Subject: HFC p. 54 Bennett wrote vicious, not viscous
From: Clark Robinson <robinsonchicago@gmail.com>
Date: 7/12/10, 17:23
To: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>
Re: "Bennett does not take his break for long. Washington at its worst can be a viscous, sick city. Nothing so captivates the Washington mind as the anticipation of a scandal or that a person in power is about to fall from grace. These words, of
course, were written just before the Clinton years;"
Sidebar: since I started reading you I have noted viscous appears in statements of your own where I would have expected vicious. I took this to be deliberate since many beliefs, especially those of social conservatives, are indeed viscous, figuratively applying a conventional definition thereof. But I doubt you intend here to improve Bennett's diction within a quotation.
If it's too late for proofreading, let me know. More importantly I am enjoying the book--the Friedman chapter is really deft. I had actually never read Friedman (why would I?) until I began reading you, and I started reading some of his stuff to see if he is as bad as you were saying. My initial reaction to him was, and I think it was unprompted by you, that within the first two paragraphs of his column I had that "spare me/what's my exit strategy?" realization that comes when someone is talking down to me. And you explain the mechanisms he employs to talk to readers as if they are overly polite children.