David Plotz and Hanna Rosin
Who Wants to Bury Millionaire?
By David Plotz
Posted Wednesday, March 8, 2000, at 2:21 PM ETDear Peevish,
You are too hard on yourself, Sweetie. Bill Bradley and Michael Bolton in one day: I feel your pain. (Where was Bolton exactly? In your office? Does he shed from that pony tail? Or has he cut it off?) And who wouldn't be irked by the speculation about Jennifer Dunn and Liddy Dole as Bush's veep? My view: It would be an important feminist achievement for either Dole or Dunn to second the ticket. It would put to rest the old canard that a woman must be smarter and more accomplished than her male counterparts to succeed in politics. Dole and Dunn are just as mediocre as any male ex-Transportation secretary or house member.
One important Super Tuesday story that hasn't gotten the play it deserves comes out of California. As the Los Angeles Times
reports in passing, Californians overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative that will legalize Indian casinos once and for all. (As you know, I have been obsessed with this topic for months.) The victory of Prop 1A completes a three-year campaign by a bunch of small Indian tribes to make their illegal gambling operations legal. The amount of money they spent--$100 million in all--is more than any political interest group has ever spent in the history of politics, and they have become the most powerful force in Golden State politics. In a matter of months, California will be the second-biggest gambling state in the nation. Meanwhile, a few thousand California Indians are getting mind-bogglingly rich. (A tribe I visited is netting $250,000 per tribe member per year--tax-free--from its casino. This does not seem so unjust when you consider how cruelly California treated its Indians for the previous 150 years.)
Californians also banned gay marriage yesterday. This was not the only news on the gay-union front. The New York Times carries a piece on Vermont's grassroots debate about gay partnership. (In the wake of a state supreme court decision requiring equal protection for gay couples, the state legislature is considering a domestic-partnership bill.) The piece reports from a town meeting where citizens expressed deep reservations about any state licensing of gay couples. The story is a red herring: The reporter visited a single, very conservative town, and the story suggests that Vermonters are generally opposed to gay partnership. My sense from our visits to Vermont is that folks are fairly libertarian about this. Marry and let marry. Your thoughts?
I end today with a call for a crusade. According to our hometown paper, last week's five episodes of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire were the week's five highest-rated programs--by far. I confess: I was a Regisaholic when Millionaire began a few months ago. (And, to air some more dirty laundry, so were you). But enough already! Hasn't America tired of 43-year-old single schlumpfs? Isn't the nation sick of phoning a friend? Yesterday you described the burgeoning anti-Harry Potter insurgency. I say: Let the Millionaire backlash begin!
Viva la revolucion!
D
Who Wants to Bury Millionaire?
By David Plotz
Posted Wednesday, March 8, 2000, at 2:21 PM ETHanna Rosin covers religion for the Washington Post. David Plotz is her husband and Slate's Washington bureau chief.
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.)
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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.)