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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: Andrew Sullivan

Muscle and mush

Posted Thursday, May 7, 1998, at 6:50 PM ET

Katha,

Back from the gym. No DC mini-celebs today. If you want, I'll recommend a couple of gyms in lower Manhattan where you won't know anyone (promise) and where no one will even cast a glance in your direction. I just hope you can bear the techno music.

Yes, I'm sure there are some wonderful films about Eastern European labor movements, and I'm glad they found an audience. But one of the necessary facts about living in a consumer democracy is that we will from now on be surrounded by a mass of instant gratification culture that is as pointless to resist as it is to bemoan. I think the only grown-up thing to do is to enjoy what one can (can you wait for Godzilla?) and make sure the discerning person can get access to the nuggets of quality in the swamp of mush. Technology--the net, cable tv, the v-chip, etc--is making this easier, not harder, and therefore the complaints of earnest Left and reactionary Right seem to me increasingly irrelevant.

And then out of the consumerist mush comes a thing of sparkling brilliance like South Park! Beefcake!

till tomorrow,
Andrew

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Andrew Sullivan

Muscle and mush

Posted Thursday, May 7, 1998, at 6:50 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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