Abstract

When I worked as a regular newspaper columnist, I absorbed two informal, folkloric strictures on subject matter: No columns based on conversations with cab drivers and none touting jury service as a magisterium of democracy, where one's faith in the people is refreshed. The fear, I think, was that a columnist who dotes on the wisdom of cabbies or fellow jurors is confessing that he becomes one of "the people" only from the back of a cab or when he has been summoned legally to meet with "the people" face-to-face.

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