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from: Margo Howard

Free Fall

Posted Thursday, Sept. 10, 1998, at 2:44 PM ET

"What's a filbert?" A nut. Seeing as how you didn't know that, maybe it's a Midwestern nut...

Two readers mailed in different remarks on that great name Bo Dietl I mentioned yesterday. One said it's a made-up character on Imus (to whom I do not listen.) "Bo Dietl and Joey Pots & Pans," she writes, "do the movie reviews and general smutty talk about women. Sometimes he punishes them by not letting them come on for a few days." The other said Dietl was "one of the oddest, most foul-mouthed illiterates ever to run a successful private investigation firm. And Imus has him doing movie reviews." I dunno how this character on Imus, real or not, got into the Malone-Cellucci race for Governor as the P.I. who illegally got Cellucci's bank records.

But back to sex. In re your coining the phrase "Contrition Position," I think it has morphed into The Contrition Campaign. The guy can't repeat his apologies fast enough. I must say now I can't get the word contrition out of my mind. Maybe the President's good friend Ms. Streisand could re-record that song from "Fiddler" and just change the word "Tradition!"

Tom Daschle left a White House meeting and talked about everybody's "sharing their feelings." Got a barf bag? Supposedly the Starr Report, or portions of it are going out over the Internet tomorrow. Be prepared to have the sites crash. (They can keep the market company.)

All this is bumming me out. Et vous? My guess is that even Prudie couldn't figure this one.

xx

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Margo Howard

Free Fall

Posted Thursday, Sept. 10, 1998, at 2:44 PM ET
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Margo Howard is Slate's advice columnist. Alex Beam is a columnist for the Boston Globe.
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