David Plotz and Hanna Rosin
To Whom It May Concern:
PRINT
DISCUSS
E-MAIL
RSS
RECOMMEND...
Facebook
MySpace
Mixx
Digg
Reddit
del.icio.us
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Sphere
StumbleUponGood morning, and Happy Super Tuesday. I too had my encounter with the charming Gabriel Snyder last night. By the end, he had me concerned as much about the state of our marriage as about this "Breakfast Table." "Do you guys ever e-mail each other?" he asked. "Because your exchanges seem pretty awkward." Awkward! If I can't avoid awkwardness with my own husband, what hope is there left for me? I feel like we're in some Raymond Carver story: seemingly tranquil domestic tableau, but the tension is evident by the couple's strained and overly formal dialogue.
Enough. I'm only giving him more fodder. Let's move on.
(Awkward transition.)
The papers today are bursting with Super Tuesday, chronicling all the campaigns' last-minute jitters. In the Op-Ed pages of the Washington Post, Richard Cohen and E.J. Dionne squabble over exactly what ways John McCain is great. I have many friends like them, committed Democrats and ironists all, who have earnestly pleaded with me that it's my civic duty to vote for McCain. You will always vote for a Democrat, goes the argument, but when else will you have the chance to remake a party, nay, all of American politics.
Today, though, their enthusiasm seems muted. While they won't yet admit it, his press admirers fear the worst this afternoon. I can't help but think that that picture of Cindy McCain on the cover of the Post today, bravely smiling through a shower of rose petals, has a whiff of nostalgia about it. As a glum-looking friend told me this morning: "I have a lot of emotions invested in McCain, and I'm worried about him." (But more on that later this afternoon)
For my part, I will follow David Segal's advice in today's "Style" section, and choose my candidate based on his musical taste. In that arena, it's no contest. Pat Buchanan. Favorite artist: Fats Domino. Favorite album: I Walk the Line by Johnny Cash. Favorite song: "I Fall to Pieces" by Patsy Cline. Be still my heart.
The most interesting Super Tuesday debate is the one that involves this very outlet, Slate magazine, and its right to publish the exit polls early. As loyal readers know, Voter News Service, which sells the exit polls to news organizations, has prevented Slate from publishing them early. Slate editors believe that news organizations that have the results early should stop pretending they don't know them. Others, include the Post's pollster, who wrote an angry Op-Ed yesterday, thinks Slate is an irresponsible rag hell-bent on skewing elections. In this one, I'm with Slate.
One place not obsessed with Super Tuesday is San Jose, where primary news has been obscured by the tragic death of Leo, a 10-year-old bichon frise, the latest victim of road rage. It seems the dog's owner mistakenly bumped a man's car. When she rolled down her window to apologize, the demented driver reached in grabbed the furball perched in her lap and threw him into oncoming traffic. Times like these, I wish this city had a tabloid. Imagine the New York Post headlines: "Pooched!" Or "Screw the Pooch!"
An interesting business story in the Times today about Nine West. It seems for 12 years this ubiquitous shoe chain has been fixing prices, strong-arming department stores into selling shoes at fixed prices. The story shatters some of this city girl's sartorial notions. I and many of my friends have always thought of Nine West as the scrappy underdog, the one American company expert at making knockoffs of much more expensive brands quickly and cheaply. If you craved a shoe and found its imitation at Nine West, you felt proud. Painful to learn that all this time we've been had!
Awkwardly yours,
Hanna
Slate Editors Spent All Day Arguing About Cancer Screenings and Health Care Rationing
What a Meal of Beef Stomach and Duck Throats Taught Me About the New China
The Blind Side: Illegal Use of Sandra Bullock
Train, Plane, or Automobile? What's the Greenest Way to Travel for Thanksgiving?
The Two Craziest Men in Hollywood Teamed Up To Make This Movie
Did Easy Rider's Predictions About America Come True?
Highlights from The Fray:
Obviously I'm biased, and in mourning, but Hanna's outburst about Bill Bradley [see Wednesday's entry] still seems to be a bit much...it's pretty hard to exit one of these races with any grace and dignity, and I think my guy's doing a pretty dang good job of it. Regarding "you just lost, nobody liked you" - Bradley picked up a fairly consistent 30% of the vote nationwide, but many more didn't hate Bradley but they simply thought Gore was the better candidate. Could you imagine if Gore hadn't gone through a primary? Six months of getting killed in the press every night by the GOP? And certainly Bradley did raise a number of issues that the veep wouldn't have prioritized--including universal health care, race relations, and, yes, campaign finance reform.
--Sad Bradley Fan
(To reply, click here.)
[And see Thursday's entry where Ms Rosin responds: that Bradley mourner in The Fray made me feel bad.]
The Breakfast Table asked [see Tuesday's entry] why science reporters haven't written articles explaining the reason TRW and other contractors have such a hard time making a workable missile defense. The short answer (I'm a correspondent for Science magazine, which I assume makes me a science reporter) is that they have written such articles, and the reason that the contractors are having such trouble is that the task is extremely difficult. It's like shooting a bullet at a bullet, only much, much harder. Longer explanatory analogy: I once saw Pief Panofsky, the Stanford physicist who helped negotiate the test-ban treaty, talk about this subject in Cambridge. He asked the audience to imagine some nutty guy who liked to drive into his garage by hitting the garage-door opener at precisely the right moment so that the door flew open exactly as he rolled in. If you think about it for a moment, you can see that this is quite like flying into the path of a missile at exactly the right time so that you hit its forward section -- it's a matter of split-second timing. Now imagine that you are doing this at thousands of miles an hour. Now imagine that instead of a regular car, you are driving a jet-powered car, which shudders and shakes and has to be constantly course-corrected just to stay in a straight line, which of course must be factored in to your garage-door opening. Now imagine that the garage is moving, too, and it's jiggling through the air just like you are. Now imagine that you have to make a whole lot of the crucial decisions when you are miles away and can't even get a good look at the garage. Now imagine -- Panofsky went on like this for a good while, and in the end pretty much convinced everyone in the audience that the ABM treaty was a good idea primarily because it would prevent nations from spending billions of dollars to build systems that simply could not work. Or, rather, that it was supposed to do that -- I guess we're doing it anyway.
--Charles C. Mann
(To reply, click here.)
You asked {Tuesday's entry] what TRW stands for.
Two brainy guys formed Ramo-Woolridge in Los Angeles and showed up on the cover of Time in the late 1950s. Soon after, the big successful machine shop, Thompson Products, acquired them. I don't remember if they named their company Thompson-Ramo-Woolridge, but if they did, they soon changed it to their italicized monogram, TRW.
--Thomas Tersigni
(To reply, click here.)
I love this word, "ironists," as in "committed Democrats and ironists all" by Hanna [See Tuesday's entry]. As for me, I try to live without irony, but sometimes my shirts are just too damned wrinkled, especially the cotton ones. And "canicide!" Fabulous.
--Tim K.
(To reply, click here.)
Plotz has a dizziness accumulated only from his great rareness in common folkish observations without realizing that greatness comes from all around him and manifests itself only to those who are not so encumbered as he obviously is in his own importance and cowering adjectives self learned and looking for a target that is worthy of his very dubious talents and one that is not likely to object as he reads much more worthy...stuff.
--bill schwarz
(To reply, click here.)
To hell with Gabriel Snyder--more domesticity please.
--Jim Crowley
(To reply, click here.)