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Christopher Caldwell and Jonathan Mahler

the breakfast table
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from: Christopher Caldwell

Hymns to Cromwell

Posted Monday, Feb. 28, 2000, at 10:49 AM ET

Dear Jonathan,

If this were a real, rather than a virtual, "Breakfast Table," I'd be glowering halitotically across the table at you--still two hours, 10 cigarettes, and four cups of coffee away from recovering anything resembling civility--and silently reading the funnies.

Since I doubt we can get a week's worth of conversation out of "Big Nate" and "The Fusco Brothers" (my two favorite strips since Bill Watterson euthanized "Calvin and Hobbes"), I'll note that George Bush's apology to Cardinal O'Connor for appearing at anti-Catholic Bob Jones University made Page A1 of the Washington Post. Bush said it was "a missed opportunity, causing needless offense, which I deeply regret." "Needless offense" how? It's only in retrospect that the offense was needless. Back on Feb. 2, Bush thought he needed the Deliverance vote, and he'd have sung hymns to Cromwell if he'd thought it would help him carry South Carolina.

Bush isn't "anti-Catholic." He isn't anything, in fact--but that's the problem. His reaction to last August's flurry of drug questions (now that I have outgrown my interest in sowing wild oats, I want to make sure no young person is ever cut any slack for doing so ever again) provided the template for a style of politics he continues to practice (now that I no longer need the Catholic vote, I repudiate everything I did to pick up the anti-Catholic vote).

Someone told me recently that Bush has half his father's friends and all his father's enemies. That's a fair outcome, since he's got half his father's virtues and all his father's flaws. His verbal klutziness, for instance. Complaining about the campaign of negative phone calls John McCain ran against him in Michigan, he said: "That's not plain talk; that's parsed talk." Either Bush doesn't know what "parse" means, or he thinks grammar is the enemy of meaning.

Naturally, if Bush knew how to wield grammar, it would be.

******

I spent Saturday afternoon in College Park watching Maryland's hot (No. 19, but moving up in today's rankings) team clock North Carolina. My thoughts ran to those old saws about youth being wasted on the young and France being wasted on the French. How come college basketball is wasted on college basketball fans?

When my wife started taking me to Maryland games in the early 1990s, the Terps were banned from post-season play and Joe Smith hadn't yet arrived on campus. The one point of pride Maryland fans had was ... themselves. They were particularly disdainful of Duke's fans (who tried to distract players) and North Carolina's (who abused them). That's all changed. The Maryland band's traditional pre-game playing of its school song has turned into a taunting ritual directed at the other team. As far as I can tell, these are the lyrics:

Danh-danh-danh-danh-duh
You suck!
Danh-danh-danh-danh-duh
You suck!
Danh-danh-duh, danh-danh-danh-duh
You suck! You suck! You suck!

So it's off to work with that inspiring music ringing in my head. Of course, if one isn't a "morning person," some such tune always does.

Chris

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Christopher Caldwell

Hymns to Cromwell

Posted Monday, Feb. 28, 2000, at 10:49 AM ET
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Christopher Caldwell is senior writer at the Weekly Standard and a columnist for New York Press. Jonathan Mahler is a senior editor at Talk.
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Highlights from The Fray:

[The Breakfast Table participants covered a wide variety of serious and political subjects this week, and as usual Fraygrants knew which were the really important topics, and were keen to participate in the life of the mind:]

The reason the quoted verse of the Steely Dan lyrics makes no sense is that you have omitted the central line:


Any major dude with half a heart
Surely will tell you, my friend
Any minor world that breaks apart
Falls together again.
When the demon is at your door,
In the morning he won't be there no more.
Any major dude can tell you

Doesn't that make it crystal clear?

--Ralph Bartlett

(To reply, click here.)


I rather think that Jonathan missed Chris' main point. Baseball teams shouldn't be adopted for their success, or for their failures. There's something mightily strange about growing up in California and rooting for the Yankees. After all, there was hardly any shortage of New York teams on the West Coast - whence the need to appropriate the only one that remained where it belonged? I'm a Red Sox fan because I was born and raised fifteen minutes from Fenway Park, because one of my strongest childhood memories is the glory of '86 (and yes, the pain), and because hope springs eternal at the end of winter. I do, however, want to compliment Chris. He may not be a native New Yorker, but he seems as smugly superior as any Yankees fan whom I have ever met.

--Yoni

(To reply, click here.)


Maybe it's one of those "you had to have been there" sort of things, but I thought The Sure Thing was charming. It was funny without being crude or stupid. And the punchline you were strugling with? After a series of catastrophes, the protagonists find themselves locked out of shelter in a downpour. The girl suddenly recalls that she has a credit card, but "I'm only supposed to use it for emergencies!"

--Bill Altreuter

(To reply, click here.)


To Bill Altreuter:
Actually that was the set-up line. The punch line followed: "Maybe one will come up."

--B.Roman

(To reply, click here.)


You should start and post a list of phrases to be banned from the press henceforth. My three nominees (for now): 1) sloe-eyed; 2) tsunami; 3) "I knew (blank) and you're no (blank)."

--Matt Murray

(To reply, click here.)


Here are some more proposed Taboo Phrases: 1) Its the *******, stupid! 2) Risky tax schemes 3) Move forward 4) Media savvy 5) Sole remaining Superpower 6) Outside the mainstream 7) Go negative.

--John McGraw

(To reply, click here.)

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