When Is A Scribe Like Billie Holiday?

When he works at The New Yorker! Here's New Yorker editor David Remnick on New Yorker "essayist" Hedrick Hertzberg:

"He's the political voice of the magazine....Rick's writing has a kind of moral tone that is irreplaceable—he has tone control the way Billie Holiday had tone control, and his sentences are as well-timed as the most brilliant joke or song phrasing."

Not just a moral tone! Moral tone control! I bet you don't have that.