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David Brooks and Susan Estrich

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from: David Brooks

Re: Hors D'oeuvres

Posted Wednesday, June 24, 1998, at 7:38 PM ET

Dear Susan,

Even though your diet book is for women, I just ordered one from Amazon. If I lose 20 pounds I'll be forever in your debt and if I grow breasts at the same time I'll have everything I need and I'll never have to leave the house. I can't agree with you about the liposuction, though. We seem to have turned all moral questions into matters of health and medicine (see the tobacco debate) but it seems to me that the real vice associated with body weight is not fat but vanity. A fit person who thinks too much about his looks is in far worse shape than a fat person who has his minds on other more important things. So if liposuction allows you to spend your life thinking about philosophy and enjoying food and then go in every Spring or so for a Hoover job on your thighs, then I don't see the problem. It's no more artificial than getting a dentist to put on a crown. The problem with face lifts is that they suggest the person is thinking too much about looks; liposuction could suggest the opposite. I guess it's probably painful though, so forget it.

I had lunch with a British journalist yesterday who told me that their TV news readers used to be good looking folks like ours, but viewers revolted and wanted normal lookers. Good for them. She also noted that her TV news is much better than ours while our newspapers are much better than theirs.

Susan Molinari has discovered that being a TV anchor isn't as easy as it looks. I got a small taste of the crossover difficulties during the last election when I did weekly commentaries on "All Things Considered." I'd go in Tuesdays to record my 400 word piece, and sometimes I'd have to go through so many takes it would occupy 45 minutes just recording a 2:30 minute item. The producer, a wonderful woman named Julia Redpath, would try to instruct me on how to read text for radio, which was fantastically difficult, at least for me. You have to inflect your voice like crazy without getting sing-songy and while sounding conversational. I now have tremendous respect for people who do voiceovers.

As for the problems of L.A. Assemblyman Kevin Murray, I think he should be flayed for not living in his district. In Britain you don't have to live in your district and the result is that every policy wonk and journalist dreams that the Tories or Labor will nominate him in some safe district somewhere. He spends his life fantasizing about being in parliament and maneuvering to get nominated. With our system, we pundits are free from that aspiration, except for those of us who are truly sick and are actually willing to live outside the Beltway in order to come back as a congressman. Instead of ambitious pundits, we get rich sons nominated for Congress. There was a House seat up for grabs in New Mexico last night. It is a representative district--its Clinton vote in 1996 matched the national vote in percentage terms--so it was considered a telltale. The Republican consultants were bearish going in since their candidate ran a poor campaign, but she ended up winning easily over the rich son of a businessman. Don't bet on a Democratic takeover of the House in 1998.

all the best,

David

the breakfast table
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from: David Brooks

Re: Hors D'oeuvres

Posted Wednesday, June 24, 1998, at 7:38 PM ET
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David Brooks is a senior editor of the Weekly Standard. Susan Estrich is a law professor at the University of Southern California.
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