ABSTRACT
As Representative Dan Miller ushered me into his spacious office on Washington’s Capitol Hill, I reflected that he was the embodiment of Republican respectability. Lean, sun-tanned and silver-haired, with a smile a toothpaste salesman would die for, he was the type, I imagined, who gave generously of his time and money to the local church, who worried about the poor without wanting to throw money at them, and who probably was not much interested in the fate of endangered species, or the music of Eminem. His clean–cut young aides looked the part, too. They exuded moral rectitude, and the cuttings pasted on their filing cabinets mocked the lurid goings on at the White House—President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky was still front-page news. So I was somewhat taken aback when Miller asked, as soon as we settled into comfortable leather armchairs, “Have you read a book called Striptease?” I said I hadn’t, and he suggested that I get hold of this Carl Hiasson blockbuster as soon as I left.
