MOMMY SMEARiST

Red Hook, NY

Thanks to Katha Pollitt ["Subject to Debate," July 17/24] for a smart and sophisticated review of my ideas, but no thanks to the implication that I took my ideas from Rhona Mahony without crediting her. ("This crucial insight [that early decisions make later choices inevitable] was not originally Hirshman's but Rhona Mahony's, in her brilliant 1995 Kidding Ourselves, on which Hirshman rather heavily relies.") Thankfully for Western culture, the concept of causation did not actually originate in Mahony's late-twentieth-century book Kidding Ourselves. Nonetheless, the book was brilliant and an important inspiration to me. Accordingly, not only do I explicitly cite Mahony on page 57 of my book for the one idea that is truly and clearly no one's but hers (find a sharing spouse by marrying down), but in my second reference to her in the bibliography, I say, "Nothing in my book would have been possible without the groundbreaking work of this book." If you're out there, Rhona, know that you were properly acknowledged. Abrasive, Caitlin Flanagan clone and all the rest I can take. But I would never knowingly take someone else's ideas.

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