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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

Re: Bye, Jerry

Posted Monday, May 11, 1998, at 12:38 PM ET

Good morning, Andrew,

I thought Seinfeld was hilarious the few times I saw it. I think it's fascinating, too, that the most popular sitcom of the decade is about four New York neurotic Jewish singles. The popularity of Seinfeld supports the contention of my friend the Last Marxist that there is no popular tide of social conservatism--family values, back-to-basics, rural-nostalgia, recycle-your-virginity, all that. Jerry Falwell used to fulminate against Kate and Allie because he thought it encouraged lesbianism (an interesting take--if single mothers knew they could have a nice pleasant home life with another mom, they'd take a pass on men? But that was before Viagra) and I remember reading the show was banned in some Christian-fundamentalist maternity homes--the perfect audience for it, I would have thought!

Between Sophie and the Internet I don't watch much TV. My favorite shows are still Bewitched in reruns and Pinky and the Brain, which--Narf!--seems to be off the air.

Lots of interesting news today, though, Andrew. The NY Times has a front page story on child marriages in Rajasthan and other Indian states (the center bottom of page seems to be the international-atrocities-against-women slot. Friday it ran a very good story about the prevalence of domestic violence against women in Poland). These marriages--the story is keyed to a mass wedding of children, including that of a four-year-old girl to a twelve-year-old boy--are the linchpin in a social syndrome of extreme male dominance, wife abuse (including sale and trade of wives after they had their four or five kids while still in their teens), infant and child mortality, lack of female education and so on. And even though it's illegal, the government refuses to take action against it. It's tradition!

In the Wash Post, I read that Stephen Glass of TNR is being fired for making things up. I thought he was a very amusing writer--I still smile when I remember his piece about Fed Ex and UPS. Sad to think that maybe it isn't true that women all over America have erotic fantasies about their UPS man, and that UPS uniforms are not one of the most popular costumes at costume parties! I wish young Stephen well--too bad life isn't really as interesting as he made it seem.

More later,
Katha

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Katha Pollitt

Re: Bye, Jerry

Posted Monday, May 11, 1998, at 12:38 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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