David Plotz and Hanna Rosin
Dear lovely wife,
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StumbleUponHilarious incident just occurred. As I was writing this, I got a call from a nice-sounding young man named Gabriel Snyder, who writes the New York Observer's "Off The Record" column. Gabriel is displeased (is that the right word, Gabriel?) with the jokey domestic comments that have prefaced our "Breakfast Table" entries. Gabriel says "The cooing is getting in the way of the substantive issues being discussed." Gabriel says that our exchanges are "awkward," and wonders whether we intended that. Sputtering and sweating, I tried to explain to Gabriel that these comments were all in fun, that Slate often features husbands and wives in the Breakfast Table, and that these very same husbands and wives often joke about their home lives in their entries. But Gabriel would not be moved. I fear that we will be lampooned in the pages of tomorrow's Observer (Gabriel notes that his item will be "media criticism of media criticism." Which makes this, I suppose, pre-emptive media criticism of media criticism of media criticism.) Out of respect for Gabriel, I think we should suspend all public displays of affection and mentions of our home life. All business from now on.
So back to the news.
I am not going down to Bob Jones. I realized I would be too late to explore the weirdness of the place, which has almost but not quite been captured the zillions of articles written about it. The 11 p.m. curfew bell. The rule against talking across the table in the dining room. The mandatory social societies. The hatred not just of Catholicism, but Islam, Judaism, Mormonism, etc. The casual use of the word "antichrist." The classes in manners and deportment. (BJU students are instructed to quote the New York Times "as the definitive view of the secular world.") Bob Jones Jr.'s obsession with Shakespeare. (When I visited the campus last year, I was stunned to see the portrait outside the president's office: Bob Jones Jr. costumed as a hook-nosed Shylock for a campus production of the Merchant of Venice. Shylock?)
I share your mild skepticism about Hertzberg's New Yorker piece. The Bob Jones folks--who are certainly as nutty as they come--have been singled out for ostracism, though almost every religious group practices some nasty form of discrimination. Most religions frown (and more) on intermarriage. Jews, especially Orthodox Jews, have been militant about fighting intermarriage, as have many Mormons, Catholics, and Muslims. Immigrant groups maintain isolationist customs from their homelands: The caste divisions of India often remain in the United States. The United States prides itself (as it should) on the way it mixes all of us up. Even so, a strong strain of tribalism remains in almost every group, and it is not always a bad thing.
At least the Bob Jones folks have the courage of their religious convictions. (They are willing to call a spade a spade. A poor joke. I hope Gabriel doesn't mark me down for that, too.) The BoJos believe we are going to hell and they tell us. I appreciate the warning. If you believe God has very strict rules about who gets saved and who doesn't, you surely have an obligation to try to rescue the rest of the world from hellfire. I am a lot angrier at Christians who think I am going to hell but don't bother to tell me than I am at those who make a big stink about it.
The San Francisco oral-sex and anus exhibition--let us call it the Lewinsky Project--is truly horrifying, though not, I would argue, significantly worse than what Time magazine and Today are inflicting on us this week: Katie Couric's rectum. Time gives Katie's crusade against colon cancer the cover this week, while Today is going to broadcast her colonoscopy. It is all a very good cause, and it will undoubtedly save lives and do all the other things that good journalism is supposed to. Even so, yuck. When Ronald Reagan had colon cancer in the '80s, they just showed diagrams on the news. Now they're broadcasting the home movies! Truly the media has become shameless.
There is a dog that didn't bark today. The murder of 6-year-old Kayla Rolland makes the cover of Newsweek--couldn't get Couric, I guess--but I have been stunned at how quickly this killing has been archived with all the other kid shootings. When the first kid gunned down his classmates (was it Paducah? Jonesboro? Pearl, Miss.? I can't even remember now), I was certain there would be enough outrage for stricter gun laws. It didn't happen. When the Columbine killers committed mass slaughter, I was positive that the nation would rise up and demand more gun control. It didn't happen. Now a 6-year-old has died because some idiot left a gun lying around his house. Surely Americans ought to be rising up to demand gun locks and handgun licensing. But they are not. In less than a week, the story has become past tense.
Regards,
Mr. David Plotz
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Highlights from The Fray:
Obviously I'm biased, and in mourning, but Hanna's outburst about Bill Bradley [see Wednesday's entry] still seems to be a bit much...it's pretty hard to exit one of these races with any grace and dignity, and I think my guy's doing a pretty dang good job of it. Regarding "you just lost, nobody liked you" - Bradley picked up a fairly consistent 30% of the vote nationwide, but many more didn't hate Bradley but they simply thought Gore was the better candidate. Could you imagine if Gore hadn't gone through a primary? Six months of getting killed in the press every night by the GOP? And certainly Bradley did raise a number of issues that the veep wouldn't have prioritized--including universal health care, race relations, and, yes, campaign finance reform.
--Sad Bradley Fan
(To reply, click here.)
[And see Thursday's entry where Ms Rosin responds: that Bradley mourner in The Fray made me feel bad.]
The Breakfast Table asked [see Tuesday's entry] why science reporters haven't written articles explaining the reason TRW and other contractors have such a hard time making a workable missile defense. The short answer (I'm a correspondent for Science magazine, which I assume makes me a science reporter) is that they have written such articles, and the reason that the contractors are having such trouble is that the task is extremely difficult. It's like shooting a bullet at a bullet, only much, much harder. Longer explanatory analogy: I once saw Pief Panofsky, the Stanford physicist who helped negotiate the test-ban treaty, talk about this subject in Cambridge. He asked the audience to imagine some nutty guy who liked to drive into his garage by hitting the garage-door opener at precisely the right moment so that the door flew open exactly as he rolled in. If you think about it for a moment, you can see that this is quite like flying into the path of a missile at exactly the right time so that you hit its forward section -- it's a matter of split-second timing. Now imagine that you are doing this at thousands of miles an hour. Now imagine that instead of a regular car, you are driving a jet-powered car, which shudders and shakes and has to be constantly course-corrected just to stay in a straight line, which of course must be factored in to your garage-door opening. Now imagine that the garage is moving, too, and it's jiggling through the air just like you are. Now imagine that you have to make a whole lot of the crucial decisions when you are miles away and can't even get a good look at the garage. Now imagine -- Panofsky went on like this for a good while, and in the end pretty much convinced everyone in the audience that the ABM treaty was a good idea primarily because it would prevent nations from spending billions of dollars to build systems that simply could not work. Or, rather, that it was supposed to do that -- I guess we're doing it anyway.
--Charles C. Mann
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You asked {Tuesday's entry] what TRW stands for.
Two brainy guys formed Ramo-Woolridge in Los Angeles and showed up on the cover of Time in the late 1950s. Soon after, the big successful machine shop, Thompson Products, acquired them. I don't remember if they named their company Thompson-Ramo-Woolridge, but if they did, they soon changed it to their italicized monogram, TRW.
--Thomas Tersigni
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I love this word, "ironists," as in "committed Democrats and ironists all" by Hanna [See Tuesday's entry]. As for me, I try to live without irony, but sometimes my shirts are just too damned wrinkled, especially the cotton ones. And "canicide!" Fabulous.
--Tim K.
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Plotz has a dizziness accumulated only from his great rareness in common folkish observations without realizing that greatness comes from all around him and manifests itself only to those who are not so encumbered as he obviously is in his own importance and cowering adjectives self learned and looking for a target that is worthy of his very dubious talents and one that is not likely to object as he reads much more worthy...stuff.
--bill schwarz
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To hell with Gabriel Snyder--more domesticity please.
--Jim Crowley
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