In the spirit of the Debt Ceiling Impasse, let's consider our next opportunity to make things right, for all concerened.
If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you pee on us and wrong us, shall we not revenge?
Liam Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
Since we cannot match it let us take our revenge by abusing it.
Michel Montaigne (1533 - 1592)
All politicians are disappointing. Perhaps the purest, the least obviously corrupt, politician in Illinois in recent years was Senator Paul Simon. One year he quoted a passage from one of my books on the Christmas card he sent out to supporters. He would occasionally write to me, addressing me as “Joe.” At one point, someone I knew named Carol Iannone came up for the minor non-paying job of member of the National Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The word somehow spread that she was a right-winger. She wasn’t; she was a serious literary critic. I wrote a letter to Paul Simon, before whose committee the nomination had to pass, patiently explaining what a good person Ms. Iannone was and how valuable she would be on the Council of the NEH and asking that he consider her nomination with the utmost care. I never had an answer from him, and he voted against her. He went with the party on this one. My point is that there are other kinds of corruption than patronage and stealing. Joseph Epstein
