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

Katha Pollitt and Andrew Sullivan

the breakfast table
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from: Katha Pollitt

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Posted Thursday, April 23, 1998, at 6:26 PM ET

You raise an interesting point. If we consider the right-wing politicians and media people on your list as actually believing their professed ideology, which I'm not sure they all do, I think yes, orthodoxers of one sort or another are often fighting the return of the repressed: a stop-me-before-I-divorce-again kind of a thing. They're like gaybashers who are in flight from their own homosexual impulses. Except, in the case of the people you mention, they do get divorced all they want to. That's what gets me--they permit themselves a freedom they seek to deny to others. Instead of being made more understanding by their own frailties and failures, they just forgive themselves and condemn others.

In any case, I don't think marriage works as a preserver of relationships. At least not for long--just a few weeks, in the case of John Podhoretz. (What was the story there, I wonder.) Having children often does make people try hard to make their relationships work, but I don't think marriage, in and of itself, does that, although I know that is an argument often advanced in its favor. People just get mean and depressed, and drag about sullenly hoping their spouse will be swept away by El Nino. Or become obsessed with work. Or have whipped-cream nights out when the cat's away. Or all of the above!

About NOW--Yes, I have disagreed with their policies publicly on many occasions. Not just about Paula Jones (where I don't think their actual position is as bad as it's been made to look in the media), but also their enthusiasm for electoral politics, the Democratic Party, and Clinton.

I have to say, though, that I don't blame them for not signing on to Paula Jones' appeal. The whole thing has become such a circus--and Jones and her people are no friends of women, either. Look what they've done to Monica Lewinsky. The real victim in all this, if you ask me!

Cheers,
Katha

the breakfast table
entries
123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566676869707172737475767778798081828384858687888990
from: Katha Pollitt

Headline

Posted Thursday, April 23, 1998, at 6:26 PM ET
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Katha Pollitt is a columnist at The Nation. Andrew Sullivan is a senior editor at the New Republic.
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