The Breakfast Table

A Kinder, Gentler Rudy?

Spill the wine, Dan,

At least that’s what I plan to do, after this gruesome week. First partial-birth abortions, then Colombian death squads, now this. You’re right to question the condolences from Rudy’s adversaries–it’s hard to believe they’re prostrate with grief. But let’s not make Hillary queen just yet. Rudy’s the kind of savvy dictator who could micromanage a campaign from his deathbed.

Then again, remember how Lee Atwater mellowed, after he was hit with cancer? Maybe we can look forward to a kinder, gentler Rudy. Here’s a good place to start: He should give up his tight-fisted control over the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which examines misconduct in the NYPD. That’s what the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights wants him to do, according to Kevin Flynn’s story in today’s New York Times. And that’s what mayors in most other cities do, according to a story Flynn filed last August 23. Instead, here’s what Giuliani’s police review board looks like: Three members are nominated by the police commissioner, five by the City Council, and five by the mayor. But the mayor can veto anyone he doesn’t like. Personally, I never trust a guy who pays people to tell him how he’s doing.

But enough about Rudy. As much as I love playing pundit, it leaves me longing to sleep late and forgo politics completely. Here’s what’s on my reading list: the new poetry issue of the Paris Review–especially a nonfiction thriller about an Emily Dickinson poem that turned out to be a brilliant forgery. The new Atlantic, which has an update on Skull & Bones by a recent Yale grad. And this: the galleys of Pastoralia, a new collection by short-story writer George Saunders, which appeared mysteriously on my doorstep last night. There’s a quirky plastic deer on the cover, and inside is “The Barber’s Unhappiness,” a story I’d always heard about, but never read. I definitely recommend it–the barber is one hell of a ladies’ man. As is, I suspect, whoever put this book in my hands.

E-mail me any time.

Best,
Cynthia