The Presidential Ear

A little while ago Time magazine reported President Jimmy Carter to have said, “I listen to classical music eight to ten hours a day.” Eight to ten hours a day? Astounding. Obviously a misprint.

But no, a later story, again in Time, cleared that up. Susan Clough, Carter’s personal secretary, is in charge of “feeding the President’s Panasonic phonograph with classical LPs. The background music plays all day. Clough types the musical program on a tidy series of yellow 3×5 cards and places them on the President’s desk so that he can make mental notes of what he is hearing.”

If he had said, “I read romantic poetry eight to ten hours a day,” one might ...