News from Stuart Benjamin

Here is a note I received from the Class of 87's most recent transplant to Washington, DC:

Happy,

You’re always asking for news. Mine isn’t very exciting but here’s the short version: I recently took a leave of absence from Duke Law School to be the inaugural Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the FCC. My wife Arti Rai (also on leave from Duke) is at the Patent & Trademark Office, and we are here with our daughters Sophia (6) and Anna (1.5).

I had two “welcome to DC” moments on my first day at the FCC: a member of Congress called a speech I gave an “abomination” and questioned my hiring (you can google “stuart benjamin abomination” for lots of detail), and the Parents Television Council protested my appointment based on something I never said. This attracted some attention in DC telecom circles (population: a few dozen) and may have led to my first C-SPAN interview, on their show “The Communicators.” You can find it on the C-SPAN website at http://www.c-span.org/Watch/watch.aspx?MediaId=HP-A-28986 and on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKZ4cEeSoqQ.

Perhaps more importantly: a few years ago I decided that if my beloved New Orleans Saints ever hosted an NFC championship game, I would go (I had been to a few losing regular playoff games in the Superdome, but they never hosted a championship game). I figured that would be even more fun than the Superbowl, since I would surrounded by 70,000 fellow Saints fans. Well, I went to the Vikings game (as did my sister, who lives in New York, and my brother, who lives in New Orleans) and it was incredible. I've been to twenty Mardi Gras, umpteen Sugar Bowls and Jazz Fests, and a few Superbowls (New Orleans often hosts the Superbowl), and I've never seen anything like the crowd outside the dome. The whole game, the entire crowd screamed on every Vikings offensive play. And when Hartley kicked the game-winner, we saw the people in the end zone going wild when the ball was still 20 yards away from the goal posts, so the crowd was going wild before the refs signaled anything. I have never seen such jubilation in my life, period. It's really hard to communicate to anyone not from N.O. what the Saints victories (and now NFL championship) have meant to the city.

I’d love to hear from classmates in the DC area – I’m at stuart.benjamin@fcc.gov.

Stuart M. Benjamin

Distinguished Scholar in Residence
Federal Communications Commission