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

Katha Pollitt and Andrew Sullivan

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from: Andrew Sullivan

Headline

Posted Wednesday, April 15, 1998, at 11:30 AM ET

Hi Katha,

Couldn't agree with you more about tobacco. I grew up imbibing the stuff from my chain-puffing mother and can't stand it. But I'm at a loss as to why it gets so many people steamed at a political level. Liberals particularly. You'd think, if you read Frank Rich or Doonesbury, that the tobacco companies represent the supreme evil in the universe when they're just a bunch of lying, avaricious executives trying to make money. In my book that's legal in America and ought to be. Tax 'em to, er, death, say I. But stop preaching about it and passing virtual bills of attainder against them. And don't try to persuade me that my mother never knew the risks of smoking. She did. My own theory is that liberals and lefties have to find some outlet for their authoritarian-moral streak. They've given up on the economy in general, having lost the argument completely. And they know they shouldn't be sexual puritans. And the Cold War is over, so demonizing the military-industrial complex is passé. So they hammer the smokers. Or rather they hammer the Big Tobacco execs in order to "save the children." Save me from saving the children. The most heartening news from the younger generation this year (apart from the popularity of South Park) is that they're smoking in ever greater numbers. Take that, you do-gooding, liberal paternalists!
Oh, did you see in the New York Times that daddy is finally helping out with the kids? Fathers are apparently spending more time with their children and on household chores than a generation ago, according to a self-reported survey. Is this a function of feminist lawmaking or the free market and empowered, money-making women? Just wondering ...
More mogul-porn in the Times business section. Yawn. But a jolly piece on how Mr. Scaife spent $2 million on the American Spectator's investigative journalism into Clinton. Can you imagine what we could have done with two mill at TNR or The Nation? The thing about the right-wing conspiracy is that, like most conspiracies, it's both paranoid and incompetent. In some ways, Clinton has been lucky to have it around, I think.