Dear Hip Hop Queen,
Reading old Breakfast Tables for a sense of the competition (competition? journalists enjoying a casual chat? I’m obviously paranoid), I’ve been struck by the operative metaphor of this feature. Call it the civilized marriage. The male-female pairings assure gender parity and kick up random titillation, but beyond that they generate an image: a couple who start their day by leisurely perusing one or several prestigious newspapers and then engage in spirited discussion of what my social studies teachers called current events. I wonder how many couples have the time to actually live this way? How many have the interest? From my outpost on the far fringes of the media elite, the answer is not many.
We sure don’t, and we come closer than most, because we both work at home. We get up around 7:30 to see our daughter off to school. I go down for the Times and breakfast groceries, and before I’m upstairs I’ve glanced at the first page, leaving me free to turn to exactly where I did in the Herald-Tribune at age 9 (it cost three cents): the sports section, baseball and basketball only. Meanwhile, Carola alerts me to stories on the subjects that interest us most–education (our daughter attends the NYC public schools, as did we); adoption (our daughter is adopted, and Carola keeps a file); that New York standby, race relations; and, increasingly (our total age is 111), the obituaries–as well as hot-ticket items like Starr-Clinton, Littleton, or that black hole of life-and-death guesswork, Kosovo. But done with sports, I’m as likely to go to metro or business (especially on media Monday). I generally skip Op-Ed, and although I’m a cultural journalist–cough cough–and think Jon Pareles, Neil Strauss, and Ann Powers are the best daily rock critics in the country, I often forget to glance at the arts coverage, so skewed is it toward genteel stuff I could care less about.
Carola and I discuss the news some days, heatedly at times; if I’m good she lets me relate ball tidbits, too. More often we talk family business. But the real deal is happening over the sound system, which is never, ever tuned to NPR or even Z-100 or Hot 97. For me, it’s a successful breakfast when I can get Carola to tell me what she thinks of one of the 100 or so recent records I’ve yet to pin down. She says something I never would have thought of, I respond or mull it over, and then suddenly I announce, “I’m going in.” It’s around 9. Already we’ve enjoyed more morning leisure than most couples get.
And so, Danyel, let me ask you this: What do you think of the new Me’shell Ndegéocello album? And, oh yeah, how are you on gun control? I’m pro, sure, but even now I can’t get passionate about it. Seems a bit genteel, a bit cosmetic. Know what I mean?
Sincerely,
Robert Christgau
Dean of American Rock Critics
