Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin Read online

  JOE LEBEAU: The French and Germans were fighting on the same side then.

  EARNEST FELLOW: But that’s impossible! The French hated the Germans!

  JOE LEBEAU: Do you blame them?

  I haven’t seen Joe LeBeau since graduation—I understand he’s a judge in California—but I occasionally run into other classmates who, as graduates of a fancy college, tend to be Wall Street financiers, impatient with those of us who have not just depreciated a factory or written off an airline. “What are you up to?” they always say.

  “I am amortizing my tuxedo,” I tell them. “I am amortizing the hell out of my tuxedo.”

  I can see my New Year’s Eve now. I am dressing for the evening. I calculate what my tuxedo is going to cost me to wear to the same party one year hence, assuming I wear it occasionally during the intervening months—to a turkey shoot, say, or a bris. Even taking the voluminous pants off the hanger gives me pleasure. I find it a bit awkward putting on Joe LeBeau’s pants, of course, but I love to start the new year by thinking of him trying to put on mine.

  1983

  THE MEDIA—LIBERAL ELITE AND OTHERWISE

  “When I was a writer at Time, I tried to escape from the Religion section by writing ‘alleged’ in front of any historically questionable religious event—the ‘alleged parting of the Red Sea,’ say, or ‘thirty years after the alleged crucifixion.’ ”

  Corrections

  JANUARY 14—Because of an editing error, an article in Friday’s theater section transposed the identifications of two people involved in the production of Waiting for Bruce, a farce now in rehearsal at the Rivoli. Ralph W. Murtaugh, Jr., a New York attorney, is one of the play’s financial backers. Hilary Murtaugh plays the ingénue. The two Murtaughs are not related. At no time during the rehearsal visited by the reporter did Ralph Murtaugh, Jr., “sashay across the stage.”

  MARCH 25—Because of some problems in transmission, there were several errors in yesterday’s account of a symposium held by the Women’s Civic Forum of Rye on the role played by slovenliness in cases of domestic violence. The moderator of the symposium, Laura Murtaugh, should not have been identified as “an unmarried mother of eight.” Mrs. Murtaugh, the president of the board of directors of the Women’s Civic Forum, is married to Ralph W. Murtaugh, Jr., an attorney who practices in Manhattan. The phrase “he was raised with the hogs and he lived like a hog” was read by Mrs. Murtaugh from the trial testimony of an Ohio woman. It did not refer to Mrs. Murtaugh’s own husband. Mr. Murtaugh was raised in New York.

  APRIL 4—An article in yesterday’s edition on the growing contention between lawyers and their clients should not have used an anonymous quotation referring to the firm of Newton, Murtaugh & Clayton as “ambulance-chasing jackals” without offering the firm an opportunity to reply. Also, the number of hours customarily billed by Newton, Murtaugh partners was shown incorrectly on a chart accompanying the article. According to a spokesman for the firm, the partner who said he bills clients for “thirty-five or forty hours on a good day” was speaking ironically. There are only twenty-four hours in a day. The same article was in error as to the first name and the background of one of the firm’s senior partners. The correct name is Ralph W. Murtaugh, Jr. There is no one named Hilary Murtaugh connected with the firm. Ralph W. Murtaugh, Jr., has at no time played an ingénue on Broadway.

  APRIL 29—Because of a computer error, the early editions on Wednesday misidentified the person arrested for a series of armed robberies of kitchen-supply stores on the West Side of Manhattan. The person arrested under suspicion of being the so-called “pesto bandit” was Raymond Cullom, twenty-two, of Queens. Ralph W. Murtaugh III, nineteen, of Rye, should have been identified as the runner-up in the annual Squash for Kids charity squash tournament, in Rye, rather than as the alleged robber.

  MAY 18—Because of an error in transmission, a four-bedroom brick colonial house on Weeping Bend Lane, in Rye, owned by Mr. and Mrs. Ralph W. Murtaugh, Jr., was incorrectly listed in Sunday’s real-estate section as being on the market for $17,500. The house is not for sale. Also, contrary to the information in the listing, it does not have flocked wallpaper or a round bed.

  JUNE 21—In Sunday’s edition, the account of a wedding that took place the previous day at St. John’s Church in Rye was incorrect in a number of respects. The cause of the errors was the participation of the reporter in the reception. This is in itself against the policy of this newspaper, and should not have occurred. Jane Murtaugh was misidentified in two mentions. She was neither the mother of the bride nor the father of the bride. She was the bride. It was she who was wearing a white silk gown trimmed in tulle. The minister was wearing conventional ministerial robes. Miss Murtaugh should not have been identified on second mention as Mrs. Perkins, since she will retain her name and since Mr. Perkins was not, in fact, the groom. The number of bridesmaids was incorrectly reported. There were eight bridesmaids, not thirty-eight. Their dresses were blue, not glued. The bridegroom’s name is not Franklin Marshall. His name is Emory Barnswell, and he graduated from Franklin and Marshall College. Mr. Barnswell never attended Emory University, which, in any case, does not offer a degree in furniture stripping. Mr. Barnswell’s ancestor was not a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and was not named Hector (Boom-Boom) Bondini. The name of the father of the bride was inadvertently dropped from the article. He is Hilary Murtaugh.

  1990

  On the Assumption that Al Gore Will Slim Down if He’s Intending to Run for President, a Political Reporter Is Assigned to Watch Gore’s Waistline

  This job means sometimes digging up the dirt

  On if a pol has stolen or he’s cheating

  With some cute waitress from a D.C. bar.

  But who knew I’d be tracking what he’s eating?

  My editor, the clever dog, decided

  The way to check that presidential itch is

  To follow Gore, especially at meals,

  And see if he stays too big for his britches.

  Last week, I told my desk that Gore might run,

  Though he appeared to be at least full-size.

  A waiter at a Georgetown place revealed

  Gore’s order had included “hold the fries.”

  But now a source will swear that he was there

  When Gore demolished half a cow, then stowed

  Away in sixty seconds gobs of pie.

  Two pieces. Apple crumble. À la mode.

  My major back in school was poly-sci—

  Quite valuable, I thought, for this position.

  I know now, though, for covering Al Gore,

  I should have studied diet and nutrition.

  2007

  Presidential Ups and Downs

  Washington Pundits Take Their Analytical Skills to the Ranch

  CRAWFORD, TEX., AUG. 20—President George W. Bush’s failure to catch a fish after he spent two hours on his heavily stocked bass pond this afternoon was considered a defeat for Mr. Bush by most observers here, and one that would weaken his position in swapping fish stories with Democrats and Republican moderates in Congress. A White House spokesman’s comment that the President, being a serious conservationist, had “done catch-and-release one better” may have only worsened matters, since most of the press corps dismissed it as a desperate attempt at spin.

  CRAWFORD, TEX., AUG. 21—The President scored a solid victory today by working on the clearing of his nature trail for an hour and a half without injuring himself.

  CRAWFORD, TEX., AUG. 22—Eating scrambled eggs this morning for breakfast was seen as a victory for the President, who had been having his eggs sunny-side up for more than a week. The President prefers his eggs scrambled. White House officials have been unwilling to discuss the reasoning behind the apparently contradictory sunny-side-up policy. However, they are not directly denying a story that the Crawford ranch’s cook, Rosa Gonzales, had refused to serve scrambled eggs ever since the President, in an effort to compliment her, tried to pronounce the
dish in Spanish—huevos revueltos—and came out with something that Ms. Gonzales understood as “very revolting.” It is not clear how the situation was resolved in a manner that permitted a return to scrambled eggs this morning, but White House officials did little to hide their jubilation.

  CRAWFORD, TEX., AUG. 23—White House spokesmen refused to elaborate on a terse announcement this morning that a two-year-old Hereford steer on the Bush ranch had stepped into a gopher hole and broken its leg—a defeat for the President.

  CRAWFORD, TEX., AUG. 24—Even George W. Bush’s harshest critics are acknowledging today that the weather has given the President an important victory. “The entire country has been suffering from a heat wave,” said a member of the White House staff who has been at the President’s ranch for three weeks, “but there can’t be any place quite as miserable as this.” Daniel Jonas, a Democratic pollster who specializes in issues of empathy, said, “Let’s face it: This is a big one for Bush.”

  CRAWFORD, TEX., AUG. 25—George W. Bush was served huevos rancheros for breakfast today—a serious defeat for the President, who does not like highly spiced food.

  CRAWFORD, TEX., AUG. 26—Republicans both here and in Washington were glowing today after George W. Bush apparently scored a big victory by losing at golf. “He’s just a regular guy with a bad slice,” one party loyalist said. “He knows loss. He understands loss.” The low scorer in the foursome, a wealthy oilman from Lubbock, won ten dollars from each of the other players. Late this afternoon, Democrats were saying that the episode might prove to be a defeat for Mr. Bush now that it is known that longtime family friends of the President’s parents came forward on the eighteenth green to cover his losses.

  CRAWFORD, TEX., AUG. 27—President Bush scored his biggest victory of the week this morning when Rosa Gonzales, his cook, posed, smiling, for a picture with him in the kitchen of the Crawford ranch. Although Ms. Gonzales has not been made available for interviews, the White House has formally denied that she ever referred to the President as “la boquita de un gringo puro”—roughly, “little gringo mouth.” In response to reporters’ questions at the photo opportunity, the President explained his views on how best to prepare eggs by saying that he is a uniter, not a divider. H. Cole Knudnik, an expert on presidential diet at the Brookings Institute, said, “The President was overdue for a clear-cut victory on this one, and he got it.”

  2001

  “Whatta We Got for the Folks This Week?”

  The office of Pete Smithers, a senior editor whose responsibilities include the Lifestyles section. Among the magazine’s writers, it is assumed that Smithers’s only conceivable qualification for high office is his unique ability to lean back from his desk at a terrifyingly drastic angle—his legs absolutely straight, his heels hooked precariously on the edge of his desk, and his Bass Weejuns spread at the toes to form a perfect V-shaped frame through which he can regard the writer standing before him, like a man sighting very carefully through a large gunsight.

  The writer whose duty at the Lifestyles story conference is to serve up potential stories for Smithers’s approval is Fred Becker, a “floater” who moves from section to section, depending on which regular writer is away—and who feels himself in imminent danger of being switched suddenly to the Medicine section, where the regular writer often finds that the symptoms of the disease he writes about cause him to feel too ill to continue.

  For the half-dozen people seated in Pete Smithers’s office, waiting for the Lifestyles story conference to begin, the bottoms of Smithers’s shoes were the only part of him visible, although a clipboard he was holding on his lap occasionally bobbed into view. Fred Becker noticed that Smithers’s Bass Weejuns were either new or resoled. Smithers’s voice seemed to emerge from somewhere below the desk: “All right, Fred, whatta we got for the folks this week?”

  Becker looked over his clipboard—a signal for the others at the meeting to adjust their own clipboards, ready to list the stories Smithers accepted. Sitting with Becker in Smithers’s office were Carol Goodenow, the Lifestyles researcher; Keith Johnson, a quiet man from the wire desk; two photo researchers (for reasons unknown to Becker, photo researchers, like FBI men and nuns, traveled in pairs); and Genine McIntyre, Smithers’s secretary, a lavishly dressed and carefully made-up young woman known around the office as La Contessa.

  “Well, we’ve got the one from California about people drowning in hot tubs,” Becker said.

  “Is that a trend?” the voice from behind Smithers’s desk said.

  “I don’t know if you can call it a trend, exactly, Pete,” Becker said. “It’s not really at the point of being the thing to do in California, or anything like that. More of a phenomenon than a trend. I guess people just get all relaxed in there, and smoke a little something, and chant their mantras, and get in touch with their bodies, or maybe lose touch with their bodies—and they sort of slip beneath the waves.”

  “Didn’t we already do drowning in hot tubs?” Smithers said. “Genine?”

  “Scalding in hot tubs,” Genine said. “We did a sixty-liner on scalding in hot tubs last year. Some of the people who were scalded did drown, but it was a scalding piece, really, not a drowning piece.”

  “I thought I remembered a piece we did on drowning in hot tubs,” Smithers said.

  Becker shrugged. It did seem as if everything to be written about hot tubs had already appeared in the Lifestyles section. He himself had done one story on new hot-tub designs and another story on a study showing that the subject most discussed by people sitting in hot tubs in Marin County, California, without any clothes on was real estate.

  “Drowning in water beds,” Genine said. “Scalding in hot tubs.”

  “Put it on the list,” Smithers said.

  Everyone in the room listed the hot-tubs piece on his or her clipboard. The two photo researchers compared clipboards to make certain they had the same wording. “What else we got, Fred?” Smithers said.

  “Well, there’s this two-thirds stocking story, also from California.”

  “Tell me more about that one,” Smithers said. “Does that mean they’re wearing two-thirds of a stocking? Which two-thirds? What’s the point, anyway?”

  “Well, I don’t know too much about it,” Becker said. He was actually hoping that Smithers would decide to drop the two-thirds stocking story. He didn’t like doing fashion stories. What he really wanted to say was that it might make sense to wait until Trish Webster, who was sometimes detached from the Show Business section to do fashion pieces for Lifestyles, happened to be available. He knew, though, that suggesting a woman writer for a women’s fashion story would upset Carol Goodenow, who was the chairperson of the magazine’s women employees committee. When Carol was upset, she often started to cry. That upset her even more, given her belief that women were no more likely to burst into tears than men were, so once she started crying there was almost no stopping her. Becker liked Carol Goodenow, and he tried to avoid doing anything that might upset her. “As I understand it,” he went on, “it’s not really about wearing two-thirds of a stocking. I don’t think. It’s more like two-thirds’ length. Two-thirds of the way up the leg. Or maybe two-thirds of the way toward the knee.”

  “Two-thirds stockings! Jesus!” came Smithers’s voice from behind and below the desk.

  “I guess it really doesn’t sound all that interesting,” Becker said. He glanced over at Carol Goodenow. He thought he had seen her lower lip start to quiver, but he might have been imagining it. “I mean, I guess we’re about due for a stocking story,” he went on, trying to make certain Carol didn’t think that he was sounding negative simply because the story had to do with women’s fashions. “I’m just not sure that this is it.”

  “Let’s scratch it,” Smithers said.

  Marks were made on clipboards. Nobody said anything for a moment or two. Smithers’s desk chair creaked. La Contessa adjusted one of her eyelashes. Keith Johnson, the wire-desk man, looked as if he might fall asleep.

>   “Then there’s this thirty-liner on obscene topiary that was written last week but didn’t run,” Becker said.

  There was another short period of silence. Finally, the voice from behind the desk said, “Obscene topiary?” Smithers, who had scheduled and edited the story the previous week, had apparently forgotten what it was about.

  “Dirty bushes,” Becker said, working on the theory that the simplest explanation was always best for Smithers.

  “In the bushes?”

  “No, dirty bushes—bushes made into statues with, well, sexual overtones.” Becker looked to see if his careful choice of words had succeeded in refreshing Smithers’s memory without embarrassing Carol Goodenow, who was made uncomfortable by talk of sex in public. Carol was blushing slightly.

  “Didn’t we do dirty bushes?” Smithers said. “Genine?”

  “Last week we did dirty bushes, but it didn’t run,” Genine said. “A thirty-liner. Spaced out by that piece on grown-ups chewing bubble gum.”

  “Put it on the list,” Smithers’s voice said.

  “Then Cravens, in Indianapolis, suggests a story on this little town in central Indiana that’s supposed to be the sex-change capital of the world,” Becker said.

  “Jesus!” Smithers said. “Dirty bushes. Sex changes. This is getting to be the goddamn Porno section. Isn’t that a Medicine story?”