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David Brooks and Susan Estrich

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from: David Brooks

Canada and Armageddon

Posted Wednesday, July 1, 1998, at 11:59 AM ET

Dear Susan,

Today is Canada Day so in honor of our neighbor to the north I promise to be extra boring. (I was born there so I can make these cracks). Have you been reading about the Fortune story on Conde Nast? According to the NY Post, the piece rips CEO Steve Florio, saying he never served in the military as he claimed on his resume, he never spent a year working with underprivileged kids (he was actually working at Esquire that year), he said he played football at NYU, but it doesn't have a team, he implies that he has an MBA which he doesn't, he claimed to have played minor league baseball, but he didn't, he said he majored in pre-med at Nassau Community College prior to NYU, but there is no pre-med program, he claims the New Yorker had $900 million in revenue but actual revenues were closer to $627 million. Apparently his staffers call him "Florocchio" after his propensity for nose-stretching whoppers. His spokesperson says he "creates personas" to fire up his sales staff. So I guess you guys have your candidate in 2000 to succeed Bill Clinton.

If you want to see the full story, that issue of Fortune put Bill Gates, the greatest man ever to walk the earth, on the cover. What an original idea! Actually, Fortune has become a great magazine, though perhaps a little too hip. I expect their next cover to be, "Stokin' Mutual Funds! How to Invest Your Lunch Money Dude!"

Something is still bugging me from a book review that appeared in yesterday's WSJ. Ben Wattenberg was reviewing Bill McKibbin's latest book Maybe One. McKibbin is the latest in a long line of low-livin', high-thinkin' simplicity gurus. He picks up his checks from the New Yorker in a wheelbarrow. And in this book he goes on again about how we are running out of resources. He apparently says we are even running out of cornmeal. But he also writes that he wanted to have two kids but he thought it would be ecologically unsound so he had a vasectomy instead. Now I can see living according to your principles, but this strikes me as symbolic politics taken to the extreme. One more kid isn't going make a difference to the environment. Maybe if everybody followed McKibben's lead it would, but nobody will. So it is pure symbolism. Depriving your family of a second kid for the sake of symbolism strikes me as a form of self-absorption. It shows that you love abstractions more than you love the world and the practical effects of your actions.

That's why I could never really fault Bill and Hillary Clinton for sending Chelsea to the fancy Sidwell Friends School even while opposing school choice for others. If you live where public schools are crappy (three-quarters of the country) and you can afford to send your kids to private school, you should be able to rise above principle and do what's best for your kids.

I see in USA Today that The Horse Whisperer is still on the bestseller lists. I hate that book and I haven't even read it. I was at a ranch in Montana a few weeks ago set to go for a horseback ride. Last time I went for a ride there, a few years ago, the wrangler gave me a 10-minute safety lecture. This time, post-Whisperer, the wrangler gave us a 70-minute lecture on the spirituality of horses, the sacred bond between man and animal, and the magic of whispering to your mount. So now every cowboy thinks he is Herman Hesse. All thanks to that awful book.

My hobby is to compose book proposals that I never send in. I'm working on one called The Horse Filibusterer about trainers who bore their horses to death. I'm also working on What Not To Expect When Your Expecting which would be a take-off on the omnipresent pregnancy book.

I see Armageddon is being trashed today. Too bad. I have a soft spot for Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer. Back when I was a movie critic I interviewed Tom Cruise after Top Gun. he went on about how he was setting up a production company. Then I interviewed Bruckheimer and asked him about Cruise's company. He replied dismissively, "Anybody can get business cards printed up." No B.S.

I took the kiddies to Mulan the other day. The last few Disney pics have left them cold, but this one they liked. It sticks to the same archetypal Disney theme: things are not always what they appear, people who look small and weak can actually be strong. But it has a little more humanity than the last few. The formula is wearing thin--plucky hero, wacky animal sidekicks--but if you can get your kids out of the pool, they will like it.

Sticking to Hollywood, Woody Allen is upset he wasn't invited to Maureen O'Sullivan's funeral. Grandmothers have this funny reaction when their son-in-law starts shtupping the grandkids. And I can't believe that Barbra Streisand can think about marriage at a time when Jim Fallows career is in such turmoil. This is the callousness that one often finds in people who have vowel-deprived first names.

Sincerely,

David

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the breakfast table
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from: David Brooks

Canada and Armageddon

Posted Wednesday, July 1, 1998, at 11:59 AM 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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