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

Timothy Noah and Marjorie Williams

the breakfast table
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from: Marjorie Williams

The End of News

Posted Thursday, July 23, 1998, at 5:56 PM ET

Dear Tim,

I was so pleased by your restraint on the females-only cloned-mice story. I was expecting a riff about all-girl mouse collectives, where they trade Joni Mitchell records and complain about who used their shampoo without permission. Slate Washington editor Jodie Allen writes to say that it might turn out to be a relief if only women can be cloned; women, she suspects, are inherently less likely to want to clone themselves than men. I can't help agreeing with her about this hunch, but why I do think it's true? Where is Robert Wright, sage of the Selfish Gene, when we need him?

I have a faint worry that we're sliding into frivolity this week, but then again there's really very little news. Even what news there is, I've noticed, tends to feel like old news: Iran is still working on the capacity to nuke Israel and Saudi Arabia; high-ranking Justice Department officials are still telling Janet Reno she's out of her mind not to appoint an independent counsel to handle the Democratic fund-raising mess (the latest, in this morning's New York Times, is a report by the departing chief of Justice's own investigation, in which he tells Reno she has no other choice); presidential secretary Betty Currie is still appearing before Kenneth Starr's grand jury; and it's still too damn hot outside.

So that's my excuse.

One could turn instead to the opinion pages, but these too have a distinctly retrospective feel. Safire today does Filegate--remember Filegate?--about which he still has "questions that need answering." Al Hunt, in the Wall Street Journal, does campaign finance reform, which, last time I looked, was already dead for the year. Welcome to the summer doldrums.

Humidly,


Marjorie

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031323334353637383940414243444546474849505152535455565758596061626364656667686970717273747576
from: Marjorie Williams

The End of News

Posted Thursday, July 23, 1998, at 5:56 PM 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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