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Malcolm Gladwell and Wendy Kaminer

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By Malcolm Gladwell
Posted Thursday, June 11, 1998, at 10:25 AM ET

The one drawback of doing this discussion with you, Wendy, is, of course, that I now have to actually read the paper. Usually, I just read the sports and the front of metro and I'm home free. This week I've actually had to deal with the whole world of news, and, I will admit, it's been a little disconcerting. Here it is, only 9:30, and I'm already irritated.

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First irritating thing: New York City Council Speaker Peter Vallone objects to Rudy Giuliani's cuts in the city budget and says: "The next time I see a working mother rushing home from work to pick up her child, a college student working three jobs to pay his tuition or a child suffering from severe asthma, I will remember these are the people Mayor Giuliani is cutting funding from." Doesn't this strike you as amazing? Only in New York City--and only in these ridiculously anti-federalist days--would a local politician talk about childcare, healthcare, and post-secondary education as "city" responsibilities. Did I miss something? Did congress go out of business? What about defending New York City against foreign invasion, Peter? I hear Giuliani's budget cuts leave us vulnerable to a Russian first strike.

Second irritating thing: the tobacco industry loses a big lawsuit in Florida. Now I'm as much an anti-tobacco guy as the next guy, but I have to say it ALWAYS makes my blood boil when a smoker wins one of these suits. Somebody starts smoking because they think it's cool. They destroy their own bodies and make the lives of everyone within four feet of them miserable for, oh, fifty years. Then when they are about to die from smoking--which everyone, their entire life, told them was going to happen--they sue a tobacco company for a million dollars. There is some step in this chain I don't understand. Also, why does everyone assume that the tobacco company is to blame for making people smoke? I thought people started smoking because their parents smoked, or because their best friend smoked. When are people going to start suing their friends or their families when they get lung cancer? Just a thought....

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