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Christopher Caldwell and Jonathan Mahler

the breakfast table
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from: Jonathan Mahler

The Summer of '75

Posted Tuesday, Feb. 29, 2000, at 10:16 AM ET

[Received yesterday.]

Dear Chris,

Now you had to go and get all intellectual on me (Noam Chomsky, no less!). I know, I know, it's my fault; I should have stuck with surfers and child actors, but I just couldn't help myself. I think my nose may still be a little out of joint over that Erroll Morris movie Mr. Death, which I finally caught last week.

Have you seen it yet? God, is it maddening. I mean, the idea of making a movie about a bumbling Holocaust denier is bad enough, but to give it this sort of slick aesthetic and coolly ironic tone. Yuck. In the end, it amounts to a sort of perversion of the old banality of evil trope, except it's even more reductive, because it makes Leuchter out to be so sad and pathetic.

But wait. I think I'm doing it again.

That's a nifty dodge on the Gary Coleman question. If you're worried that people might get the wrong idea if you start trying to chase down a dollar quote on a pair of the little fella's briefs, I'd be satisfied with something a little less--how shall we say--intimate. Like what about that dopey baseball cap he used to wear. I think he might have even kept it on the corner of that bunk bed he shared with the now disgraced Willis. Or am I making that up? Anyhow, I bet that cap would fetch a pretty penny on the open market.

Of course, you make a good point. That Gilligan's Island commercial was really embarrassing. Still, I was troubled by your unkind words about Clueless. OK, maybe "Tempted" was the wrong song. Maybe "Mmm Bop" would have been better. But what a movie! My favorite line: "Anything happens to my daughter, I've got a .22 and a shovel--and I doubt anyone would miss you." Or something like that. Erroll Morris could learn a thing or two.

Oh, there was something else I wanted to ask you about this morning. Did you catch that story in the Times today about this new Lindbergh biography? (No, I am not about to launch into yet another Holocaust tirade.) Well, in case you didn't, it raises a kind of interesting question, one that I had been thinking about recently while writing a piece about biography for Talk (self-promotion alert!). Here it is: If a biographer changes his focus over the course of the project, is he or she honor-bound to inform the subject?

Now, getting back to 1975. I was partial to Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots and Matchbox cars myself. As for the World Series that year, it was the Red Sox against Ken Griffey (the original Ken Griffey) and the Big Red Machine, no? Pudge Fisk hit a game-winning homer in--what--the 12th inning of Game 6?

Dear Chris, are you a baseball fan? Have been wasting our precious breakfast time talking about the Holocaust and Gilligan's Island when we could be discussing baseball? Say it ain't so.

Fondly,
Jonathan

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Jonathan Mahler

The Summer of '75

Posted Tuesday, Feb. 29, 2000, at 10:16 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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