriously about “critical” theory, i.e., Marxism. Decent people do to that.
How can you stand to be in that world? It’s a hothouse of spoiled children competing over who can be more rotten.
In the words of The Other McCain, "Crazy people are dangerous." In this case, having just skimmed over it, they can also be gullible. There isn't anyone involved in the matter who would be judged sane by 1950's standards. Look how far we've progressed since then....
Ans as Mark said above:
He would accrue over $300,000 in legal bills
That's a choice. It also ought to be a lesson in how the so-called elite law firms have no problem with ripping people off.
I have to assume that his own teaching material covered all the mistakes he made, so why did he make them anyway? Does he himself consider his own teaching to be bullshit?
TLDR.....read some. Just enough to figure out, he was thinking with his dick and enjoying getting his ego stroked.
That and the naivete of the "intellectual class". A tobacco chewing, knuckle draggin', big rig driver, wearing a MAGA hat, at a big truck stop would have been more savvy and known better.
So educated /s So stupid. Such childlike naivete. Yet. These are the people who think that they deserve to tell the rest of us how to live.
@Fen:
Well you would know.
How's mommy?
Picked on any crippled kids today?
No, but I did pick on a prick who can apparently dish it but can't take it.
If you have never used heroin before- that is, if you have never filled yourself with the chilly sensation of narcotic pleasure, that intense drool-worthy bliss- you will never know the schadenf-rrific joy I felt reading this article.
I'm mildly impressed that Prof. Althouse would link an article cheapening her profession and her very social class, but kudos to her.
Ha! He "studied at" UW-Madison according to his Harvard Law faculty bio. Doesn't say he graduated and doesnt say he ever encountered AA.
"Before joining the Harvard faculty he clerked at the United States Supreme Court, and practiced law with Sidley Austin LLP in Washington, DC, specializing in appellate cases. He studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison"
He's what's known as an "expert". A highly educated, intellectual. Hay's stupidity and lack of wisdom is not at all an exception among those with his credentials. The process of getting those credentials is exactly what robbed him of his common sense, and the respect they got him only made him more vulnerable and less self-aware
The same kind that get cited as subject matter experts by the likes of WaPo and the NYTs.
There ought to be a corollary to the Murray-Gellman Amnesia Effect.
We read about how a Harvard Prof was taken, then turn the page and assume the next one has wisdom.
What Clark said at 5:49. Hay is a poseur with a disordered mind.
That and the naivete of the "intellectual class". A tobacco chewing, knuckle draggin', big rig driver, wearing a MAGA hat, at a big truck stop would have been more savvy and known better.
Bingo ! I skimmed it but the old rule about never dipping anything important to you in crazy, seems to apply.
A few years ago a professor of Psychiatry at UC, Irvine was in court as his family sought a guardian for him after he had sent a $million to a Formosa scam.
It seems like everyone in that story claimed to have bonded over shared mental health issues. So I guess we're not allowed to say it's a crazy story because it's about a bunch of crazy people right?
"He's what's known as an "expert"
Indeed. What a fucked-up, degenerate bunch our would be overlords are. If they weren't so stupid, they'd be an even bigger threat.
"So educated /s So stupid. Such childlike naivete. Yet. These are the people who think that they deserve to tell the rest of us how to live"
He deferred to the grifters because lesbians/ fake women outrank him. It's a sacred totem pole to the true believer leftists.
Live by the identity hierarchy . . . lose your job, money, home, cat, ex-wife, kids, dignity, self respect and die by the identity hierarchy.
Sounds like a great made for TV movie!
Needs adult lessons..........
"he clerked at the United States Supreme Court"
God, help us. Truly confidence inspiring.
Well, he had the best of intentions, and we know where that road leads.
"Sounds like a great made for TV movie!"
It would be a great one, and may well be someday, but nobody would buy that if it was fiction.
Practice tip: Never trust a lesbian in a hardware store that wants a one night stand. Gambling with porn stars is less risk than that.
The weird thing is how easy he was to fuck over.
Article shows both personal and intellectual gullibility.
I started it, but I'm not going to finish it. It clutters the mind. No one from that part of the country is worth my time.
Is the wife still around out of pity or what?
I have to admire the evil genius of these women. Concocting that wild tale about lesbians and trans women would have sent 99% of men running after the first encounter, but it's artful seduction to a woke Harvard professor.
“There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.” --George Orwell
So, what do you do with your homework when you find out your professor is this guy? What do you do with your degree? Just don't tell anybody you went to Harvard. HA!!
@The Bergall:
Sounds like a great made for TV movie!
Needs adult lessons..........
Had this been written as a screenplay, it'd probably get rejected for being too unrealistic. Once again proving the cliche: truth is stranger than fiction.
Watch Fleabag on Amazon.
It’s all in there.
This poor man ignored all sorts of red flags. He was vulnerable and a bit of a jackass. And in his defense, all sorts of people, many of them super smart, fall for con artists like Bernie Madoff or "Nigerian princes" or even Donald Trump.
Besides all that, why didn't someone tell this man to take his relationships with his wife and children more seriously? Don't these people have priests or rabbis or someone to put their butts on the straight and narrow? Jesus!
"Read the linked article first. Then read Hay's Salon hit piece on Justice Scalia."
That article has a whole section lauding Mischa Haider — one of the 2 individuals who supposedly victimized him.
"I am close to one of the victims of [Scalia's] operation, a transgender woman named Mischa Haider, whom I got to know during the course of her work on a Ph.D. in physics at Harvard. She’s an extraordinary polymath — gifted violinist, writer and novelist; fluent speaker of a half-dozen languages; math genius. And physicist. Her intellect would have made our brilliant Justice want to hide his head in a bag, to borrow his charming words from last year’s marriage equality ruling. Those who have any doubt about trans mothers should meet Mischa’s children. Since coming out as trans a few years ago, this remarkable woman has suffered a debilitating depression. Partly from the transphobia she encounters daily at the allegedly enlightened Harvard; from the constant stares in public; from the indignity of worrying about things the rest of us take for granted, like walking in the street or using a public bathroom without fear of taunts or violence, or taking her children to the park without fear of being humiliated in front of them. And from the pain of rejection by family and former friends who, despite her prodigious achievements, are somehow ashamed to be associated with her. Beyond all that, it’s her knowledge of what the “culture war” means for trans women across the country, women who are shunned by their families, who are often unable to get jobs and therefore live in poverty, who face shocking levels of assault and murder (2015 was a record year), who attempt suicide at a rate greater than 40 percent. Who are generally excluded from the protection of antidiscrimination laws. Who, on the contrary, are at this moment the subject of dozens of pending pieces of transphobic legislation around the country, such as bills to stigmatize trans children by forcing them to use separate locker rooms at school or to jail trans women for using public bathrooms that match their identity. The drumbeat of organized hatred, calling to mind yellow stars and separate drinking fountains and worse, makes my friend feel like a nonperson, unwelcome in her own country. All this, for the crime of not matching someone else’s idea of how women are supposed to look. She’s decided to leave academic physics after finishing the doctorate. She has become too absorbed in the struggle for equality – for being accorded the most basic human dignity – to think of anything else. She could not live with herself, she tells me, if she did not devote her talents to helping the many trans women whose lives are decimated by the bigotry and ignorance of those around them. Bigotry and ignorance inflamed by demagogues like Antonin Scalia, whose toxic rhetoric has done so much to incite and legitimate fear of gender nonconformity and elevate it to the level of constitutional principle. She is resolved to become a trans rights activist."
SCOTUS law clerk, but a complete dunce.
I note that he wasn’t Wisconsin Law or Creighton Law faculty material.
Aside: A lawyer from Omaha clerked for Brennan. I read his book. A number of obvious mistakes. He’s now running some art education thing in NYC. He lives in the Chesla hotel.
I sometimes think a giant meteor right into the heart of Cambridge might be a blessing.
Some people fall for Private Server Clintons.
Maybe, Hay can seek redemption by joining other Harvard Professors in the noble Emoluments! litigation.....
Wait.
"This poor man"
He's not a "poor man". He's a dangerous fool.
So he clerked for Scalia. Did Scalia hire him as a devil's advocate or just to torment him (he probably thought the latter)?
Freeman Hunt said...
Is the wife still around out of pity or what?
She's protecting her investment.
She’s an extraordinary polymath — gifted violinist, writer and novelist; fluent speaker of a half-dozen languages; math genius. And physicist.
And psychopathic scam artist, apparently. Even though I was only 9 at the time, I still remember the brouhaha in the gay community over Silence of the Lambs making the killer a tortured transexual.
Two quotes are instructive here...
George Orwell: "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."
Richard Feynman: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool."
Don't these people have priests or rabbis or someone to put their butts on the straight and narrow? Jesus!
It is depressingly easy to deduce why Spiros is so consistently mistaken in his reasoning and conclusions on virtually every topic he chooses to comment on.
Harvard and its environs have been circling the maelstrom for decades, and as the circles grow smaller the decline grows sharper and faster. They've deconstructed the clockwork of civilization and the predictable chaos ensues. Corruption hath its consequences.
Soon to be a major motion picture, with Tom Hanks as Hay, Patton Oswalt as Mischa, and Sara Silverman as MP. Coming soon to a multiplex near you.
And psychopathic scam artist, apparently. Even though I was only 9 at the time, I still remember the brouhaha in the gay community over Silence of the Lambs making the killer a tortured transexual.
You were quite the woke 9 year old. Seriously, though, that movie could not get made today. They'd have to change the killer to a straight, white Trump voter or something, like they do on Law & Order.
I read the Salon link, not the NY. Did he finally woke up (or would that be down?)?
A thousand pardons, for I was mistaken. Whatever joy I felt from reading the main article was a candle against the sun of Hay's Salon piece trashing the man who made his worthless career. I am certain Scalia is looking down from heaven, laughing uproariously alongside Jesus Christ as they watch a worthless charlatan's reputation circle the drain. Bravo, you crazy deviants. Brand Hay's abuse as the worst crime since the Nazis stole art from the Jews. (The subject of Hay's award-winning book!)
Let me ask the shitbag leftists who insist on cluttering the comments here: do you still feel safe, knowing these grotesque incompetents are your protectors? Do you think they will last very long in the Storm?
In my former career, I met some very brazen criminals, and you almost have to admire their nerve and creativity.
Imagine giving somebody money to move, and coming back into town to find out it's YOU that has moved, and your "friend" now has a signed lease, reviewed by your attorney, and now is more or less legally living in your home.
50 years ago, you and the neighbors drag them out and run them out of town. Now, you must engage with the machinery of the state, which means it will cost a fortune, take forever, and you are lucky if YOU don't end up in jail.
The world has gone crackers.
@dcotrev:
So Hay's deserved to be victimized because he had an opinion of Antonin Scalia you didn't agree with?
@Automatic_Wing:
You were quite the woke 9 year old.
Haha. I actually saw that movie in the theater. What the hell was my father thinking? I remember people remarking that I was mature for my age, but come on.
>> like they do on Law & Order.
From which you will learn that most NYC murders are committed by fabulously wealthy pharmaceutical executives and country club presidents.
The following quote from Hay stands out as the most concise summary of the whole shitshow: "How dare you question these people who are suffering?"
That was in response to his...wife (...ex-wife...partner...whatever) expressing suspicion about these people. With that context, and everything you know about about SJWs, NPCs, etc., the rest of the story pretty much writes itself. No matter how bad I feel about my life, I'll always be able to think "I'm glad I'm not that motherfucker."
Alright my first question is why you would believe any woman who said she was pregnant with your kid if you never ejaculated? Seriously. I'll continue the article and see if I'm correct.
J. Farmer said...
So Hay's deserved to be victimized because he had an opinion of Antonin Scalia you didn't agree with?
7/23/19, 6:45 PM
He deserves to be victimized because he's a Judas, exchanging his loyalty for pity pennies, damning the man who unquestionably made his career just as Iscariot betrayed the Christ. He deserves his fate because he's a gullible retard who thought the T in LGBT stood for Trust. He deserves his fate because he's an enemy of the American people, and should make aliyah before the proletariat holds him and his fellow degenerate lawyers at Harvard responsible for their complete destruction of the rule of law in America.
Have a lovely day!
I should append "so far" to my comment
That fool virtue signaled himself right into poverty. Suicide by pervert.
A real Harvard Prof knows it is all about money all the time and all that fake nobility is for fooling people. Ask Pocahontas.
@doctrev:
He deserves to be victimized because he's a Judas, exchanging his loyalty for pity pennies, damning the man who unquestionably made his career just as Iscariot betrayed the Christ
Hmmm. I guess I don't consider writing a Salon article the equivalent of turning someone in to be executed. But okay. Variety is the spice of life, after all.
Have a lovely day!
You too! :)
p.s. I should add thatit seems obvious Hay's has some serious interpersonal problems, that I have little sympathy for how thoroughly he allowed himself (and his innocent family) to be played, and I don't agree with his politics, but to say someone deserves to be victimized is a bit of a step too far.
I tried to read the article, but I just couldn't figure out who was what. The one clear character is the man a law professor who had been (was still?) married with children. And he and his (ex?) wife are committed to living with those children, except when they want to form another significant attachment. The next clearest character is the girlfriend who has children, "coparenting with her female partner" or something. So it's not clear to me whether those (girlfriend) children are her own children, or those of her "spouse". And the girlfriend has a close attachment with a trans-woman, which is either a person with a penis who doesn't want one, or a person without a penis who does want one. And how this trans-woman is involved with the (girlfriend's) children is also unclear, except I guess she is Auntie Mame or something.
So I admit, I gave up without reading this to the end; but the one clear thing that came across to me is that no adult in this whole article gives one single solitary shit about any of the children. I will give a very slight nod to the (ex?) wife who maintains a relationship with a man she doesn't love (except why the extra children after they separated?) which one could argue (I won't) is for the sake of the children.
So I don't care about any of the adults. And I despair for the children; except I think they likely (some of them) have strong enough genetic intelligence to possibly counteract their horrible childhoods.
Oh to have been there when Hay and his friends were disparaging Trump as stupid and mentally unbalanced.
Smug smugly smugs and hopes we pay mind.
Smugly.
He deserves to be victimized because he's a Judas, exchanging his loyalty for pity pennies, damning the man who unquestionably made his career just as Iscariot betrayed the Christ. He deserves his fate because he's a gullible retard who thought the T in LGBT stood for Trust. He deserves his fate because he's an enemy of the American people, and should make aliyah before the proletariat holds him and his fellow degenerate lawyers at Harvard responsible for their complete destruction of the rule of law in America.
Hehe. This.
In addition to letting these two amateur con artists push him around for years he let his ex-wife take him of the deed to his house. He seems so desperate for social contact he'll let anyone do anything.
"I tried to read the article, but I just couldn't figure out who was what."
I suspect that might have been Hay's real problem. He was simply confused and overwhelmed, trying to keep up with the players and their positions. So to speak.
I believe the women.
Right off the bat Hay tells a lie. He says when he moved back with his wife it was a mostly platonic relationship. A platonic relationship that produced two children!
He's a liar. He's probably a pervert who did what the women say. Now he's going to lie and retaliate against the women.
Meanwhile elsewhere in legal ethics:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/mueller-will-appear-with-lawyer-who-represented-the-clinton-aide-who-set-up-email-server%3f_amp=true
@Birkel:
Smug smugly smugs and hopes we pay mind.
Smugly.
You always do, Birks. You're my biggest fan! Hugs and kisses, darling.
"I believe the women."
SPOILER ALERT
Then how do you explain their similar behavior towards at least 3 other men? I was wondering why the first anonymous victim mentioned was given the last name "Roe." Why not "Doe?" Because there was another victim, given the name "Doe." And the third? "Poe." I'm betting there's at least a few more, as they seem to be quite the busy little beavers.
I got about two-thirds through the article and couldn't finish. I've done stupid things in my life, but this story is just too mind-bogglingly stupid to endure.
Talk about rationalization. Professor Hay ought to teach a class in rationalization. He's a pro.
It appears that in the course of all this Professor Hays signed away a half-interest in a three million dollar house to his ex-wife.
Not all trash lives in a trailer park.
Over my 60 years on the planet I've learned to tread carefully around "others". I always had a strong desire to help others in need (maybe the result of Catholic education) until I saw my older and wiser sister get taken by a con-man. Fortunately for her, it was small potatoes stuff. My view is that many highly educated folks actively counteract the messages that their lizard brains are sending.
Goes to show even an Ivy League professor can be a splooge stooge.
He CO-AUTHORED this piece with Mischa Haider: "The only thing standing between Trump and authoritarianism: the supreme court/With Congress in Trump’s pocket, it’s more important than ever for Democrats to block Neil Gorsuch’s appointment"
"I believe the women."
Other than the ex-wife, there's only one woman involved and she hasn't said a word.
That was the biggest simultaneous commentgasm of all time on the Althouse blog.
5 comments, all at 7:25
He says, in reference to his ex-wife not trusting the women, "I just thought she was deceiving herself.” Ha!
I feel sorry for the kids. Imagine having a father that stupid but with pretensions of intelligence.
Next time Mischa and the kids visit the Hays residence I sure hope "Cops" is there with cameras.
"Live PD" would be good too.
I bet Hays has a collection of Calvin Klein sleeveless white t-shirts in his closet.
“5 comments, all at 7:25.”
Talk about splooge stooges!
Am I wrong about this? I accept the possibility that a person can be a brilliant physicist or a brilliant economist, and also be a total nitwit about personal relationships or politics. But can person be a brilliant legal scholar and also be such a nitwit? The story about personal relationships, and the link to the over-emotional article about how the Kavanaugh nomination is the end of the world, makes me think that Harvard Law has a horrible vetting process for tenure.
I bet Hays has a collection of Calvin Klein sleeveless white t-shirts in his closet.
Hell no. He has sleeved v-neck white t-shirts!
p.s. I know people say "sleeveless t-shirts" all the time, but isn't that an oxymoron?
Let me check...
Oh God, there I am right in the middle of it.
I need a drink and a cigarette.
Who was the Lucky Pierre?
"That was the biggest simultaneous commentgasm of all time on the Althouse blog."
Tag it.
From what I could tell, the ex-wife managed to get him to sign away half of the multi-million dollar house to her alone, or did I misunderstand that part?
With a commentgasm like that, the blog will be suing for child support in 9 monts for sure.
I know well all of the Cambridge places mentioned in this article - Tags Hardware, Darwin's, the Sheraton Commander.
This will constitute piling on, the Harvard Crimson mentions Bruce Hay in a correction to its article "40 Harvard Law Profs Sign NYT Op-Ed Demanding Senate Reject Kavanaugh":
"An Oct. 3 version of this article listing the then-25 Harvard Law professors who had signed the New York Times editorial left off Law School professor Bruce Hay. The Crimson regrets the error. The article was updated to remove the list of Harvard signatories after the number grew significantly over the course of the day on Oct. 4."
It was not hard to figure which house was his on Mount Vernon Street. It seems that Bruce Hay quitclaimed his interest in the $3.2M house to his ex-wife Jennifer Zacks on December 27, 2016 for the nominal consideration of $1.
Gullible doesn't seem to cover it.
It's not unusual. That's how women work. The difference is in how much they nag.
I think current and recent Harvard Law students should also be tallied in the victims category.
When we met for pizza at his Sunday-night hangout one evening, he wondered aloud whether he might be 'on the spectrum.' That could help explain why warning signs that might have been obvious to many managed to elude a man who teaches a Harvard Law class on 'Judgment and Decision-Making,'
Um, no, it really wouldn't. Confidence in one's judgments of the character of others is not the sort of thing that the social fumbles caused by being a high-functioning autistic person engenders.
Alright my first question is why you would believe any woman who said she was pregnant with your kid if you never ejaculated?
There are pre-game shows as well as the main event.
Ann Althouse said...
He CO-AUTHORED this piece with Mischa Haider: "The only thing standing between Trump and authoritarianism: the supreme court/With Congress in Trump’s pocket, it’s more important than ever for Democrats to block Neil Gorsuch’s appointment"
7/23/19, 7:25 PM
There's a comment-gasm because every time I think I'm tired of winning, every time I say "Well, the wine was great, but please, no more! I have to drive home tonight..."
... Althouse, ever the gracious host, brings up another cask of the good stuff and says, "Come onnnnn, you gotta try this, be a bro! This is the best wine I got, even better than what you drank earlier!" And I lift the cup to my lips, only for the dawn to greet me as I realize that I have no idea where I left my car. Also, I'm on an island of some kind. But I'm surrounded by hot chicks, and I'm pretty sure the wine is responsible, so it's all good.
No matter how many people are here, I'll be bookmarking this as the endless well, from which the waters of Joy From Pain spring.
Women are like hurricanes. When they arrive they're hot and wet and wild, and when they leave you have no house and no car.
- somebody famous
You cant cheat an honest man Episode #23,456,789
I had something similar happen to me but the stakes were much lower and, apparently, the girl wasn’t as creative. Years ago I dated a girl and, in the middle of the relationship, I got a job offer out of town. She also wanted to move to South Carolina at the same time. Anyway, she came to visit me in my new town under the premise of trying one last time to make it work. We had to protected sex. Additionally, she had had her tubes tied years earlier. At the end of the week, we decided it was best we stayed friends and she moved to SC. That was over thanksgiving. In mid January, I met someone new and we began dating. My ex and I had a mutual friend and that friend let it slip that I had went out with a new girl. Also, my ex started dating someone in SC. At the end of January, while I was with the new girl, I got about 20 voice messages on my phone from my ex saying she was in the Hospital because, somehow, she was pregnant.
I compartmentalized the information but was very supportive of my ex. We couldn’t find out if the child was mine until it was born so I intended to do the right thing and then get a paternity test immediately once the child was born. However, the stress of it was unbearable. My ex continued to want me involved and wanted me to communicate via email with her new BF. The new BF was also a member of my college fraternity but at a different school (though I never got a last name so I could do a background check). I suspected the entire thing was a hoax (which I felt guilty about that suspicion) and made sure my communications were supportive while not agreeing to anything. She would sometimes call and want support and other times she was belligerent - but she’d call back and claim it was pregnancy hormones.
After a few months, the stress was too high and I explained to my current GF what had happened. She was immensely understanding and, since it all happened before our first date, never saw it as a betrayal.
I never told my friends or parents. That would happen after a paternity test.
About six months in, she called to tell me her new BF was really coke addict and she was breaking it off with him and losing all her support - and wanted me to move down. I offered to move her up to me but I wasn’t quitting my job and moving down (can’t raise a kid without a job).
Then, 7 months into it, my ex called me in tears she had a mis-carriage. That was the worst because I had zero evidence she was pregnant but, as the same time, it was certainly possible I just lost a child. And, at that point, no paternity test was possible.
About a year later, she called. She said it was the anniversary of the miscarriage. But, the math was off by about a month. That was my first real clue it had been a con. Then I got our mutual friend to probe a bit to find out who her new BF was. It turned out that guy never existed. That was another lie.
Now, my story is different from this schmuck. He cheated on his partner - at minimum in her eyes. The con was a con from the beginning in his case but, in mine, I think this simply was a lie born out of being hurt and she lost control of it. And, I think her goal was to either get me back or destroy my job and relationship - but she never got a dime out of me and I did a lot of ensure she really only knew me and not other people in my life. Every chance this schmuck had to contain this con, he doubled down and got deeper.
I read the whole thing, somewhat distracted by memory of Shawn Colvin's rendition of "Viva, Las Vegas." Truly this is a case worthy of that famous LA shamus, the Dude.
While the Dude would no doubt fall prey to the wiles of La Shuman and her trans partner, his judgment proof status would stand him in better stead than the poor judgment of Professor Hay. There's no Title IX for bowling leagues. Though I can easily imagine Mischa Haider shoving his head into the toilet, screaming "Where's the money, Lebowsky?"
As a wise cowboy once remarked, the whole durn human comedy keeps perpetuating down through the ages...
I read the whole thing.
This is what happens when very broken people find each other, and then decide they are smarter than everyone else.
She’s an extraordinary polymath — gifted violinist, writer and novelist; fluent speaker of a half-dozen languages; math genius. And physicist. Her intellect would have made our brilliant Justice want to hide his head in a bag, to borrow his charming words from last year’s marriage equality ruling.
I'm guessing she is a biological he.
I deleted my comment from 8:01 because it had too many typos. I intended to say:
Why should I find myself chiming into this comment stream to defend Prof. Hay? He changed ownership of his $3 million house to his (ex??) wife, instead of co-ownership. That's not because he is a stupid person, but because he realizes that he is in danger of tort claims and would put a claim on his house, and he wants to protect his (ex ?) wife and his children from those legal claims. There are a lot of things here to blame Prof Hay for, but the real estate transfer to his (ex?) wife is not one of those things.
Fraudulent transfer?
And now that I'm totally done with the article I'll say I'm a little surprised so many men have sex but don't ejaculate. Is it really this common now or does Misha know how to pick em?
Much more common to ejaculate without having sex.
I don't really see someone who missed obvious clues. It seems to me the guy understood exactly what was on offer and he got what he bargained for. But then I think people generally hear what they want to hear, see what they want to see, etc.,if they aren't deaf or blind or something. If he was duped, he was a willing victim.
It is always funny to me, how easily a man can be convinced that a much younger woman finds him attractive and wants to have sex with him.
Can we - the men of the Commentariat - take a blood oath, not to sleep with crazy women, even if they are really hot and you are really lonely?
It's be better (and cheaper) to spend your money on hookers and gin.
@Bay Area Guy:
Can we - the men of the Commentariat - take a blood oath, not to sleep with crazy women, even if they are really hot and you are really lonely?
No problem :)
Men learn this early on: (Nelson Algren) Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/nelson_algren_393284
But Sally327 makes an excellent point. Blood drains away from the brain toward the penis. And it's not just Harvard Law profs.
As Nia Vardalos wrote in My Big Fat Greek Wedding: "The man may be the head of the household. But the woman is the neck, and she can turn the head whichever way she pleases."
"She's protecting her investment."
Sunk costs.
I’m with Peter- that’s some clever scamming. I want to know if they did reconnaissance on Hay or if he was a random mark you could find any day at the hardware store in Cambridge?
Playing Title IX that way should instill fear in men subject to, though I suspect it won’t.
"And now that I'm totally done with the article I'll say I'm a little surprised so many men have sex but don't ejaculate. Is it really this common now or does Misha know how to pick em?"
Probably look for the super-woke ones.
Sunk costs
There’s probably only one economist left in Allston/Cambridge that still teaches the sunk cost fallacy.
Obviously didn't have a dad, brother, or best friend give him time honored advice: Don't stick your D in crazy.
9 Mothers On The Pains And Joys Of Emotional Labor
Mischa Haider, applied physicist
Kids: Three (5, 3, and 1)
Partnership status: Married six years
Aid with childcare: None
"A lot of [my emotional labor] has to do with managing relationships. One of the big challenges of parenting and motherhood for me is balancing my love for my children with also knowing that the way they work out their disagreements and desires among each other is going to form them into the people they become as adults. How I help them manage their dynamic is going to impact a lot of people moving forward. ... more ..."
He reminds me of Chris Farley(?) in Coneheads.
Hay was a SCOTUS clerk for Scalia, resisted all that darn wisdom, indeed, rebelled against it, and now look at him. An unrequited mess of a man.
Buck up Hay - it's never too late to make amends and shape the fuck up!
Other than the couple of months of squatting in the house, what did they actually get out of the guy, in terms of money, goods, or services? He helped one of their careers, I guess, but the total direct theft seems very low for a story of this type (and there have been so, so many stories of this type--though usually with fewer very-colorful characters).
With a commentgasm like that, the blog will be suing for child support in 9 monts for sure.
Whoops, yet without Whoops.
I read the article more with morbid fascination than enjoyment. Everyone involved in this mess, including the ex-wife, seem so fucked up as to be living in another dimension. There must be some kind of occult force field that causes people like this to bond together. They seem to have bonded together over the things that cause most people to keep and maintain their distance. Maybe the elaborate con job was part of the appeal for all parties involved. For her part there were very few men alive who would be willing to believe such elaborate lies and for his part, there were very few women who would be willing to make up such elaborate lies to involve him in her life. Even as she was possible, he was possible. For every man there's a woman. I'm sorry to see that this story has ended so sadly. Perhaps if they sought poly-couples counseling, they could work things out. Huma and Carlos Danger have worked things out and learned from past mistakes. The important thing is for them all to keep an open mind and try to move forward in their relationships.
Haven't laughed so hard in years -- and the very best part had to have been when his lawyer starts reviewing the prior (that he KNOWS ABOUT!!!) exploits of that peerless pair (trio?) of grifters, like their virtually identical pursuits of a Harvard med student and a CPA, facing identical paternity blackmail efforts, one of whom couldn't even manage to figure out that the kid's actual birthdate was off by two years from their actual, erm, procreative activity. It is increasingly obvious that the only way to deal with Harvard entire is to nuke it from orbit.
1. Hay is a complete liberal idiot.
2. Why did Hay agree to do this story and with pictures?
3. That $3m house in Cambridge is $500k tops in Omaha.
4. Great find Ann.
“Haider attributed the cancer to hormonal changes from the pregnancy, telling Hay it was his fault and that he’d ruined their lives by bringing an unplanned child into the world.”
Hormones don’t cause cancer.
And that of Zacks for not jettisoning him right away.
Well, Huma has let Weiner move back in, so that sets the bar pretty low.
Everyone is rightfully ridiculing this guy, but the woman and the trannie are real psychopaths. They could have easily pulled this on a not-so-naive single guy, the same as some of these other women like 'mattress' girl have done. It's dangerous out there for men (and women).
Never forget that the Harvards are our betters. They are our ruling class.
I like when the ex wife is in Paris with the kids for summer, he is gonna sneak the crazies in to live with him and everything will be cool and the crazies will leave before mamma comes home and she will never, ever know they were there.
That is some real deep thinking
Imagine what it must be like to be a cop in Cambridge.
Not to be a jerk, but what about this story is worth a year of a journalist's time? I get that it's a human interest thing involving some extreme characters, but, I mean, so what?
From his faculty bio, “He is also interested in the economic analysis of law, including the economics of litigation...”
Here it is prof: if you are a plaintiff the goal is to get as much money as you can, if you are a defendant the goal is to keep your money and if you are the lawyer for either side the goal is to get the party’s money in an ethical fashion while zealously representing your client.
Can I teach at Harvard now?
"There must be some kind of occult force field that causes people like this to bond together."
They turn away from God and then wonder that there are consequences. 'All the harm the soul receives is born of its enemies: the world, the devil, and the flesh.'
“nearly perfect people” who were “bright and kind and sweet to their children and socially conscious,” and whose family composed a striking, distinctly modern portrait: Haider, a loquacious, impassioned Indian-Pakistani trans woman physicist, the mother of two children (who call her “Maman”) birthed by the sultry, soft-spoken French daughter of a major Jewish American songwriter (she’s called “Sumi”). (Haider’s boyfriend Klein, Hay later discovered, also helped raise the children, who refer to him as “Daddy.”)
Yes, nearly perfect people. Snort
Modern Family
That's a crazy story. What did they want? Was it some sort of malignant evil they wished to visit on people? Why was the couple divorced? Why was he so desperate he got so wrapped up in their lives? Why didn't he know he should be paying more attention to his children? Those poor kids.
"Not to be a jerk, but what about this story is worth a year of a journalist's time?"
It's a crazy story. But I could see it as a horror movie. Fatal Attraction + Absent Minded Professor + generic horror movie. She may be able to sell it for movie rights.
rehajm said...
I’m with Peter- that’s some clever scamming. I want to know if they did reconnaissance on Hay or if he was a random mark you could find any day at the hardware store in Cambridge?
--
She told the staff she was looking for an uncommon tool and was led to Hay.
Alright my first question is why you would believe any woman who said she was pregnant with your kid if you never ejaculated?
Never ejaculated or not: I'm not a guy or anything but it seems to me that a good series of descending rules for reducing hassle and vulnerability to charlatans and nutcases would be: 1. Don't stick your dick in anyone you don't know well; if that's too hard than at least 2. Don't stick your dick in obvious crazy or ripoff artist; if that's too hard than 3. Don't ever stick your dick in anyone without a condom; if that's too hard, than 4. Don't believe any woman who claims she's pregnant without outside verification (they sell used pregnancy tests on eBay and CL; watch her take it) and if she is in fact pregnant do not admit fault without a DNA test.
Then again, you could just not ruin your and your family's entire lives by being fucking faithful to your wife, but if that's too hard, see above.
Mia-Pia was no prize even if the cost to him was just one hour of his time.
Twilight Zone becomes real.
“Imagine spending $300,000 recovering your own house from a lesbian trespasser. You have entered the Twlight Zone.”
This story is moving around quickly. Playing into alot of biases on the internet.
"they sell used pregnancy tests on eBay and CL"
--
WTF?!
Just more evidence for the resonance of the evergreen proclamation by William F. Buckley:
“I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.“
No conservative would ever be in Hay’s position.
So this is how radical progressive leftists live their personal lives. The article shows how they view marriage, transgender-ism, liberated mothers and sex actually shape the kind of world they find themselves living in.
4. Don't believe any woman who claims she's pregnant
5. Don't believe any woman who claims she can't get pregnant
It is always funny to me, how easily a man can be convinced that a much younger woman finds him attractive and wants to have sex with him.
Ain't no fool like an old fool.
So after all he's just learned in this nightmare, he then agrees to tell his story to the New Yorker. And they throw him this middle finger: "The Most Gullible Man in Cambridge". When he went to complain, he was repeatedly tied up by official Cambridge wallet inspectors.
No conservative would ever be in Hay’s position.
Not as a matter of principle, but mortal men and women will exhibit bad judgment ("original sin"). Many, perhaps most, will not share, shift, or deny responsibility.
5. Don't believe any woman who claims she can't get pregnant
Human Reproduction 101. Well, female, anyway. That said, quite a few men and women don't get it, which has served to rationalize the "wicked solution" and the persistence of Planned Parenthood et al.
So he deposited the 3 grand check? What did he do with the money?
It's always easier to look accomplished than to be accomplished. Real accomplishment usually takes some work on top of talent, otherwise one is merely talking about potential.
To me, this talk of an incredibly talented transsexual person who tragically doesn't have enough time to produce her masterpieces because of bigotry and of having to dedicate herself to trans activism rings all the alarm bells, and not in a good way.
But I guess to a socialist this would sound so, so wildly interesting and tragic, like the perfect confirmation of their deepest held beliefs about how the world works.
Academia: the sex here is really about being stimulated by a fantasy of persecution by evil "cis" society.
Hay is stimulated by the fantasy that his transgender friend is endangered by Scalia and Trump. They write articles about the imaginary sexual danger being created by political others. It's how they get off.
Transgender politics is about insisting that people are trying to kill transgenders, and even the article's author genuflects at the "record year for trans murders" bullshit.
Hay gets off on imagined persecution; the grifter and her trans friend get off on torturing anyone they can get their hands on on the grounds that they are persecuted sexually.
The author is afraid to come out and say this is their grift because, well, you know.
There is little concern for the children by anyone. Not surprising. Harvard.
"[Hays ex-wife Jennifer] Zacks found on his desk an application for a $500,000 home-equity loan." I am not going to read anything that bothers Althouse - but divorces always take care of legal arrangements on joint-owned property, so I would only puzzle at the illogic of the ex-wife's reaction.
This is also weirdly close to the plot of The World According to Garp. The only thing missing is an airplane crashing into the house.
I was impressed at the apparent ease with which the grifter invoked Title IX proceedings against Hay. They may end up being the most difficult and damaging part of his experience. People tend to think that academic life is well-cushioned, but when it comes to even a whiff of a hint of sexual impropriety by anyone remotely connected to a school, the Title IX bureaucracy takes over.
Re: Yeshua, Judah ...
No "Betrayal = no "Risen"
"I was impressed at the apparent ease with which the grifter invoked Title IX proceedings against Hay."
We don't know that she's a grifter. That's Hay's side of the story. He was a professor and she was a graduate student, and he chose to work with her a lot. The degree of personal involvement seems immense, even in the story told from his point of view.
"So he deposited the 3 grand check? What did he do with the money?"
Did the women seriously believe they had rented the house? The court decided against them, it seems, because Hay didn't own the house when he did whatever the transaction was.
From the article, after the women moved into the house: "The next day, Hay called the Cambridge police. When the officer accompanied him to his house, the women came to the door — his door — and furnished a lease renting them the $3.2 million home for two years for $1,500 a month. He says Shuman had used his laptop while they were in Quebec to send an email to her lawyer from his Harvard account, in which he purportedly said the “lease” “looks good.” Then they produced a copy of the $3,000 check they’d made out to Hay before the Quebec trip. See, we paid a security deposit, they said. Shuman also told the officer that she’d thrown Hay out of the house the night before for unwanted sexual advances. The officer saw no reason to believe Hay’s story over hers. Hay tried to appeal to the women to leave and de-escalate the situation before Zacks returned."
Did Hay purport to rent them a house he didn't own?
Hay's family's belongings were moved out of the house and into storage, and it was storage that he himself paid for and rented. The article explains it like this:
"Acting on what he says were Shuman’s requests, Hay booked a moving truck, putting the $200 deposit on his university credit card, and rented a series of storage units. He says Shuman claimed it was necessary for insurance purposes that he sign the paperwork, even though the units were not for his belongings. He deferred to her authority; as an accountant, she was business-minded, he reasoned. He signed without reading them. (Shuman says Hay did this all on his own initiative; she denies giving him instructions.)"
That's the story he tells, and Shuman did not talk to the reporter.
The article tries to center the dispute on a paternity claim, but says that Mischa is listed as the other parent on the birth certificate, and there's nothing about trying to get child support from Hay.
Near the end of the article: "After Hay filed his suit against them for the years of harassment, he finally asked for a paternity test. So far, they’ve refused. He hasn’t seen the baby since 2017, when the child was a year and a half old." So the baby is 3 or so. If the women had sought child support, he'd have had the answer on paternity by now. But that didn't happen. Right?
The article ends: "Hay remains mystified about what the women really wanted from him. Money appears to be a factor but not necessarily the only one — after all, theirs was a long, expensive, and punitive game with no guarantee of a big payoff."
Huh? That just sounds like a big old personal relationship.
But there's one more idea, stuck on the end of the article:
"Hay says Shuman once told him they’d targeted him for signing an open letter in late 2014 calling for more due process in Harvard’s Title IX proceedings. (Shuman denies ever saying this.) “I don’t know if that’s the real reason or something she made up later,” says Hay. In May 2018, Hay received a barrage of text messages from an unknown number: “Find a way to connect if you want a chance to take the last exit before HELL … Take my word, you ain’t seen nothing yet. I promise. Oh and as to your quest for motives? Don’t bother. I just really hate the patriarchy, that’s it.”"
So... 2 feminists targeted him to punish him and ruin his life because he wrote an open letter about due process in Title IX proceedings? Is that believable?
There's a spate of stories about Hay from 2010 when the school had to field complaints that he behaved strangely in classes, shouting about rape during a weird effort to stage a rape trial in class, and screwed up his grading so badly the school intervened, which, being Harvard Law, has to be the second most inexplicable aspect of the story, the first being a lawyer criticizing the SCOTUS judge he clerked for.
Everything else just sounds like your typical university campus, circa right now. Or twenty years ago. Or fifty years ago. Or in the future. Tenure either breeds oversexed infantilism or it doesn't.
He says Shuman claimed it was necessary for insurance purposes that he sign the paperwork, even though the units were not for his belongings. He deferred to her authority; as an accountant, she was business-minded, he reasoned
Would a person of his supposed level of intelligence but not educated in financial matters make that sort of error? What would be the logic an otherwise learned person would use to not recognize 'it was necessary for insurance purposes' as a red flag?
1. It makes no economic sense to rent a $3.2m house for $1500 month,
2. This scam is all about money, real estate and just jerking an idiot around for fun.
3. In civil discovery, he can get a paternity test.
4. These two women are First Class liberal feminist grifters, They all deserve each other.
2 feminists targeted him to punish him and ruin his life because he wrote an open letter about due process in Title IX proceedings? Is that believable?
Sure it is. Some people like golf, some like knitting... but seriously, there were other men they had similar 'big old personal relationships' with. Sounds like a different manifestation of psychopathic behavior.
"Is that believable?"
Why not? I met plenty of people in academia who weaponized their sexualities in order to avoid real work while keeping their jobs -- or getting them. Threatening legal action over identity and sex is the primary academic transaction these days.
But he wasn't teaching undergraduates, and these women were adults. The execrable Elena Kagan apparently intervened for him because his private life was such a crazy mess, with serial mentions of involvements with students. But still, not undergraduates. His writing is both obsessively hateful towards conservatives and weirdly amateurish. The idea that he and the transgender person were doing actual academic work together is pretty silly when the product was a mere handful of short op-eds even Salon seemed embarrassed to publish.
Bottom line: All leftists can do absolutely anything in academia with no consequences. Nobody else need apply. Kagan was protecting this nutcase after helping Eric Holder and Clinton figure out how to exclude female victims of serial sexual torture-murder from being counted as victims of gender bias hate crime, so as not to litter the desired statistics with dead women. women
Normal people really cannot relate to the sick depths of insanity of a pretty big slice of academia.
Tina Trent said...
This is also weirdly close to the plot of The World According to Garp. The only thing missing is an airplane crashing into the house
It is! What a horror to think that John Irving novels are becoming reality
Tina Trent, great comments in this thread.
so,
1st sentence, we learn that the reason he went to a hardware store was picture hooks: LOSER
2nd sentence, She has Red hair; OBVIOUSLY EVIL!
3rd sentence, we find that she is dressed to hunt
4th, she's Hunting HIM
5th, we learn he is COMPLETELY stupid, and TOTALLY the right person for her to hunt (has a mark)
7th, we learn that she uses a fake french accent
8th, i got bored, and quit reading
BUT! just imagine how much of a girlfriend experience you could buy with $300,000?
We don't know that she's a grifter.
How do you explain the legal cases against two other parties apparently unknown to Hays?
The article tries to center the dispute on a paternity claim, but says that Mischa is listed as the other parent on the birth certificate, and there's nothing about trying to get child support from Hay.
One of their earlier cons was disproven via a paternity test. It seems like they learned this was a path not to be taken.
@ Misplaced Pants: My husband just told me that everyone's life is one John Irving novel and his is Hotel New Hampshire. Never read it, but I know there's a bear. Now I have to decide if I should live in doubt and trepidation or knuckle down and face the truth.
I did work as a bear for a while. I was the Georgia Shares Workplace Giving Bear for state and federal employees. I still remember the sense of freedom and anonymity when I put on the slightly odorous ferro cement bear head. Also, no bad pants days in a bear suit.
Something in the water?
2 feminists targeted him to punish him and ruin his life because he wrote an open letter about due process in Title IX proceedings? Is that believable?
Ctrl-Left
"Don't ever be the first to stop clapping, comrade"
Doesn't Cambridge sound fab?
Sploogeless stooge. But with respect to Meade, the best epigram for this story is provided by Rod Dreher, who titled his article on it the Bonfire of the Trannities.
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