Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

Years ago, I took great pleasure in reading your takedown of Ben Sherwood in Spy. I had a special reason for doing so. He and I were among the dozen or so candidates at the California state Rhodes Scholarship semi-finalist competition hosted at Cal Tech in late '85.

I can't say that you get to know people particularly well in what was then a two-day event, but I and others knew him well enough to realize he was an ass - not just in his choice of words but in the way he...