Each week, we debate a question in collaboration with the Washington Post Magazine. This week: Is it ever OK to play dumb?
Ann Hulbert: I find rewards in playing dumb with the quite old and the very young. "Stop me if I'm repeating myself," my mother used to say, a rare request that I obeyed in her case but do my best to disobey in general with my elders. Who wants to see that mortified look when people realize they're broken records or that their memory is going? And little kids really do say the darnedest things if you hold back, sometimes, from setting them straight.
KJ Dell'Antonia: I used to play the naive young lawyer when I was a prosecutor. I found that a certain silent, nodding, wide-eyed demeanor lulled a particular type of older, complacent male defense attorney into relaxing (and spending less effort on arguing a motion or making a case for bail, say.) And then I would sail in and nail them. It was entirely intentional and quite pleasant. Plus the bad guys would stay in jail and whatnot—so all done in the service of good.
Hanna Rosin: My terrible, horrible confession: I sometimes do it around stay-at-home moms, especially new moms, for fear they have not, say, read the paper that day (or maybe that month) and will peg me as one of those Washington workaholic types who never sees her kids.
Amanda Marcotte: I've played the helpless female driver to get out of at least three tickets. I call it "making sexism work for you," and my guilt about it is assuaged by remembering sexism doesn't brake for women 95 percent of the time.
Ellen Tarlin: I don't recall ever playing dumb or ever feeling that I had to play dumb. I guess I've acted goofy while trying to flirt—trying to make conversation about things that I don't care about, which has only ever resulted in self-humiliation. I suppose I've also played sarcastically dumb, trying to make fun of someone for being a jerk. But for the most part, if I'm being dumb, it's completely sincere.
Laura Moser: I played dumb semi-frequently when I lived in England, usually to avoid getting slapped with a moving-vehicle violation. Once I was biking the wrong way down Portobello Road and actually got stopped by a police officer. You mean there are one-way streets here? That’s so quaint and Merrye Olde! Another time, when I was stopped for speeding I pretended I was having trouble with the whole miles-kilometers conversion thing, even though, um, we both use miles. I occasionally felt guilty for throwing my countrymen under the bus, but whatever. The English are already pretty sure that Americans are stupid, and I’m not above playing to stereotype.
Erika Kawalek: I play dumb when I'm reporting in the early, sniffing around stages of a story—always. I do it so that my own conclusions don't stifle the reporting. Acting too sharp or like a know-it-all is a liability; subjects share less, or they assume you know more than you actually do. My professional motto is curiosus tamen stolidus—curious but dumb.

Tags: playing dumb, women and intelligence

The American political novel has gotten a bad rep in recent years, probably because we now seem nationally unable to produce a great one. In an oft-quoted 2001 essay in the Guardian, James Wood called for fewer novels attempting to “‘tell us how the world works’” and more that “‘tell us how somebody felt about something.’” Wood was writing about the social novel, but the rule should be applied to its political counterpart. Great political novels of the past—All the King’s Men, 1984, Catch-22, Underworld, The Handmaid’s Tale—succeed because the politics emerge through idiosyncratic characters in their specifically imagined contexts. So Much For That by Lionel Shriver, the author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, is not a great political novel, but it is a good and timely one. The novel is especially impressive because its subject is health care, not obvious fodder for drama or intrigue. It works because Shriver portrays our broken system—how one part of our world works, or fails to—through fully realized characters who have very personal reasons for thinking about it.

His entire adult life, Shriver's protagonist, Shepherd Knacker, has promised to quit the rat race young and “abscond” to some developing nation with a low cost of living where he can live like a king. He finally has the tickets in hand when his wife, Glynis, announces that she has cancer and needs his health insurance. Chastened, Shepherd abandons his exit plan, keeps his job, cares for Glynis, and pays the bills that World Wellness insurance won’t. Suddenly he understands better what his best friend Jackson, whose daughter has the degenerative disease familial dysautonomia, has had to deal with all these years, and the two men spend pages venting their frustrations with the health care system.

But only rarely does this story seem forced into the service of its politics. Jackson’s rants and Shepherd’s ruminations are more than anything opportunities to get to know the characters better. Politics play no part in the single chapter where we see life from chemo-depleted Glynis’ perspective. And we also get an intimate, sustained portrait of a marriage, with its tides of resentment, fear, guilt, and devotion. Witnessing his wife's suffering and nearing bankruptcy, Shepherd earns the right to ask explicitly, as no politician can afford to, “Is there … a limit to how much you should pay to keep any one person alive?” and we believe the question comes from Shep, not Shriver philosophizing. This is what we need political novels to do, voice truths too loaded for the Senate floor. In the process Shriver underscores what has made the health care debate so fraught, that the personal may be political, but the political is absolutely personal.

Tags: health care debate, health care reform, lionel shriver, political novels, so much for that

It’s been comical watching Christiane Amanpour have to defend her qualifications to anchor the Sunday Beltway Show This Week. Amanpour is replacing George Stephanopoulous, and people have been “puzzling” about this out-of-the-box choice, reports the Washington Post’s Lisa de Moraes. What makes it so puzzling? Amanpour, who grew up in Iran and Britain, has mostly foreign-reporting experience. For decades, news organizations have groomed their top men by sending them overseas. This has long been the standard path of success at the Washington Post and the New York Times. Until now, it never occurred to anyone that spending four years isolated in Moscow or Beijing would not be the absolutely ideal preparation for covering the White House, running the national desk, or writing the paper’s editorials on health care policy. In fact, it was absolutely de rigeur. But suddenly the lady—who happens to be one of the best-known TV reporters in the business—appears, and the network feels it has to release tortured explanations about how the “international and the domestic have come to effect one another” and how global conflict is now domestic conflict and other such nonsense.

Photograph of Christiane Amanpour by Nicholas Kamm/AFP.

Tags: Christiane Amanopur, George Stephanopoulos, This Week

If you're looking to waste some of your employer's time today, you could do worse than watch this entirely safe-for-work reality show in which porn stars play Dungeons and Dragons. Sasha Grey guest-stars as "a first-level tiefling wizard." In an interview with Annalee Newitz, Satine Phoenix describes her character as "an Elf Rogue named Mirror who is generally kind and will try to avoid killing in most instances but will step over a friend to get the sparkly piece of gold." A hairdresser with truly exquisite hair plays "dark elf rogue named Varla." It's definitely boring, but in a relaxing way, like a yule log with porn stars sitting around and talking. Pheonix seems big on the idea that hot women should be free to enter the shadowy worlds of geekdom. Sadly, the guys in the comments think it's all a conspiracy to sell them more porn.

Photograph of woman by Lifesize/Getty Images.

Tags: Dungeons and Dragons, porn, role-playing

Emily Y., I agree that the sex scandals just aren't fun anymore. They're sordid and upsetting. The most upsetting part, though, is not the vulgarity (though Tiger's texts should win some sort of prize for debasement)—it's that many of these guys were not using condoms when they cheated on their wives. Jesse James allegedly did not use protection when he had sex with apparent white supremacist Michelle "Bombshell" McGee, and Tiger didn't use them with at least two of his mistresses, according to Us Weekly.

Of course, as this handy Esquire article on "Why Men Cheat" makes note, men are a) not thinking about their wives or any other details of their quotidian lives when the are having sex with friends and strangers, and b) are doing it to test their own "tolerance for risk." I imagine the tolerance for risk will be vastly depleted with the first symptoms of gonorrhea.

Photograph of Jesse James and Sandra Bullock by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images.

Tags: affairs, condoms., jesse james, michelle, sandra bullock, tiger woods

It's common knowledge that women in abusive relationships have trouble leaving their abusers. It is uncommon to the point of bizarre for a judge hearing a domestic violence complaint to take it upon himself to send a woman back into the arms of her abuser by marrying the couple. And yet, that's what Baltimore County District Judge G. Darrell Russell Jr. did last week. After hearing a second-degree assault charge against 29-year-old Frederick Wood, whose fiancee, according to the police report, said he kicked her, banged her head against a wall, and hit her in the face (she had a bloody nose when the cops showed up), Judge Russell offered to perform a wedding ceremony. This way, the woman could invoke the marital privilege against testifying and Wood would be found not guilty.

According to the Baltimore Sun: " 'He's asking for a postponement so he can go out and get married, come back and resolve the case,' said the defense attorney. "His wife will then invoke her privilege.' "

Russell replied, "Well, why don't I just marry them today in court?" And then after the wedding ceremony, "The case came to an end with the judge finding the defendant not guilty, saying, "I found you not guilty, so I can't sentence you as a defendant in any crimes, but earlier today, I sentenced you to life married to her."

A judge who is happy to serve—however utterly misguided and inappropriate such service might be. Russell has been reassigned from his regular duties, but not suspended.

Photograph of couple by Photodisc/Getty Images.

Tags: domestic violence; marital privilege

Aren’t sex scandals supposed to be a little bit fun? Of course, if they’re scandals, it means a left-behind partner has gotten hurt, but the best sex scandals at least allow you to be wryly amused about the follies of human passion. The Mark Sanford affair was a good sex scandal—the meltdown press conference, the tearful confessions of love, the e-mails about Maria’s luscious casabas, the knowledge that the wronged Jenny could very well take care of herself. (She actually takes care of herself too well—the tell-all book makes her look stupid for marrying him.) But each iteration of the Tiger Woods and John Edwards scandals leaves a sick, dispirited feeling. Now there are more Tiger Woods texts, and they reveal a sadistic creep who acts as if his family is an annoyance that takes him away from fantasies of golden showers with porn actresses. The John Edwards-Rielle Hunter saga should be entertaining and titillating—a phony narcissistic is brought low by an aging airhead. But the background noise of loss and death makes you want to turn away.

Photograph of texting by Alton, made available under a GNU Free Documentation License.

Tags: John Edwards, rielle hunter, tiger woods, Tiger Woods sexting

—Hillary Clinton and President Obama finally forge an alliance after the bitter Democratic primary. [New York Times]

—Given her history of reporting from international war zones, Christiane Amanpour is both a surprising and risky pick for host of This Week. [Politico]

—Why is ABC News paying accused baby-killer Casey Anthony’s legal bills? [Gawker]

—A South Carolina ethics commission forces philandering former governor Mark Sanford to pay a $74,000 fine. [Post Chronicle]

—Women call for “potty parity” in federal buildings and demand more ladies’ restrooms. [Salon]

—Why is New York governor David Paterson trying to take credit for sabotaging his own career? [Politico]

Tags: 2008 election, abc news, Barack Obama, cheating politicians, christiane amanpour, david paterson, Hillary Clinton, mark sanford, politics