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Timothy Noah and Marjorie Williams

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Goodbye to All That

By Marjorie Williams
Posted Friday, July 24, 1998, at 7:18 PM ET

Dear Tim,

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One final thought on the cotton/polyester question. In this case, you're dealing with something much more primal than aesthetics-as-snobbism. There may be no force on earth more potent than mothers' desire to dress their infants in the cutest possible clothing. You have only to look at the new mothers in a Baby Gap, dazedly pushing their strollers while fingering the delicates (however lethally flammable they may be), to grasp this truth. I was one of them, not so long ago.

So this is our swan song at the breakfast table. My only real regret is that, as the Internet's answer to the Bickersons, we stayed away from the Maryland case of former U.S. Senate candidate Ruthann Aron, whose defense rested yesterday in her second trial for trying to hire a hit-man to eliminate two people she was mad at: a lawyer she didn't like and also her husband. (The first trial ended in an 11-1 mistrial.) Her defense focused not on whether she tried to do it, but on just how crazy she might have been at the time. Experts testified that at the time police recorded her haggling with their snitch over hit-man fees, she had borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, low sodium levels (which made her confused), psychotic thoughts, mild brain damage and post-traumatic stress syndrome as a result of parental abuse. Phew. History does not relate what her husband thinks about the propriety of the word "butt," or whether he ever read Ulyssees.

So it's back to the real breakfast table of sticky plastic place-mats, spilled juice, top-volume tapes of Raffi (or, as you're so fond of calling him, the Raffish One.) I've really enjoyed the mail from readers; I've really enjoyed you.

Love,

Marjorie.

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