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the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

David Brooks and Susan Estrich

the breakfast table
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from: Susan Estrich

Lunch

Posted Monday, June 29, 1998, at 6:38 PM ET

Dear David:

I do like Katie Couric. So does my mother. She came to my house one year for the Yom Kippur breakfast (her agent is a neighbor and she happened to be in town), and I found her smart and gracious. Poor Katie Couric, I say. Her husband died of colon cancer, her boss was treated for it...and she gets up every morning and does what she has to.

Speaking of NBC, and cancer...the head of MSNBC died last week, at the age of 51. His obit was in Saturday's paper, and it has stuck with me. He was one of the whiz kids of my generation -- a little older than me, on the fast track, smart, talented, and dead at 51. Just a coincidence, all those accomplishments, all that unbelievable pressure, and cancer? Does the body break down? My sister, who had cancer at 33, told me that in her support group at the University of Chicago -- fifteen years ago, Thank God -- everyone had just been through a major life change, shock, or stress when they were diagnosed. Is working too hard bad for you? Yes, we know it is...

Now as for Clinton stopping at foreplay, it depends on what you consider foreplay. Now some men, I am told, consider it foreplay when they're satisfied, and stop there. They think a snow job is foreplay when they're getting, and asking too much otherwise. Do I believe such a thing could happen? Indeed.

What did you make of the questions to Sid Blumenthal in Tony Lewis' column? Apparently, one grand juror asked Sidney last week why the President would confide in him? I thought the same thing. Maybe the answer is that he didn't. It's all quite disgraceful, though....

But Harry Thomason wins, hands down. He's the same guy who claimed to have rediscovered the old Wednesday night at the Convention trick 6 years ago -- he said Clinton was the first since Kennedy to do it, and that he had been the one to think of it, leading me to wonder whether there was anyone around to remind him that Dukakis and Mondale had both done it, too. Carter, also. Ow, history, who cares, he's Hollywood. I don't know him, but the old saying "with friends like these..." does come to mind. Do you think Harry has subpoena envy, and wants to be called like Sid? At least he could afford the legal bills.

Einer Elhauge in the New York Times seems right about Microsoft -- and he wrote the treatise after all.... Woody Allen in real life. How many more days are the Clintons in China? Is it all pictures? Am I the only one who this trip is leaving cold? I'll try to heat up. Later.

p.s. How was the McCormick manse? What do conservatives do when they get together -- or rather, who do they trash -- liberals or other conservatives? Just read my CATO newsletter -- who needs me trashing Gingrich, Lott etc. when they'll do it themselves. I remember this era in the Democratic party -- how I got to be a law professor.

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Susan Estrich

Lunch

Posted Monday, June 29, 1998, at 6:38 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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