Compare and contrast.
John Holbo

Solomon can split the difference between parties to a dispute, but not if Solomon is a party to the dispute, such that Solomon is now obliged to split the difference between splitting the difference and not splitting the difference. You end up with a cross between a Russellian Theory of Ramified Types and a Liberal Who Can’t Take His Own Side In a Fight. (And we haven’t even started in on what happens to Solomon once the other parties get wind of the fact that Solomon always splits the difference.) Committing yourself to evenhandedness, while thinking of yourself as just one player in the game – not as ‘above it all’ – seems sensible and modest, but it risks giving you an epistemological itch you can’t scratch. It may preserve you from groupthink, but by attacking the ‘think’ bit, not the ‘group’ bit.

Nir Rosen [a repeat from below]

"i'm a journalist, not an american journalist. my job is not to serve as a propagandist for anybody, just to tell stories and my advantage is that i can tell stories that are hard to come by
...imagine if that one taliban commander had not screwed up my plans to go with them when they conducted attacks, and i had seen that too. isnt that interesting? isnt it important to understand who they are? and most importantly, wouldnt it make for a fun read?"

Serendipity again.
Harry Brigbouse on Joan Rivers

I’m sure I first heard Joan Rivers the same way I did Bob Newhart and Woody Allen, on Frank Muir Goes Into… but she never entered my consciousness really till I moved to LA in the mid-80s and started seeing her on daytime TV. I found her captivating—the only thing on TV worth watching a lot of the time. Rude, self-deprecating, very funny, and very clever. So when Swift and I wandered past a theater showing her new movie last night we decided, whimsically, to go in after dinner.

I’d recommend it to just about anybody over 21...

He also links to what he calls a "delightful profile" of her written by someone who's known her for 20 years. One of his stories: "A few days after 9/11, she called and asked me if I wanted to meet her for lunch at Windows on the Ground. She pushes as far as she can as soon as she can. It’s compulsive."

Nir Rosen and Joan Rivers would have a few things to talk about, but Holbo and Brighouse take themselves too seriously to see the obvious relation. They still don't understand Jon Stewart.

Perfect tie-in, from the past.
"...more than his fair share of sunlight."
Brighouse can get a kick out of Joan Rivers only by ignoring the fact that she makes a living mocking everything he claims to represent: the schoolmasters' search for non-contradiction.
Interested to hear her take on "Legitimate Parental Partiality."


The Professor