Joel Achenbach and Marjorie Williams
Dear Joel,
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StumbleUponThanks for putting so economically what it was that bothered me about the vigilante cybermom. The only thing in today's paper that is nearly so creepy is political consultant Ralph Reed. The New York Times fronts a story about how Microsoft is paying Reed to lobby his top client--George W. Bush. It's usually hard to tell when the Influence Economy has taken another step down the path to perdition, but this case seems pretty clear: I'm not aware of any other instance in which a consultant signed up to lobby a current political candidate. Reed is orchestrating a letter-writing campaign in which major Bush backers are being solicited to write to the candidate, saying they oppose the government's antitrust suit against Microsoft. Now, this is just the sort of organized pressure that makes running for or holding high office so hard, and one might expect one's friends (or at least one's paid professionals) to refrain from adding to the load. But in the upside-down world of political life, someone like Reed is seen as so crucial to a candidate's success (in the years before this year's Republican field took shape, Reed's deliberations about which candidate he would work for were watched so closely that politicos referred with straight faces to the "Ralph Reed primary") that he can do anything. Shades of Dick Morris, who used to sidle into the Oval Office to bother the leader of the free world with complaints about his cut of the ad buy.
There's my dudgeon for the day. On a lighter note, I want to hear what you thought of big story in the "Science Times" on the NASA mission now underway to study the asteroid Eros. This is probably old news to you, but I--who never write and rarely think about science--loved this piece: Who knew that we even had spacecraft that could orbit an asteroid a four-year journey away from Earth? (I thought we sent them all to Mars and drove them into craters.) My only disappointment was that that the story told me nothing about who named the asteroid Eros, and whether they knew, at the time they named it, that it looks like a giant baked potato.
I do think (I'm back to answering you now) that there's something arrogant about all this "new philanthropy." It's great that these zillionaires are giving away a lot of money. And it's even good, up to a point, that they're trying to find new ways to do it: The world of "old" philanthropy can be fairly sclerotic. I'd rather see someone start a new endeavor, even a self-aggrandizing one, than give to Harvard, which already has more money than God. But Saylor does symbolize the annoying side of it: He wants to be Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller right now, at the very same time he's making his fortune. No problem, if you share his Panglossian belief that you can help the whole world in a way that also creates new markets for yourself and also helps you develop a skilled workforce and also gets you more press, so that it will all make you richer and a better person and more famous than before, which are all goals that now seamlessly support each other. Somehow our new technology will just abolish all the old sufferings.
But giving money effectively requires a tragic imagination. Part of what was most admirable about the old robber barons' philanthropies was that these men bothered to open their eyes to the particular forms that wretchedness takes. The Saylors of the world think their new magic is so powerful that they can skip all that.
Indignantly,
Marjorie
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Reader Response from The Fray--to be read after the final entry:
Let me get this straight: they give out Pulitzer's for criticism [Monday]? Please--my heart is pounding, my blood pressure is rocketing, my hands now shake, please dear, please, please tell me, where do I sign up?
--Old Timer [who is well-known in The Fray for his expertise in this area.]
(To reply, click here.)
Re: Elian Gonzales. I believe that immigration laws should be as open and welcoming as possible. But at the same time we need to look at the long-term situation of the country the people are fleeing. There is not always a whole lot we can do, and we also run the risk of becoming control freak America with it's thumb in every pie--oh, hang on, we already are that. Well, anyway, my point is that instead of trying to pass a bill to make Elian a citizen, why don't we lift the embargo and make life a little better for all Cubans?
--Anne
(To reply, click here.)
"That's exactly what Castro wants us to do", I believe, is the stock response to either ending or continuing the embargo.
--Steve Dowling
(To reply, click here.)
[This response almost silenced David Edelstein, but not quite:]
The embargo is a 40-year hissy fit, and it's time to give it a rest. Say what you will against Castro (I can say plenty), he'd have been long gone if the embargo had been lifted 25 years ago and Disney and all the other U.S. corporations had moved in with their sundry inducements to free (sic) enterprise.
--David Edelstein
(To reply, click here.)
The question of why people hate Janet Reno [Thursday] is a bit intricate and since I do hate her, I'd like to take a stab at it--the question, not her (I don't hate anybody that much). Reno reminds me of the Greek tragedy Antigone which shows us that strict enforcement of the law, by the book, isn't always the best thing. The Waco invasion wasn't the best thing, for example. I believe the law justified her actions, that the operation was by the book. But that doesn't mean it was a good thing. With Elian, there's that potential again that Reno will embark on the legal course, but that it won't be the morally right course.
Reno does not respect people who defy her. She assumes they are wrong and she acts on that and she has a tremendous amount of power to enforce her interpretation of law. This is the crux of my anti-Renoism: She doesn't talk to people, she barks orders at them. When people ignore the lectures they get punished. Hey, that's her job. But it'd be nice to have a more philosophical sort wielding all that power--someone with a better sense of proportion who realizes that every act of defiance is unique and deserves unique treatment.
--Michael Maiello
(To reply, click here.)
Don Porges writes in The Fray about Thursday's entry:
The definition and connotations of "dice" are much more precise in naming the objects in question. My old TI-99 had a "random number generator" command in its BASIC programming. Since it was just code, it resembled nothing that would help baby get a new pair of shoes. Besides "dice" fits into a headline nicely.
--Charles
(To reply, click here.)
[No proposals this week. But that doesn't mean the Breakfast Table went unappreciated:]
These guys were the best. And that's granting that there were some close competitors. But Joel and Marjorie are the BT gold standard. The King and Queen are dead! Bring on next week's random number generators!
--Mike
(To reply, click here.)
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