I don't have air conditioning in my apartment. My friends think I'm insane, despite the fact that domestic air-conditioning was exhoribitantly expensive, and thus considered a true luxury in Israel, up until around 10 years ago. Hardly anyone here grew up with air conditioning at home, but today it's considered a necessity. Since I live in a rented apartment, in a building that is slated for demolition in a couple of years (getting permission from the municipality takes a very, very long time), the owners aren't about to invest in a unit - and I'm certainly not going to spend $1,000 to get one installed. Mostly, this is not a problem: I live in an old (and crumbling) Bauhaus building with high ceilings, and my apartment doesn't get a lot of direct sunlight. Tonight, however, it's particularly hot and humid, and the air just isn't moving. The cold shower didn't help; I can't sleep.

So I'm waiting for the magic hour before dawn, when the humidity declines a bit, and meanwhile I'm reading the New Yorker online. I just finished Hendrik Hertzberg's very intelligent and beautifully written review of Bill Clinton's memoir, "My Life." I particularly like this bit:

"...the book is shaped by political pressures and obligations. Theoretically, when a President becomes an ex-President he is freed from many of the constraints that necessarily shackled him when he was seeking office or negotiating with Congress or conducting diplomacy. But Presidential memoirs seldom take full advantage of the freedom to be frank, and Clinton’s is no exception. It is his unique and ironic fate to have a spouse who is a politician, too—one whose elective career lifted off with a roar just as his own was nearing splashdown. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, represents a state bristling with political minefields, and she will almost certainly be on every list of Presidential possibilities for several cycles to come. Her husband must therefore consider the impact on her political fortunes of everything he says, does, or writes. He might like to fire off something beastly about Israel, for example, or the Cubans in Miami, or the teachers’ unions. But he can’t. He has to watch what he says. If this is Hillary’s revenge, it is exquisite."

What can I say? I respect and admire Bill for his brilliance and charisma, and I think the Starr Report (which I read) can most kindly be described as none of anyone's business. But humiliating one's spouse in public is very uncool, and if Hertzberg's half-joking speculation is true then I say - more power (both literally and figuratively) to Hillary.