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the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Lisa Zeidner and John Allen Paulos

the breakfast table
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from: Lisa Zeidner

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Posted Wednesday, June 30, 1999, at 11:23 AM ET

Dear John,

Halfway through our mutual gig, I thought we might talk about halfway measures, waffling, and middle grounds.

The paper this week is full of "fair compromises." Christie Todd Whitman signs her abortion bill, which she claims "strikes a common-sense balance that recognizes the right of parents to know when a medical procedure will be performed on their minor child, while preserving a young woman's legal right to choose whether or not to have an abortion." An advisory panel presents a distinction about using embryo cells in scientific research: "I think we speak to a great number of Americans who have complex views and who are undecided." Clinton declares himself "open to compromise on tax cuts." Only in Ulster was compromise rejected, on IRA disarmament.

So set me straight on this, Professor. Every semester I do a riff with writing students about logic--because they don't get it anymore, alas, as part of their undergraduate educations--and trot through all of the fallacies, including The Golden Mean. Often, a middle-ground position makes sense (a little red wine is good for you). But not always (a little arsenic, a little bit pregnant). Sometimes there is no middle ground, and everyone loses--as in most custody battles, like the bizarre one yesterday, in which two sets of parents in an embryo mix-up case--one white twin, one black--locked horns about whether the boys should be kept together in one home, or split apart in two.

People seem to trust the wisdom of The Golden Mean. Anything in moderation is thought to be OK ("sooner or later, scientists will discover that everything they said is bad for you turns out to be good for you too"). So why is Clinton so universally excoriated as a spineless waffler, not a vigorous conciliator? Surely I realize there's a difference between politics and principles (Christie, please note). But has Clinton not made things happen? Has he not found balance on, made progress on, some enormously tricky issues?

Sincerely/Love/XOX/Later

(One friend signs her e-mails "more anon." I like the arch formality of that--makes a nice contrast to e-mail's breeziness. Maybe, in fact, you CAN'T properly close an e-mail exchange. They always feel truncated, incomplete. I admit my "Love, Lisa" to you sits there on the screen, awkward and inert. Maybe you need a real signature to give the emotion weight. I notice a lot of us sign our e-mails with initials, as if the whole name looks too prissy. So as a compromise, I offer you)

L.L.

the breakfast table
entries
1234567891011121314151617
from: Lisa Zeidner

More Anon

Posted Wednesday, June 30, 1999, at 11:23 AM ET
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John Allen Paulos is a professor of mathematics at Temple University and the author of six books, most recently Once Upon a Number (click here to buy the book). Lisa Zeidner, a professor of English at Rutgers University, is the author of four novels, most recently Layover (click here to buy the book), and two books of poems.
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