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the breakfast table
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from: Benjamin Cheever

Ouch!!!

Posted Monday, Nov. 9, 1998, at 7:51 PM ET

And I thought I was in a bad mood. Did I ever say, or even imply that middle class white men are dreadfully oppressed and unjustly condemned by a new class of women with huge expectations and tiny little hearts? Did I?

What you just did in that graph was the textual equivalent of kicking somebody in the balls. It was the textual equivalent of kicking your younger brother in the balls. Isn't this the sort of thing men are supposed to do?

I don't like that you did it. I wouldn't like it if you were a man. I wouldn't like it if you were an Okapi.

And as for alcohol, I don't remember ever calling it an unqualified good. I do think that self righteousness is as deadly as hootch. Alcohol wrecks the family car, scars the children; self righteousness crushed Poland.

I won't be going out to a literary party tonight. My beloved wife is realizing her huge expectations by helping her recently widowed mother in Florida. She's a new class or breed of woman. With a huge heart and very limited expectations.

I was going to bring both sons out to see The Waterboy but John (12) has too much homework. Andrew (9) has a piano concert tomorrow, so we all need to get to bed early.

From now on we should probably stick with what's in the paper. War, floods.

Areas that we can agree upon.

the breakfast table
entries
123456789101112131415161718192021
from: Benjamin Cheever

Ouch!!!

Posted Monday, Nov. 9, 1998, at 7:51 PM ET
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Benjamin Cheever is a novelist and author of the forthcoming Famous After Death. Susan Cheever is a teacher, columnist, and writer. Her memoir, Note Found in a Bottle: My Life as a Drinker, is forthcoming. They are siblings.
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