What began as a 2005 essay for the San Francisco Chronicle has led to a soon-to-be-published memoir: “Leaving the Left: Moments in the News That Made Me Ashamed to Be a Liberal.”
Those moments feature everybody from Bill Clinton (“robbed children all over the world of their innocence with his tawdry Monica Lewinsky escapades”) to Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (“claimed Abu Ghraib had simply ‘reopened under new management.’”)
PASS THE INK
Few men play the part of George Washington as passionately as Virginia historian James Renwick Manship Sr.
Indeed, Virginia General Assembly Delegate R. Lee Ware, a longtime history teacher, observed: “What David McCullough and others are doing between the covers of printed books, Mr. Manship is doing in person . . . the substantive information combined with pageantry of costume is an extraordinary entry into the life and times of an era.”
Given that as background, we find amusing the text of an e-mail Manship sent this week to a woman who had inquired about a certain book on the first president. Obviously, the computer age as a means of communication is proving difficult even for the modern-day Washington, who still prefers his correspondence via quill and ink:
“Dear Martha,
“I just received your e-mail sent today, 7 August, asking if I had received your e-mail of last week. Apparently I had, but had overlooked it, or it was delayed in arrival as sometimes happens, so that I missed it, for it was below the ones I had already checked.
“This is an e-mail management issue I must master. I must talk with my buddy Ben Franklin on how he handles this new type of post, being he is used to handling large volumes of mail as Postmaster General.”
AW, SHUCKS
In the category of “most bizarre media advisory ever issued,” we call to your attention an eye-opening paragraph in a Tuesday advisory from BP Alaska surrounding a press tour of Prudhoe Bay operations, including the latest oil spill site:
“All participants, by acceptance of invitation, agree to adhere to all BP safety issues. No firearms, illegal drugs, contraband or alcohol are allowed.”