The Breakfast Table

Wicked Stepmothers

Morning, Nell–

I hope you had a good weekend editing your book. I came down with a cold that kept me mostly in bed, where I listened to some early Haydn quartets, a lot of National Public Radio shows, two Yankee games, and Dr. Laura. The purpose of Dr. Laura was to help me break out in a sweat, which I’ve heard will rid the body of toxins. If I really, really, really wanted to hurt someone–to traumatize them for life–I’d suggest that they call Dr. Laura for advice. No matter why they think they’re calling, Dr. Laura knows there’s something they’re not telling her, and one by one she’s going to pull off those fingernails until they talk. Hoping to be validated? Then you must be punished. Dr. Laura must have done naughty things in her youth because born- agains don’t come any more vindictive. But I’d better stop there, because yesterday she said that there was no difference between gossiping about someone and murdering them–which means I’m ripe for lethal injection after last week’s orgy of Tripp- and Kissinger-bashing. Truth to tell, I felt hung over from it anyway. Maybe I deserved to catch a cold. Maybe I had to be punished.

I’ve been eating raw garlic and sucking down echinacea since I started feeling sick – a regime I learned years ago from my guru, Andrew Weill. If nothing else, I keep others from getting my colds, since my pores leak so much garlic oil that not even panhandlers approach me. My parents, who are medical doctors, roll their eyes when I urge them to treat their colds with “folk” remedies; my mom, in particular, is a great believer in the prophylactic use of antibiotics. I’ll sneeze once and she’ll say, “Here. Take this erythromycin. You can’t afford to get pneumonia.” So in addition to all the other ways she screwed me up, I’m pretty sure that my mom has compromised my immune system. Yesterday’s New York Times Magazine had a scary story about the coming wave of antibiotic-resistant bacteria to go with its scary story about the coming wave of global-warming environmental disasters. This was in addition to an NPR story about–I swear–cosmic vacuums that could, at any second, blow up the universe. I’m thumbing through my Prophecies of Nostradamus book looking for references to bleached-blondes named “Tripp.”

Orrin Hatch made headlines yesterday by saying that if the president admits to an affair with Monica Lewinsky that he’s pretty sure Congress wouldn’t kick him out. Er, can we see that in writing? Actually, I believe it, since as Daniel Schor pointed out on NPR, the last thing the Republicans want is two years of Al Gore’s boyscout act leading into the next presidential election. Clinton is so miserably compromised, so sullied, so neck-deep in mud, that maybe the smartest thing Starr can do at this point is walk away, leaving a president “murdered” by gossip.

I don’t know if you got to Ever After yesterday. I dragged myself to the theater from my sickbed and ended up liking it more than I expected to. At first, everything seemed wrong, especially Drew Barrymore with her half-English accent and unsymmetrical, un-storybook features. Her lewd, twisty little mouth looked out of place even in a “revisionist” Cinderella. But looking out of place became part of Barrymore’s charm, and the narrative swept me up. This Cinderella is self-consciously progressive; she saves herself and the prince, and she spouts anti-feudal, anti-monarchist ideas that would have surely gotten her head lopped off. The message to young girls: a real prince will like you best if you make a practice of telling him off–sort of like Dr. Laura. The problem with the film is that its feminist recasting removes all the story’s archetypal imagery. Gone are the pumpkin and the coach, and the slipper seems superfluous now that Cinderella’s feet aren’t smaller than all the other women. All of this might be more “correct” but I can’t help but feel that something has been lost. (Well lost? What do you think?)

Saturday’s Times had an interesting take on another modern Cinderella, exploring some revisionist-feminist studies of Martha Stewart. While one branch speaks of Stewart’s “need to regulate” and “fear of transgression,” another argues that Stewart’s social role is more complex than it first appears, going against the age-old definition that a woman of class is someone who doesn’t do her own housework. Stewart “does not disdain manual labor…There’s a real working-class background and a real manual dexterity that she’s not afraid to weave into her clearly upper-class presentation.” This idea of Stewart fitting into an American tradition of “self-reliance” dovetails beautifully with Ever After: it says that Cinderella can be a princess and still be Cinderella.