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Timothy Noah and Marjorie Williams

the breakfast table
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from: Timothy Noah

The Case Against Jamin Raskin

Posted Tuesday, July 21, 1998, at 10:12 AM ET

Dear Marjorie,

Slept fitfully last night. Probably had something to do with the fact that Willie crept in and took all the covers. Also, I miss you. (Reader, she's still in Princeton, NJ, tending to her late mother's estate.) Also, the hyperstimulation of looking for a job hath murdered sleep. "Daddy, do you have a new job yet?" Willie, 5, asked me yesterday. A Dickensian moment. "No, but I'll have one soon!" I answered brightly, feeling a bit like Mr. Micawber. Willie's favorite video these days is "Jetsons: The Movie," whose plot centers on George Jetson's organization-man climb up the intergalactic job ladder, and climaxes with an act of insubordination. Willie's favorite bit of dialogue: "Jetson! You're fired!" (That's Mister Spacely to George Jetson; strangely, the line appears in the preview for the movie, but not in the movie itself; still, Willie and now Alice have lately been marching around the house chanting, "Jetson! You're fired!" Now and then I join in.)

Anyway, all this is by way of saying I'm a little bit crabby this morning, so when I opened up my Washington Post and saw yet again that Jamin Raskin was being quoted in a story about the District of Columbia, I felt I had to disgorge a long-simmering resentment.

Preamble: I like Jamin Raskin, whom I have known as a friendly acquantance since he was an intern at the New Republic (I was a youngish staff writer at the time). He is smart. He is idealistic and true to his leftish pedigree. (His father is Marcus Raskin, a founder of the lefty Institute for Policy Studies; there's a hamburger named after Marcus at Childe Harold, a very good burger joint in Dupont Circle.) I enjoy running into Jamie at the Takoma Park farmer's market, which is just a few blocks away from our house, which stands on the District side of the Maryland border. I am sure Jamie's a wonderful teacher at American University, where he is professor of law.

Here is what bugs me about Jamie's status as Mister District of Columbia: His house, though not far from ours, is not on the District side of the Maryland border. It's on the Maryland side of the District border. The guy doesn't live in D.C.!

It doesn't seem to have impeded his career as Most Quotable Activist for Home Rule in the District. (Reader: "home rule" is local shorthand for "make the District a full-fledged, fifty-first state.") Last year when Slate had a dialogue on this subject, the Home Rule position was put forth by . . . Jamie Raskin! I agreed with many of his points, and found all of them stimulating, but waited in vain for his adversary, Slate's David Plotz, to say: "But Jamie! You don't even live in the District! Your views are roughly akin to my views about the composition of Akron, Ohio's City Council!" (Reader: Plotz, like me, lives in the District.)

I don't begrudge Jamie his views on the District. I just wish that every time somebody quoted him as an oracle about home rule, they included the phrase, "who himself lives just across the border in Takoma Park, MD."

Is that too much to ask?

Crankily,

Tim

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031323334353637383940414243444546474849505152535455565758596061626364656667686970717273747576
from: Timothy Noah

The Case Against Jamin Raskin

Posted Tuesday, July 21, 1998, at 10:12 AM ET
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Timothy Noah writes Slate's "Chatterbox" column. Marjorie Williams is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.
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