Just Good Writing

A very lucid account of why Prop 8 failed in California. I love Hendrik Hertzberg and hope some of his better columns about the Bush administration come out as a book (that I will gladly buy).

What's particularly engaging is his use of very very long sentence. Short sentence. Like this:

You might think that an organization that for most of the first of its not yet two centuries of existence was the world’s most notorious proponent of startlingly unconventional forms of wedded bliss would be a little reticent about issuing orders to the rest of humanity specifying exactly who should be legally entitled to marry whom. But no.

I try to use this style as often as possible when writing email -- the long-short style, I think, catches your attention and is very useful for non-fiction writing.