Politics And Prose

Two reviews of the new book,Daniel Patrick Moynihan: a portrait in letters of an American visionary / edited by Steven R. Weisman. , one by Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Yorker, and by David Brooks in the Times begin differently, and that is quite telling:

Despite the well-established American loathing of politicians as a class, everything seems to get named after them, begins Hertzberg in his 3,969 word essay, not using the first-person pronoun until the 1,109th word. Brooks, juxtaposed, uses it as his 6th (of 1,881) word: Sometime in the late 1980s, I had lunch...