FROM STENOGRAPHY TO TELEPATHY. I'm sorry, but this Michael Crowley thing that got cited earlier simply won't do. It's a perfect example of why Spencer The Apostate won't be attending the annual Stephen Glass Birthday Soiree at Chez Peretz this year. We have mind-reading. We have body-language interpretation. I guess we can count ourselves lucky that Crowley misplaced his Magic 8-Ball. If I turned in a piece of copy that repeatedly used the phases "one imagines," "definitely seemed," or "promise to be" as promicuously as Crowley does here, my editor would chain me to a radiator for a week, especially if my final paragraph, the one containing the actual news, pretty much made the rest of the post look like 10 pounds of nothing in an eight-pound bag. Good Lord, Nancy Pelosi was elected unanimously by her caucus even though most of them knew at the time they were going to vote against her choice for Majority Leader. How can she recover? Well, she can start by not caring how the various Beltway palm-readers and mock-clairvoyants "imagine" things "seem." And Crowley should inform "Reader A. M." that the Hammer would have understood. In 1995, he ran for Majority Whip and defeated the preferred candidate of that Definer Of The Rules Of Civilization, Newt Gingrich. I don't recall anyone commenting at the time how weak Gingrich "seemed" or that he put on a "game face" after this crushing blow to his new Republican majority. -- Charles P. Pierce
