rosie should get to co-write The Believer advice column

Birnbaum vs. Sarah Vowell:

I like the distance of talking about the long dead. There are some very serious parts of the book, and some mournful ones, but there is some joking around, and you can do a little less of that when someone's daughter and brother are mourning them. Or wife and children, in the case of [Martin Luther] King. I'm just not very interested in John F. Kennedy. Also, my books are purely optional. They are not books that need to be written.