Dear Bill,
Call me Michael. Or whatever you prefer. I don’t feel strongly about it, and there are certainly no political implications. While you suggest that “Mike” may connote left-wing egalitarianism, I have also received hate mail from conservatives suggesting that “Mike” connotes a rugged individualism to which no liberal may decently stake a claim. (I’m putting the point more politely than they do.)
One thing I enjoyed about playing Ed McMahon to your Johnny Carson all those years on Firing Line was your insistence on addressing people by their last names, as a reaction to the false intimacy of other TV talk shows, which promote the illusion that people who appear on television together all hang out together. But cyberspace is definitely the land of first names, and so is the Pacific Northwest, where I now live, and I’m afraid I like that a lot. In everyday life, and not on television, the false intimacy and symbolic egalitarianism are healthy tributes to real intimacy and equality. So it will be “Bill” for the rest of the week.
The Wall Street Journal has an op-ed this morning, “The Case Against McCain-Feingold.” Nothing new there–the Journal runs that headline every day. What’s interesting is the byline: of all people, Niall Ferguson, the trendy Oxford historian (Britain’s answer to Simon Schama). Ferguson says Americans should look at Europe, where campaign finance rules are far stricter, before joining McCain’s crusade. Fair enough, but his arguments are bizarrely weak. First, he says, restrictions on election spending lead to less interesting campaigns, which lead to lower voter turnout. But of course voter turnout in Europe is far higher than in the United States. Second, he says, restricting corporate contributions will make political parties more dependent on government funding, which is nefarious for sundry reasons. But of course there is no government funding of U.S. congressional campaigns–the focus of McCain-Feingold–and the bill proposes none. You surprised me with a column last week expressing some sympathy for campaign reform in general. But what’s your take on McC-F?
The Times report on the annual Gridiron dinner–the premier event on Washington’s journalists-in-dinner-jackets circuit–totally buys into the myth that events like this (the White House Correspondents’ dinner, the Radio and TV Correspondents’ dinner, another one named after some vegetable: brussel sprouts? alfalfa?) are occasions for the press and politicians to knock each other down a peg or two. “[S]elf-effacement was the main course,” the Times reported. That would be news indeed if true, since these events are actually orgies of mutually reinforcing self-regard. What could be more flattering than to be insulted by the president of the United States? And perhaps you can explain the last graph of the Times story to me:
The payoff [for Bush’s decision to stay past 11 pm] was a lesson: while reporters and politicians, Republicans and Democrats, sometimes seem like mortal enemies, they all worship–and wink–at the same altar.
Huh? I think there may be a good point here struggling to get out–or maybe smothered in its crib by a night-shift editor–but it’s hard to tell.
Finally, for now, I laughed at a full-page ad in the Times: “Not just a last name. A lasting name. … One voice. One vision. And now, one name. … We will be known as, simply, Andersen.” Not one Times reader in 1,000 will have a clue what this is about, but this one I can explain to you (with help from Slate’s Moneybox). Andersen is the big accounting firm, aka Arthur Andersen. In a bitter spin-off, its consulting division set up shop under the ridiculous name “Accenture” (with an invented and irreproducible accent mark over the second “c”) and bought a bunch of Times ads to celebrate. This is the spurned parent’s response. Based on the money they are squandering on this silly game, I wouldn’t hire either firm as my consultant–would you?
Oh yeah, the Oscars. Did you watch? My bottom line: Russell Crowe is a great actor (his acceptance was a model of the form), but Gladiator is preposterous.
And what do you think about Rich Lowry running for mayor of New York? Sincerest form of flattery to you, of course. But sensible?
Thanks for doing this. Over to you.
Mike [sic]
