Tina and Larry and Ellen and Joel

Tina Brown weighs in on men and relationships
Harvard Prez Lawrence Summers is the dish du jour among female columnists. Here’s a piece by Tina Brown from today’s Washington Post. As an aside, it’s interesting to note that the bottom of her piece says Copyright 2005 Tina Brown, while most other op-eds and contributed pieces read Copyright 2005 Washington Post. She must be one helluva negotiator.

Anyway, Tina is taking on powerful, intelligent men claiming that they lack some basic interpersonal relationship skills that oftentimes leads to their early demise. Her theory is that men have fewer role-playing options than women. They are either “samurai or wimp.”

Women, by contrast, get a crack at boss lady, taskmaster and office power woman along with mistress, wife, geisha, doormat, chatelaine, vixen, goddess, nursemaid and she-devil -- all in the course of one day.

A woman playing any of these roles is perfectly in her element; a man playing a role feels unmanned. It's easy for Condi to switch from standing on Putin's corns to gazing into Chancellor Schroeder's eyes and laughing coquettishly at his Germanic jokes. That kind of thing is harder for Bush -- and off the table for Rummy. Hee hee, got a chuckle at that last zinger.

In this piece by Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman, she takes a tongue-in-cheek stab at defending Summers from his defenders.

The truth is that the Harvard president is on social probation. He's alienated so many people that one more false move and he'll end up at the World Bank where he can insult whole countries.

Achenblog has yet to disappoint
Reading Joel Achenbach has become something of an addiction for me. His writing appears to come so easily (and breezy) and yet, as he writes in a post called The Von Drehle (as in fellow WaPo David) Rules, sometimes this blogging (and writing) business can be tough.

He’s also posted a compelling story by one of his Georgetown students about a bar bouncer at a fine Dupont Circle establishment. Teaching this kind of student and reading this quality of writing must be truly inspiring.