Today's Quiz

Quick: What do these three quotes have in common?

'A patriot must always be ready to defend his country from his government.'
--Edward Abbey
'The great majority of mankind is satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities.'
--Machiavelli
'Don't be humble. You're not that great.'
--Golda Meir

Answer: they all appear at the beginning of various chapters of the fine Karl Rove biography, Bush's Brain.

Sign of the Times: It wasn't too long ago that a job posting such as this would have raised an eyebrow or otherwise caused a stir. Not any longer.

Highly Quotable: Sometimes, you're in the middle of a long, workmanlike interview, when suddenly, from out of the blue, the person will say something so pithy, vivid or otherwise remarkable that you just instantly know it's going to help bring the story alive. New York Times food critic Frank Bruni (the same guy who wrote a thoroughly unremarkable book on George Bush not so long ago) knows what I'm talking about. In a long piece last week on the 20th anniversary of a breakthrough French restaurant in New York, Montrachet, I found this zinger: "We had a $16 prix fixe,' Mr. Nieporent recalled. "It was a sensibility, a mentality: no barriers. The menu wasn't in French. there was no dress code. As long as the feet and the genitals were covered, it was cool." Good thing he didn't get any more specific about the genitals, because the NYT is pretty squeemish about that stuff.