Time

I don't subscribe to Time, but my mother in law does. I enjoy reading it, but I don't take it seriously. They DO. When they have an article, it's always got the Big Thoughts and the Deep Analysis, both of which will be forgotten by next week. Okay, perhaps the Thoughts will last two weeks, but that's it.

Right now, I'm reading the letters to the editor. (Do editors even look at those, I wonder?) People who write to it are frequently amazed, irate, astonished, angry, baffled. I suppose you have to have some kind of strong emotion to make the effort to write (not so much, now that email makes it easier, but still: some). I wish that I could talk to some of these people, so long as they promise not to get intense on me. For example, one guy is pleased that Specter lost, and that's his right. But the reason he's pleased is that he feels Specter supported 'expensive Big Government policies featuring mammoth debt'. Well, he did, and I don't like the thought of the debt, either. Difference is, I don't see where Obama had much alternative. I'd like to know if he does -- what, in other words, as an Obama fanboi am I not seeing that he does? But could I have such a quiet conversation? Doubt it. (And I would bet that he, and others like him, feel the same way about talking to me.) Another person says that 'Elena Kagan... should be judged not on hypothetical cases but on her accountability to the people'. What does that mean? How is a judge accountable? Not to say they shouldn't be, but how? And, how much?