Me and MCI, and Other News
Dear Mick--
In a survey of news uncommented upon by us about which
I might at least have something entertaining or informative to say, I ran into
the commuter train crash in London, which has so far a death toll of 26 and is
of course horrifying, but speaks for itself; and the MCI WorldCom-Sprint
merger. Hmm. I once had such an ugly experience with the customer-service
department of one of those companies that I wrote its president a letter of
complaint on the letterhead of an impressive magazine in which I stated my
intention of reporting in print how unpleasant it had been dealing with his
company at every conceivable opportunity and that I would consider myself to be
doing a service to my readers thereby. OK, it was MCI. This has been my first
opportunity! Readers, beware! MCI was mean to me! Me, me, me, me, me! I find it
hard to discharge my punditry duties in this space without coming across as
unbecomingly stuck on myself. You have been managing this very gracefully, I
notice with (unbecoming) egotistical irritation.
CNN's Inside Politics is,
at this very moment, according to Bernard Shaw, going to address the question:
Can Minnesota's governor walk away from his controversial comments? I wasn't
taking notes, but I think this is pretty much the exact same question that was
being posed yesterday. I know the answer! Call on me! In a word, Yes! Yes, he
can! It seems to me self-evident that if your poll approval ratings can go from
70-something to 50-something in as short a period of three months, they really
didn't mean a whole hell of a lot to begin with!
Philippe de Montebello is the director of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, I did mean to say. To get even more parish-pump,
the magazine-publishing news of the day is that Miller Publications is putting
Spin , Vibe , and the
Blaze up for sale. And to get even more parish-pump
than that, Leonard Stern also recently announced that he was selling the
Village Voice , my very first employer, as you of
course know since I got the job owing to your recommendation when I had no
experience at all, because you were tired of hearing me blather on, much as I
am doing now, but more crankily, as we sat in bars back when we met in the
go-go '80s.
Do you really think, to jump back to your initial
e-mail, that Warren Beatty would be a candidate worth breaking one's heart
over?
I am looking forward more than I can say to the season
premiere episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer this
evening.
Love,
Mim
