David Plotz and Hanna Rosin
Killing Me Softly With His Song
By Hanna Rosin
Posted Wednesday, March 8, 2000, at 4:37 PM ETDear Che,
Michael Bolton was thankfully not in my office, merely in the product of my office ("The Reliable Source"). But I feel peevish because the pain is self-inflicted. Often when I read a song title I can't get the tune out of my head, especially when I particularly hate the song. So in my moments of mental drift, on this glorious day, I have several times found myself humming "Love is a Wonderful Thing." (You know what this feels like; often I catch you singing that miserable Backstreet Boys song, you know which one). One time it was "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution" (or "Is Noise Pollution," can't remember). Anyway, it lasted a whole week. It was torture. (This is the opening of some Anne Tyler novel, Breathing Lessons I think, where the wife can read the husband's thoughts because he unwittingly hums his subconscious--Vivaldi if he's happy, Wagner if he's not, etc. I never finished it, but I think they end up divorced.)
Now, on to the Rumsey Band. Although you are too modest to point this out, I will note that your gambling obsession has produced a wonderful piece in this week's New Republic about the very subject you discuss, gambling in California, as controlled by a tiny tribe strangely called the Rumsey band. I have mixed emotions about these guys. Generally, these gambling types are petty swindlers, like the band of crooks in South Carolina. But the California story involves a bunch of ex-migrant workers who transform their lives. Once the state's poorest dependents, they are now a political force, as you point out. Where are the villains here?
About Vermont, I have only good thoughts, as it's the blissful state where (as you know, I pause for the reader) we were married and visit often still. Never a lovelier state there was, and never a lovelier people. So I choose to disregard the ugly quotes from Vermonters in today's Times, quotes like "something as ill and as foul as same-sex partners." Can you imagine any of your farmer neighbors up there saying such a thing? Of course not.
And of course, I romanticize. I think these town-hall meetings are the proving ground for the Alan Wolfe theory. Vermonters, like Americans, are infinitely tolerant and unwilling to judge their neighbors. Unless their neighbors are gay.
I have a guess on what Al Gore meant by "unstable." My guess is he was referring to the guy who has left messages on my voice mail 20 times today, complaining about some story I once wrote on the pope ("the agent of Satan" he calls him) and offering me impromptu lessons on the Inquisition. Must change beats.
XXOO
H
Killing Me Softly With His Song
By Hanna Rosin
Posted Wednesday, March 8, 2000, at 4:37 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.)