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the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Christopher Caldwell and Jonathan Mahler

the breakfast table
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from: Christopher Caldwell

Ménage à DeGeneres

Posted Wednesday, March 1, 2000, at 2:59 PM ET

Dear Jonathan,

It's tough to think of a Steely Dan lyric "appropriate" to our correspondence. Maybe "Only a Fool Would Say That" comes close. But their lyrics are intentionally inappropriate--surrealistic, even--and on top of that, I tend to like the druggy songs best. What are we to make of: "They call Alabama the Crimson Tide/ Call me Deacon Blues"?

"Pistol Tyke" would be a good title for a Steely Dan album. Probably half their titles came out of mornings of Post-perusal like yours. I'm reminded that the editor of Slate--at least he's always given the credit--once devised a contest for boring headlines. As I recall, it was won by "Sensible Canadian Initiative." But last week, I found an actual boring headline that puts it to shame. In the Economist (the one with Islam on the cover), there was an article on the prime minister of the Netherlands that ran under the grabber: "Wim Kok: Quiet Reformer."

Wow--Sharon Stone, Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche together in the sack! Next you'll tell me that's it's been commissioned by Jennifer Lopez to fill her video-porn library. Now, if HBO were to advertise that on SportsCenter, they'd probably find sports fans as a class considerably more progressive on Sapphic matters than had hitherto been assumed. Beats even a 3-6-1 double play. Or how about a collaboration? The SportsCenter version could be narrated by Michael Douglas, the Sir Kenneth Clark of Post-coital Connoisseurship, all of whose movies seem to land him the role of lying next to Glenn Close or Sharon Stone and muttering, "Oooh, my Geeee-awd. That was in-cred-ible. That was unbe-lieve-able. That was awesomely--" Kind of the color man, if you know what I mean. Maybe they could get him a set of magic markers like John Madden. "OK! Degeneres is lined up wide left. But instead of going over the top, Stone jukes right and--holy moley!"

Just a thought. Maybe one I should have kept to myself.

As for Nixon's doctor, a ton of these medical memoirs have come out over the last decade. Mao's doctor did a full-scale biography, as I recall. Serves us right: The medical perspective is just one candidate to fill the gap left by the moral one. No one's bad. Everyone's sick. I'm sure the conclusion will be that Nixon was a great guy--he just suffered from Phone-Tapping Paranoids' Syndrome. He was a Dirty Campaign Addict. Not his fault.

Now--having made claims for the moral perspective, I'm considerably less keen on McCain's anti-Robertson démarche than I was yesterday, now that it's been followed up by a round of moral preening. Yes, it's still a hell of a speech--and a good political move. "You're not what our party is about at all" is excellent and politically necessary. But "You represent the forces of evil" is the kind of language that ought to be saved for a rainy day.

Best,
Chris

the breakfast table
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from: Christopher Caldwell

Ménage à DeGeneres

Posted Wednesday, March 1, 2000, at 2:59 PM 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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