Best Of The Fray

The Fantanas Ate My Soul

Between the nuclear nightmare headed to Nevada and the civic cesspool headed for Lower Manhattan, this was a week to wallow in the mire. Things got so bad that the bad things started merging with one another: Traficant became Moussaoui, the Kronos Quartet became the Fantanas. And everywhere, the self-evidently worst became the perfectly emblematic. It was a souped-up American version of poshlost.

Subject: The Straw Man Responds
Re: “
Ballot Box: The Liberal War on Crime
From:
John Conyers Jr.
Date:
July 22, 2002 2:47 p.m.

Mr. Saletan accuses me of hypocrisy in the current debate on corporate crime because of the positions I have taken in the past with respect to civil liberties and drug penalties for nonviolent drug offenders. In presenting a number of my quotes from past debates in Congress completely out of context, Mr. Saletan creates a “straw man” that bears no relationship to my consistent and justifiable beliefs about criminal justice policy.

First, Mr. Saletan offers a series of quotes in which I have expressed my views … with respect to the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences on nonviolent drug offenders, sentences where Congress mandates that under no circumstance can judges or juries impose lesser sentences. Mr. Saletan is correct that I have viewed such sentences as “paternalistic dictates from Washington” and do believe that judges should be free to impose sentences in such cases based on “the evidence in court” and that Congress shouldn’t presume a single formula for all such cases. I believe this because mandatory minimum sentences in nonviolent drug offender cases are administered in a racially discriminatory manner, have questionable deterrent value, and take discretion away from judges and juries.

What does this have to do with the legislation I have introduced to combat corporate crime? I have no idea. My bill does not contain a single mandatory minimum sentence. Instead, it proposes to increase the allowable maximum sentence for various corporate crimes, including document shredding. …

Second, [Mr. Saletan] … pulls a quote in which I defend the exclusionary rule, which by the way is constitutionally required, and which I adamantly support. I am also dumbfounded as to what this has to do with my position on corporate crime. …

Third, let me express my disappointment that Mr. Saletan did not ask for my response to his allegations of hypocrisy. Unfortunately, he chose to write a piece that reads like some misguided, inaccurate “opposition research” by a Republican Party summer intern.

[Find this post here.]

Subject: Let’s Go Shopping at the Cemetery
Re: Culturebox: Mall of America
From:
TheCynic
Date:
July 18, 2002 6:57 p.m.

What should be a memorial to the most tragic event in American history since the Civil War will, of course, be turned into a mall.

Think of the excitement of renting a video on that site from a store called “Blockbuster.” That’s gotta be the height of good taste.

Or maybe we’ll purchase clothing at “The Gap” or a CD or DVD at “Tower Records.”

After shopping, let’s do lunch. Surely there’ll be a restaurant serving Firehouse Chili and Osamaburgers. …

[Find this post here.]

Subject: Nuevo Yuppo
Re:Music Box: Kronos Crashes
From: The New Snobbery
Date: July 23, 2002 9:00 a.m.

There’s world music and then there’s World Music. One is utterly un-self-aware, and the other is a “take” on those sounds. And I’m not one to say that nativeness is going to bring about more quality than an outsider.

But …

Kronos splits the difference between the worst attitudes in the World Music camp: Half-assed reverence for the source material prevents them from really having any fun with it, and at the same time, they aren’t exactly playing to their strong suit by sticking in the same ballpark with simple, bawdy songs.

They can’t resist the high-art/low-art comparisons but can’t summon the balls to do anything interesting with it.

Mix that up, and you have the perfect background music for hipper-than-usual yuppie parties. Exotic in a warmed-over and inoffensive kind of way. Blech.

[Find this post  here.]

Subject: Weepy Goo

Re:Ad Report Card: The Fanta Clause

From: locdog

Date: July 22, 2002 1:32 PM

The fanta jingle is “catchy” in the same way … “it’s a small world” is catchy: It bores into your consciousness day and night, relentlessly consuming your waking hours and haunting your dreams when you sleep, grinding you down into a weepy, quivering mass of carbon-based goo whose spirit has been crushed and whose will has been broken. …

[Find this post here.]

Fray Notes:

I hate myself:
The winner of the “Dad Again” middle name contest is Keith M. Ellis, who wrecked it for everyone. The new contest has only Slate and the totems of capitalism as its targets.

Brown-eyed girls: Marcparis has noted Slate’s inconsistent genetics. While “Dear Prudie” counseled that “two blue-eyed people producing brown eyes is unusual, but not impossible,” Mark Hawthorne dismissed the possibility of a neato design for the WTC site by saying that “Parents who have had six children with dark hair and dark eyes just aren’t likely to produce a green-eyed blonde on the seventh try.”

Mythology 101 meets International Relations 101: Persephone has put Spain “[B]etween Scylla and … er, Scylla II” in its conflict with Morocco.

Cut to the chase: History guy has taken issue with the way this Fray editor cuts posts to fit in the weekly BOTF. Here is an eviscerated version: “The Fray editor, … an editor, edited … long … posts— … punctuated [and] reprinted [them]. All … were better … in full. … A lighter hand … please.”