Every Steeler Got a $57,500 Watch February 7, 2006January 16, 2017 DETROIT Miriam Paschetto: ‘You have probably already received quite a few emails about today’s column; but just in case you haven’t, I thought I’d straighten you out regarding the Super Bowl yesterday. It was played at Ford Field which is located in Detroit but the teams playing were Pittsburgh and Seattle. So you don’t have to feel bad for Detroit – the city probably attracted a fair amount of business from the Super Bowl attendees and they didn’t lose any game. (P.S. I feel I should admit that the only reason *I* know who was playing is that I am an engineer who worked on reviewing the stadium roof to see if it had enough capacity to safely sustain the equipment the Rolling Stones wished to use in their halftime show. My husband, Will Galway, and I spent the afternoon in an Himalayan art museum in NYC – and he probably still doesn’t know who played in the Super Bowl.) ☞ Well, the footnote was meant to suggest I actually sort of knew that. But you’re right: I got a ton of emails wanting to make sure. BROKEBACK Jesse Kornbluth: The review of BROKEBACK you WANT to quote: The New York Review of Books: An Affair to Remember. . . . The real achievement of Brokeback Mountain is not that it tells a universal love story that happens to have gay characters in it, but that it tells a distinctively gay story that happens to be so well told that any feeling person can be moved by it. If you insist, as so many have, that the story of Jack and Ennis is OK to watch and sympathize with because they’re not really homosexual-that they’re more like the heart of America than like “gay people”-you’re pushing them back into the closet whose narrow and suffocating confines Ang Lee and his collaborators have so beautifully and harrowingly exposed. THE $57,500 WATCH James Ooi: ‘Do you think people didn’t buy $57,500 watches during Democratic administrations? Why is it that the same people who tend to be so outraged at the government’s desire to regulate a woman’s right to choose or to put wiretaps on its citizens are so enthusiastic about having the government decide what to do with our personal property? This second question is not rhetorical. I really want to understand why personal property rights are not respected by typical ‘liberals.” ☞ Thanks, James (who went on to say some nice stuff) – but you are arguing against a point I didn’t make (and against which I’d join you in arguing). People should have the right to freely spend anything they want on a watch – $57 million if they want to. My general point was that when we go to a society where the top-paid make 500 times what the average Joe makes instead of 60 times (say), we need not compound that by then greatly reducing their tax rate as well – which is what the Republicans chose to do instead of, say, funding the education bill or reducing the deficit. The balance of good fortune, I should have thought, was already pretty favorably skewed to the best off. But now, those earning $1 million a year can buy an extra $57,500 watch each year with their tax saving. TXCO [Dept. of Full Disclosure] Suggested here at $4.50 two years ago, TXCO closed at $11.11 last night and I sold most of the rest of my shares – not because I know or suspect anything negative about the company’s prospects, but because I wanted to buy a watch. (Well, an acre or two in Costa Rica, actually.) I kept just enough so that, if it hits $30 one day, I will not feel compelled to hurl myself off a roof.