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Rated F for Fatuous

By Cullen Murphy
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 17, 1999, at 5:05 PM ET

Yikes. Mea maxima culpa on the J. Bryan Hehir front. Even as I make a (permanent) mental note of his true clerical affiliation, I'll also move a crack of his last night about "transnational actors like IBM, Phillips Petroleum, and the Jesuits" out from under the "fetching self-deprecation" rubric and put it in the "good-natured malevolence" column.

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I was thinking last night (right around the time Hans Kung said, "And now for my seventh point ...") about your comments on The Blues Brothers, and I'm not sure I agree that this is a fatuous movie. It's silly, yes, but it's also very self-aware--it knows exactly what it's up to. Fatuousness isn't very self-aware. The gold standard for fatuousness, to my mind, would be Dances With Wolves. Movies about Tibet, movies in which William Devane plays a Kennedy--these also tend to be fatuous. It would be a shame to tar The Blues Brothers (or Caddyshack, another Chicagoland movie, and the pinnacle of Rodney Dangerfield's oeuvre) with the same brush. Anyway, if we're going to ask Jack Valenti to completely revamp the ratings system, we ought to be absolutely clear on what we want.

In your review of this morning's Times you didn't explicitly call attention to the new "Men's Health" section, or to the eye-popping appearance of Bob Dole in the full-page Viagra ad on page E-5. I have to admit: I'm not sure I like the idea of a special report on men's health. Predictably, the editors indulge a taste for cloying wordplay--"When Nature Keeps Calling"; "New Ways to Help Sperm Get Up and Go"--and, as you'd expect, the special report might almost be called "The Impotence Section." (Perhaps news about NATO could run there, too.)

I sometimes worry that, among East Coast elites, the notion of what constitutes a "men's health issue" has become sadly circumscribed. Do you ever read Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report? This is one of those little known but essential publications, and in the issue that arrived this morning there is an article titled "Blastomycosis Acquired Occupationally During Prairie Dog Relocation--Colorado." The article describes a chilling outbreak of fungal pneumonia among workers in the male-dominated prairie dog removal trades: a men's health issue if ever there was one. But I suspect we will look in vain in the next Times special report for any significant coverage of this subject.

Meanwhile, I'm relying on you to watch for fuliginous-browed images of Bill Clinton on the NewsHour this evening. He apparently has spent all day at the White House ("phone and office time"), but there probably will be film available from an afternoon event in the East Room. (According to a Press Office memo, "President Clinton will speak to young people and discuss why using the budget surplus to pay down the debt and strengthen Social Security is important to younger generations.") It's unlikely that he has had time to step out to St. Matthew's for ashes, but self-administration may not be out of the question.

Till dawn ...