I didn’t know Marc Steinberg, but I remember him. He had a sign on his office reading “When the going gets tough, the weird go professional.” I loved that sign. It was close enough to Watergate that I remembered John Dean’s quoting the crooks around him saying “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

Later, I bumped into him in the hall and congratulated him on his award for teaching. He told me one of his bits to get students’ attention. First class: he brought in a bucket of water and walked into it, wetting his pants up to the knee. “See?” he said, “I can’t walk on water, can’t do miracles. If you want to learn sociology, you have to work.”