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Margo Howard and Martin Peretz

the breakfast table
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from: Margo Howard

Doesn't Dubya Have Any Friends of His Own?

Posted Monday, Jan. 15, 2001, at 10:41 AM ET

Well, Marty, I believe this is a first at "The Breakfast Table." There've been husbands and wives, fathers and sons, nursing mothers ... but never, I think, Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins. I know you've asked me to keep this quiet, but I do owe quite a bit of my college education to you. Granted, this was when ice covered the earth (the late '50s) at our sometimes beloved Brand X ... or Brandeis, to the rest of the world. And let's ignore, for the moment, that you were three years ahead of me, though we are the same age.

OK, now that we have established our bona fides--well, yours anyway--we can get down to tacks of brass: the nebbish with raisins for eyes. I find myself obsessing about his upcoming presidency. On top of which, installing the goniff McCauliffe at the DNC seems all about keeping the seat warm for either of the Clintons at Gore's expense. I don't know whose Democratic Party it will be. I fear it ain't gonna be mine.

I am almost physically discomfited by what is in store for us. Our very own Edgar Bergen and Mortimer Snerd (Cheney in the Bergen chair, of course) are beyond spooky. I'm waiting for Dan Quayle to make it back in some post or other. There really ought to be a rock group for this crowd--maybe Rummy and the Retreads? The next administration is looking increasingly like it came from the thrift shop of governmental Washington. Doesn't Dubya have any friends of his own besides Evans, Rove, and Hughes? Charles Radin in the Globe suggests the new guys will most likely bollix up North Korea, causing a string of other bad things to happen. I admit I am a little over the edge with all this and probably not in my right mind. Of course there are other things going on ... El Salvador: a horrendous reminder that Mother Nature still has the last word. MLK is being honored today. You knew him, as I recall, no? Sorry to get back into obsession mode, but it is widely reported that Bush is reading a book ... news, I suppose, in its own way. His old man has taken to calling him Quincy so he's reading about the Adamses. Cute.

Oh, and do you think you could muzzle Andrew Sullivan? He has obviously been overcome with disdain for Clinton's personal weaknesses to the point of becoming a Bush booster. I mean, how does an intellectual, Catholic, gay man come to wave his pompoms for that callow kid? (Do you think we will be audited for this stuff?)

XX,
Margo

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Margo Howard

Doesn't Dubya Have Any Friends of His Own?

Posted Monday, Jan. 15, 2001, at 10:41 AM ET
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Margo Howard writes Slate's "Dear Prudence" column. Martin Peretz is a lecturer in social studies at Harvard and editor in chief and chairman of the New Republic.
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