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David Edelstein and Nell Minow

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from: David Edelstein

Odd Balls

Posted Friday, July 31, 1998, at 1:27 PM ET

Top o' the morning, Nellie!

Donna Britt is a delightful writer, and her column today is as marvelous as you say. But I still feel as if we're going a bit easy on Linda Tripp. The woman is a hemorrhoid on the presidency. Lucianne Goldberg thundered on at Larry King last night about Tripp's use of a tape-recorder in "self-defense." The obvious answer to what Tripp alleges Lewinsky said to her--"This is what you should tell the grand jury, even though we both know it's untrue"--is: "Er, I don't think so. No." No other self-defense is needed. Encouraging a young and possibly unstable "friend" to babble on about her sexual escapades into a concealed tape recorder fits no definition of self-defense I've ever read, especially when said imperiled defender has been negotiating to write a "Behind Closed Doors at the White House" expose for years.

The best part of Britt's column is her emphasis on "hypocrisy," a word that won't seem to go away. An editorial on Clarence Thomas's speech in the New York Times says it brilliantly: "His instinct to turn antagonism toward his ideas into a racial matter is an odd impulse for a man who wants to be judged on his intellect and ideas alone." Perhaps Randy Cohen could set up a contest to come up with a substitution for the word "odd."

As for Carolyn Hax, I wish that, when I was growing up, advice columnists were writing things as knotty and provocative as: "Exploring and committing cannot coexist without someone getting hurt." Writers have devoted entire careers to a Talmudic examination of that conflict...

Did you catch Nightline last night? Andrew Sullivan versus the woman whose group has been generating all those ads about how homosexuals can change if they come to Christ. She looked like a malfunctioning android; she kept repeating that tolerance wasn't a one-way street, it was a two-way street, which meant that people should also tolerate the positive, loving messages of her organization. You might have thought she was campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize, except that Sullivan kept pressing her on whether she supports laws in some states calling for the imprisonment of two adults of the same gender having consensual sex in the privacy of their own homes--and she kept dodging him. (Her answers, like those of many Confederate politicians, had something to do with "state's rights.") Forrest Sawyer finally couldn't take it anymore and repeated the same question, over and over, until she finally screamed: "YES!!! The filthy sodomites should all be put to death!!!" Words to that effect, anyway. A magical moment in television.

Buffalo Bob has gone to that big prairie in the sky. I'm too young to have seen him in anything but clips, but he looked genial enough. I was a Mister Rogers kid, even past the age where I should have moved on to, say, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I felt guilty turning him off. With those awful songs ("Everybody's fancy/ Everybody's fine/ Your body's fancy/ And so is mine") and those beige cardigans he seemed so sweet and simple, like someone's vaguely retarded bachelor uncle. He just broke my heart.

Uh oh. The first clue, Across 1, in today's Times Crossword puzzle--"Discovery made by a spot check?"--seems eerily foreboding. Seven letters.

"Clinton"?

the breakfast table
entries
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from: David Edelstein

Odd Balls

Posted Friday, July 31, 1998, at 1:27 PM ET
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David Edelstein is Slate's film critic. Nell Minow's reviews of movies and videos appear on her Movie Mom Web page. Her book The Movie Mom's Guide to Family Movies is forthcoming.
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