Loitering: New and Collected Essays

by Charles D'Ambrosio

Pretty much the opposite of Letourneau’s hesitance was the insta-commentary offered up by local broadcasters. After the sentencing one Bonnie Hart from KIRO or KOMO—I forget which and don’t believe it really matters—quickly convened a kind of radio Sanhedrin. As far as I know Hart’s only real qualification for commenting on Letourneau is that she holds a job that requires her to say something re: something most every day of the week. Day after day I suppose she’s paid to be fluent in politics, cookbooks, fresh vegetables, fads, open or closed batting stances, menopause, studded tires, whatever. In other words, her authority is mostly occupational, though it seems she’s possessed of omniscience. Her opinions weren’t suasive enough to win me over, not by any of the common measures I developed as a Catholic kid avidly listening for lame moments in hundreds of homilies. No elegance or force of thought, no wit, no keen insight, no revelatory moments that broadened perspectives, that enlivened feelings, no resonance, no self-scrutiny, no risk, no compassion or sympathy or anything close to eloquence. By the strident and aggressive tenor of the talk you couldn’t tell if this Bonnie Hart entertained any doubt, then or ever, she was so careful not to cross herself, so careful to arrange her moral outrage along the lines of least resistance. In a sense the whole program was about Hart rendering the round world flat and endorsing lopsidedness, halfness. This seemed a crude and retrog...