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

Katha Pollitt and Andrew Sullivan

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By Katha Pollitt
Posted Thursday, April 23, 1998, at 5:23 PM ET

Dear Andrew,
Re marriage gay and straight: of course I can have it both ways. Since there is marriage, do I think it should be available to all? Yes! Do I think its social and economic benefits might be better distributed in some other way (health insurance, for example), are often illusory, come with large helpings of inequality, sexism, psychological torment and so on? Yes!

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Is there an anti-family values "left"? Lower Manhattan I give you. But I have to laugh when you talk about my "friends at The Nation" as anti-family values types. Victor Navasky -- married forever, three children; Katrina van den Heuvel, married, one child; Richard Lingeman, another supersolid family man; Art Winslow, ditto. John and Sue Leonard, not only married but job-sharers, together 24-7. Quick mental glance at the rest of the editorial staff--usual collection of urban publishing-industry singles. Nobody's even pierced!

Columnists and writers? Christopher Hitchens, married (to a stay-at-home wife no less) with whom he has one child (also two children by a previous wife); Pat Williams, single mother of adopted child. Alex Cockburn, well okay, maybe he's a bit of a rogue, I give you him too. But as far as personal conduct goes, The Nation is probably as conventionally virtuous as any magazine in the land. Except for Slate, of course.

As for ideology, I stick to my contention that family values hold sway partout, except in tiny subcultures. Most of the people tagged by the right as anti-family values advocates are actually asserting mainstream ideas, like, there are many different family forms in contemporary America, working mothers are okay, and so forth. But perhaps we should define what we mean by family values.

What do those loaded words mean to you?

Cheers,
Katha

PS. Re NOW and Paula Jones. I always thought, and have written many times, that Paula Jones was telling some version of the truth, although whether it is legally actionable, even if she could prove it, which she can't, is another story. The New Republic, I seem to remember, took a strong stand that it was not actionable, because there were no work-related consequences, prompting a hilarious letter from a reader who opined that if the magazine really believed that it was okay for the boss to drop his trousers and ask an employee for a blowjob, The New Republic must be a helluva place to work.

But you know, it isn't just NOW that wants Paula Jones to go away. Just about everybody in the country feels that way. Kenneth Starr, Paula Jones, Linda Tripp, Lucianne Goldberg, Susan Carpenter-McMillan, the Rutherford Institute people -- they're very unpopular, even among salt-of-the-earth citizens who don't at all condone the sorts of shenanigans alleged of Clinton. The anti-Clintonites didn't bargain on this, and still don't seem to understand it.

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