Nicholas Lemann and Judith Shulevitz
Dear Nick,
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StumbleUponSo what exactly are you saying here? That the best remedy to our hypothetical stranglehold over the "Breakfast Table" would to be ... to break us up?
That might be a tad draconian in our case, and so may it be in Microsoft's--especially since last June, when the appeals court deemed Microsoft's crimes to be less egregious than Judge Jackson had said they were and threw out the worst of the findings regarding the supposedly illicit marriage of operating system with browser. As far as I know, no one disagrees with you about the software market needing more competition and a better choice of products, but not everyone sees a breakup as accomplishing that goal. Who's to say it wouldn't hurt consumers more than help them? One group the breakup would help a lot is Netscape and other Microsoft competitors, but helping them is not the same as getting Nick Lemann a wider array of programs to run on his computer, nor is it the goal of antitrust law. I freely admit my ignorance here since I've never actually read any antitrust law or followed the case as closely as I should, but I wish you'd explain how crippling Microsoft aids competition, as opposed to competitors. Shouldn't the monopolist pay its debt to society and get on with the business of inventing products and marketing them, subject, of course, to strict court supervision? Why break a guy's legs when you can tie his hands?
Moving right along, I have news. Terence M. Brewer has turned himself in. This unexpected conclusion to a peculiar story (detailed in your first post) has some juice in it for us journalists since he turned himself in to a newspaper, the Trenton [N.J.] Times, thereby exhibiting an astonishing level of trust in our often derided profession--or at least more trust in journalists than in cops, which makes it somewhat less astonishing. The Trenton Times' crime reporter repaid that trust by writing a long and fairly sympathetic article, in which the following details emerged: 1) The guards weren't as stupid as we thought they were when they mistook the convict for a visitor--he had jumped from the roof of the visitors' building and landed right outside its window. 2) The breakdown in social connectivity you hypothesized wasn't so great that Brewer felt safe enough to be treated in the hospital he was taken to; he walked away 10 minutes later with a broken foot--leaving in so much pain that he later said he didn't mind being taken back into custody. 3) Coincidence always plays a bigger part in these stories than we tend to give it credit for. Brewer didn't mean to turn himself in; he ran into an old acquaintance who unbeknownst to him had become a bail bondsman and refused to let him go. It was at that point that the two of them decided to call the paper and negotiate a surrender through its crime reporter. 4) According to Brewer's sister, he didn't entirely mean to escape either. She claims he felt compelled to run away because he'd been put in a cell with relatives of the man he killed. 5) As usual, the local politicians are making hay out of the incident, the Democrats in particular tsk-tsking at the Republicans' county executive and the local congressman (party affiliation unspecified) saying he's going to call in the feds to inspect the jail.
As for the boot camp story, you failed to mention the most damning detail of all--that over the past two decades, 30 kids have died in these camps. Thirty kids! Now, why aren't we calling in the feds to inspect that?
Love,
Judith
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Reader Comments From The Fray
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[Notes from the Fray Editor: Don't like restaurants? Then let's discuss home cooking, and get some ideas for tonight's dinner, in this thread here. One of the cooks, Will Allen, has this to say elsewhere (context not really important, but he had been accused of pre-judging people): "I nearly always allow someone to clearly display their banal, wooden-headed, nature before denouncing it." There was an interesting thread on prison officers, the word 'perversely', and insults, starting here. Everyone was in cheerful mood in the Fray: Ex-Fed was able to start joke threads here and here (warning: this one was considered tasteless by another poster.) Ex-Fed also proposed marriage to one of the Breakfast Tablers, here: we're being a little circumspect because this involved being rude about the other BT-er. And there was a fan letter from Zeitguy to Judith Shulevitz here.]
If there's anything "unique" about American society, it's the amazing extent of our ability to think that we're somehow different from every other civilization in history. Maybe it's because our particular culture has only been around for a few hundred years, in a land where we are cut off almost completely from the ancient civilizations that have been around significantly longer. I don't know. But bored, whiny rich people? That's nothing new
--Mangar
(To reply, click here.)
It's not the self-pity that bothers me so much, though it's bad enough, but the truculence and righteous indignation and desire to grind the faces of the poor it seems to lead to.
To put it another way--what, exactly, are the rich and powerful so pissed off about? What is it that they want that they're not getting? 100% of the wealth instead of a mere 90%?
--Kassandra
(To reply, click here.)
(9/5)