This episode of the Gab Fest contains explicit language.

Hello and welcome to the Slate Political GabFest for June 13th, 2019.

The Little Diddy About Mitch and Elaine Edition.

I am David Plotz of Atlas obscure.

I'm in Washington, D.C.

Alone at a green felt table. But I am David Plotz of Atlas Excerra. I'm in Washington, D.C., alone at a green felt table. But I am looking, I'm looking through the miracle of science all the way to New York,

where I see John Dickerson of CBS's 60 Minutes. Hello, John. Hello, David. And I almost saw

Emily, but she was off mic there for a second. There's Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine in Yale Law School. I would never be off mic. I can't imagine what you mean. It's a summer. Let's forget about Yale Law School for a little while. John is so well-dressed. And we had the conversation before the show about why he's well-dressed, even though he's not appearing on TV.

He's not.

He is on writing his book right now. And so, and he insufficiently answered it. So I'm going to ask you one more time, John, in two sentences or less, why, on a random Thursday, when, as far as I know, you do not need to be on television, are you so beautifully dressed? Well i like i like dressing well but more to the

point uh i when you get up in the morning it you don't have to think about what you're going to wear

you grab a shirt a tie that goes with it getting your suit you're out the door like all my other

clothing options are, require thought.

And at any minute, I could, like, have to go do something and or meet with somebody where I have to be.

Oh, okay.

So that's, that's, anyway, so that's true.

Plus, why not, you know.

The real reason, though, is the one I said off mic, which is when you're in the middle of writing a book and you're deep in the bowels of your process, everything seems up for grabs.

All of the normal stability in life is removed from you and you are in a howling void.

And so if you can have your self put together, at least in terms of what you're wearing,

it provides some tiny structure against the terror of the abyss.

That is probably the most important thing Gaffess listeners are going to hear today. And it was in the first 30 seconds of the show. You can turn it off now. Totally unplanned. So you should turn it off right now. Can I just say from our standpoint? And how long to the abyss? Listeners, what we're viewing is David sitting in a green table with the bubble tea, it looks like you're the most relaxed card dealer in Vegas I've ever seen. because that table with the green felt looks like a card table.

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