Letter from Washington

As was predicted here a year ago, the new book by Wood-strong has become a landmark in the history of hype. A full week of page- one play in the Post, a Newsweek cover, television reporters risking their very hairstyles to bring back actualities with authors Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong. A visiting fellow from the Mars School of Journalism might take it for the top story of the week, just ahead of the unpleasantness in Iran and opening a strong lead over energy, tax policy, and the esoteric rites of something called the Iowa Caucus.

The book itself, The Brethren, delivers everything we ever wanted to know and were afraid some boor would one day tell us about the Supreme Court. It makes for fascinating reading, of course, as the remote judicial figures are rendered life-size and, in the unhappy cases of Warren Burger, William Douglas, and Thurgood Marshall, somewhat less than life-size. In Woodstrong’s made-for-television prose, Burger is cast as the quirky, conniving Nixonite—a white- haired, black-robed version of Donald Segretti. Douglas, felled by a stroke, continues to fire off a fusillade of dissents, threats, orders, and intramural rockets long after his mind (and the patience of his colleagues) has snapped. Marshall appears as the shiftless Negro. His understanding of the job is that there will be no heavy lifting.

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As was predicted here a year ago, the new book by Wood-strong has become a landmark in the history of hype. A full week of page- one play in the Post, a Newsweek cover, television reporters risking their very hairstyles to bring back actualities with authors Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong. A visiting fellow from the Mars School of Journalism might take it for the top story of the week, just ahead of the unpleasantness in Iran and opening a strong lead over energy, tax policy, and the esoteric rites of something called the Iowa Caucus.

The book itself, The Brethren, delivers everything we ever wanted to know and were afraid some boor would one day tell us about the Supreme Court. It makes for fascinating reading, of course, as the remote judicial figures are rendered life-size and, in the unhappy cases of Warren Burger, William Douglas, and Thurgood Marshall, somewhat less than life-size. In Woodstrong’s made-for-television prose, Burger is cast as the quirky, conniving Nixonite—a white- haired, black-robed version of Donald Segretti. Douglas, felled by a stroke, continues to fire off a fusillade of dissents, threats, orders, and intramural rockets long after his mind (and the patience of his colleagues) has snapped. Marshall appears as the shiftless Negro. His understanding of the job is that there will be no heavy lifting.