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David Frum and Danielle Crittenden

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from: David Frum

Excitable Boys

Posted Friday, May 12, 2000, at 3:20 PM ET

Mmmm. I may side a little more with the schoolmarms than you do: When half the boys arriving in a classroom are the products of fatherless homes, a little dose of Ritalin may be the only thing that keeps the place from exploding out the sides. This is a point you're always making about the public schools: While once upon a time it was reasonable to worry over their permissiveness, the real horror of them now is how repressive they have had to become in order to cope with children who have never been subjected to discipline at home. But we're agreed about Christina Sommers' book. Can I throw a bouquet here too to Stephanie Gutmann's book, The Kinder, Gentler Military, on what the pursuit of sex equality has done to America's fighting forces? It's splendidly researched and an indispensable corrective to a press that all too often seems to think that fighting is the very last thing that armed forces exist to do.

Yes, this has been fun--but it's not true that I ignore your messages. Remember, ducky, You have the DSL line; here at the Manhattan Institute (which is paradoxically home to one of the world's leading experts on telecoms and the Internet, my colleague Peter Huber), I have to dial up to get my e-mail. Worse, there seems to be some bug in the program that deletes all messages whose subject lines include the phrase "And don't forget to ..."

But I'm late getting to the best part of your last dispatch. Martini and slippers? Is that a promise? In that case--Thank you, Slate!

the breakfast table
entries
123456789101112
from: David Frum

Excitable Boys

Posted Friday, May 12, 2000, at 3:20 PM ET
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David Frum, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is the author most recently of How We Got Here: The 70s--The Decade That Brought You Modern Life (click here to buy it). Danielle Crittenden is a columnist for the New York Post and the author of What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman (click here to buy it).
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Reader Response from The Fray--to be read after the most recent entry:


It's early in the morning, yes, but I'm confused. If I read Ms Crittenden correctly, she is being a little bit pissy about Hillary Clinton using both her married name and her maiden name by referring to her as "Hillary Rodham-Not-Clinton". [Wednesday's entry] But of course Ms Clinton does use "Clinton," though, in her current Senate race, she is not making a big deal of it. Ms Crittenden, however, does not appear to use the name "Frum" at all. But she does--correct me if I am wrong here--advise other women to use their married names. Now, if I read her correctly, she is making fun of Hillary Clinton who does what Crittenden says women should do when, in fact, Crittenden does not. I'm sure there's an excellent explanation for this. Wouldn't now be an ideal time to let us in on the secret?

--Eric Alterman

(To reply, click here.)

(5/11)

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