Eric Mendelsohn, Daniel Mendelsohn, and Jennifer Mendelsohn
Mistakes Were Made
By Jennifer Mendelsohn
Posted Monday, March 13, 2000, at 10:47 AM ETDear Dan and Er,
G'morning!
Tempted as I am to start in with some little sister rant ("Why do I have to go first at "The Breakfast Table"? I always go first at the Breakfast Table. Moommmm!!! Daadddd!! He's hurting me!"), I'm terrified that Gabriel what's-his-name from the New York Observer's "Off the Record" column will be pounding down my door accusing The Breakfast Table of getting too precious, just as he did last week. So I'll just get right down to the good stuff.
For me, it's all about the pope this morning. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post have front-page stories about the pope's Lenten homily yesterday, in which he made a sweeping request for forgiveness for 2,000 years of sins committed by the Catholic Church. Apparently, while this is generally seen as noteworthy, the pope's reluctance to mention any specific transgressions is being called into question. Instead, the pope referred to them with catchy euphemisms: I think my favorite would have to be his asking to be forgiven for "sins committed in the service of truth," which, if I'm not mistaken, would be referring to that little nastiness known as the Inquisition.
This story all but leapt off the page at me, given that last night's Sopranos was so chock-full of references to the Catholic Church, sin, forgiveness--and even the pope himself. (When Adriana affixes a medallion with the pope's picture to her critically wounded fiance's hospital gown, someone points out that it's a good omen because "His Holiness got shot, too, and he survived!") In case you missed it, the wounded mobster, Christopher Moltesanti, wakes up after having been clinically dead for a minute and is convinced that he's been given a fleeting glimpse of mobster purgatory: It's eternally St. Patrick's Day in an Irish bar, you lose every hand of cards you play, and every night at midnight, you relive being whacked. And it hurts.
Coincidentally, I also happened to catch a little bit of the Screen Actors Guild awards last night. (Stick with me here; there is a segue.) When Tony Soprano himself, James Gandolfini, got up to claim his award, the pit orchestra muddled through an ersatz version of that great, thumping Sopranos theme song by A3--an exercise that reminded me of the Saturday Night Live sketch with the middle-school music teachers who do the painfully earnest renditions of rock and pop songs on an electric keyboard. (I love that their names are Marty Culp and Bobbi Mohan Culp. Didn't we have them?) Anyway, I still haven't worked out the details, but I'm pretty sure that's the kind of stuff that will be in constant rotation in my own version of purgatory. And you?
Love,
Jen
P.S.: In the interest of appearing to be well-rounded, though I know neither of you care, the brackets for the NCAA basketball tournament came out; my alma mater (and yours, Dan) Virginia was grievously excluded. Let's pretend to be really riled up about this.
Mistakes Were Made
By Jennifer Mendelsohn
Posted Monday, March 13, 2000, at 10:47 AM ETEric Mendelsohn is the writer/director of the film Judy Berlin, currently in theaters and starring Madeline Kahn, Edie Falco, Barbara Barrie, and Julie Kavner. Daniel Mendelsohn is a regular contributor to the New York Times Book Review, and the New York Observer, a lecturer in classics at Princeton University, and the author of The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity (click here to buy it). Jennifer Mendelsohn is Slate's Washington, D.C.-based "Keeping Tabs" columnist. Highlights from The Fray:
Don't the Mendelsohns remind you of J.D.Salinger's Glass family of precocious children?
--Patti
(To reply, click
here.)
[Eagle80 was of the opinion that the Mendelsohns were in fact The Sopranos of the literati. Stacy Grover
asked How did so much cleverness end up in one family? and this brought the Missing Mendelsohn brothers to The Fray: Andrew
said I often wonder that myself. And you haven't even heard from the rest of us yet!
And
Matthew
responded:]
I have to agree with my brother Andrew. I've been feeling like Zeppo Marx all week. I think Slate should host a Breakfast Table with the forgotten Mendelsohn brothers. Jennifer, Eric and Daniel can host a discussion about gay culture while Andrew and myself discuss biotech stocks. You'll learn more with them but you'll make more with us.
(To reply--or to follow the thread in more detail--click
here.)
Thursday's entry: As for Jennifer and marriage, I believe she is the star of an upcoming Fox special called, Who wants to Marry A Mendelsohn? Should be good.
--Bill Watrous
(To reply, click
here.)
[If you want to read the marriage proposal for Jennifer (and her response) click
here. Yet another member of the Mendelsohn family, Jay, entered The Fray
here.
Marriage proposal for Dan is
here. Sorry, Eric, no proposal, but lots of Fraygrants did like your film and one of them liked your photo.
But there were also Fray readers who wanted to discuss serious issues, or at least give a short, thrilling history of religion down the ages:]
Typical drivel from the pseudo-intellectual phenoms. Here's some of my drivel. Let's see: there were 12 tribes waiting for the Messiah, He comes, they kill kill him because he wanted to give Caesar what was Caesar's, they wanted power, all he wanted was your faith and devotion to a Greater Good. The various churches spring up, (no-one mentions the Orthodox Churches and the atrocities they committed), Popes are killed, moved to France, etc., they offer forgiveness of sins for money, and kill, all for power using the popular religion of the time. Then we have Protestantism, (no one mentions the 2.5 million Catholics Cromwell killed and the killing that has gone on since then in Ireland) Let's leave for the New World, Puritan brothers, so that we the church leaders can have the power over every bit of your life (Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Al Sharpton, Pat Buchanan, et al) Oh yeah, you're a witch, die! (You also had a piece of land I wanted...)I am going to skip a century or two now... lets see Joseph Smith, ex-con, sees an angel called Baloney, no Maloney, no, Moroni... yeah that's the one. Yeah, Yeah, that's my wife...Morgan Fairchild...all 11 of them...God told me I could, I swear!
Well enough of this. People are the problem, not God, not Jesus, no matter what religion, faith, creed.
--St Pat
(To reply, click
here.)
Is it possible that the pope's "doctrinal rigidity" and "gestures of expansive humanity" [Monday's entry] are of a piece? As I understand John Paul II's thinking, the humanity Mendelsohn admires arises almost entirely from the pope's dogmatic beliefs about God, man's nature, and the consequent requirements for living a good life. Liberals (and I don't intend that as a lazy epithet) should consider the possibility that the "humanity" they praise must rest either on certain irreducible truths or on a collection of insubstantial, albeit attractive, sentiments.
--Michael Pollard
(To reply, click
here.)
Many have decried the pope's apology as a political ploy. I doubt it, if only for the reason that if it were, he would have vaguely referred to the Crusades and Inquisition as "youthful indiscretions" of a church that is now much more mature and therefore knows better as a result of the important lessons it has learned.
G Wiz
(To reply, click
here.)
1. Gays (yawn). How over. How '90s.
2. Catholics. "Anti-Catholicism is the anti-Semitism of the intellectual."
--P.J.O'Connell
(To reply, click
here.)
To P.J.O'Connell: Let's jump back in time to 1960...
Negros (yawn). How over. How 50's.
2. Jews. "Just ignore them and they'll go away."
It ain't over by a long shot!
--Dave
(To reply, click
here.)
I'm glad Eric Mendelsohn cleared up the confusion over Beauty and the Beast. But I'm still not sure which Psycho he had in mind. Perkins or Vaughn? Or Christian Bale? I hope he clears this up before the Breakfast Table is wiped clear of bagel crumbs, the dishes go in the dishwasher, and he goes off to film The Magnificent Mendelsohns.
And, by the way, the poet Catullus [see Wednesday's entry] was really the Matt Drudge --or maybe Fray contributor--of his times. How low can you get?
--Eagle80
(To reply, click
here.)
[The Catulluses of the modern age also discussed dogs, names, the Oscars, The Sopranos and many other Breakfast Table topics in The Fray this week.]
(3/17)
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Highlights from The Fray:
Don't the Mendelsohns remind you of J.D.Salinger's Glass family of precocious children?
--Patti
(To reply, click here.)
[Eagle80 was of the opinion that the Mendelsohns were in fact The Sopranos of the literati. Stacy Grover asked How did so much cleverness end up in one family? and this brought the Missing Mendelsohn brothers to The Fray: Andrew said I often wonder that myself. And you haven't even heard from the rest of us yet!
And Matthew responded:]
I have to agree with my brother Andrew. I've been feeling like Zeppo Marx all week. I think Slate should host a Breakfast Table with the forgotten Mendelsohn brothers. Jennifer, Eric and Daniel can host a discussion about gay culture while Andrew and myself discuss biotech stocks. You'll learn more with them but you'll make more with us.
(To reply--or to follow the thread in more detail--click here.)
Thursday's entry: As for Jennifer and marriage, I believe she is the star of an upcoming Fox special called, Who wants to Marry A Mendelsohn? Should be good.
--Bill Watrous
(To reply, click here.)
[If you want to read the marriage proposal for Jennifer (and her response) click here. Yet another member of the Mendelsohn family, Jay, entered The Fray here. Marriage proposal for Dan is here. Sorry, Eric, no proposal, but lots of Fraygrants did like your film and one of them liked your photo.
But there were also Fray readers who wanted to discuss serious issues, or at least give a short, thrilling history of religion down the ages:]
Typical drivel from the pseudo-intellectual phenoms. Here's some of my drivel. Let's see: there were 12 tribes waiting for the Messiah, He comes, they kill kill him because he wanted to give Caesar what was Caesar's, they wanted power, all he wanted was your faith and devotion to a Greater Good. The various churches spring up, (no-one mentions the Orthodox Churches and the atrocities they committed), Popes are killed, moved to France, etc., they offer forgiveness of sins for money, and kill, all for power using the popular religion of the time. Then we have Protestantism, (no one mentions the 2.5 million Catholics Cromwell killed and the killing that has gone on since then in Ireland) Let's leave for the New World, Puritan brothers, so that we the church leaders can have the power over every bit of your life (Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Al Sharpton, Pat Buchanan, et al) Oh yeah, you're a witch, die! (You also had a piece of land I wanted...)I am going to skip a century or two now... lets see Joseph Smith, ex-con, sees an angel called Baloney, no Maloney, no, Moroni... yeah that's the one. Yeah, Yeah, that's my wife...Morgan Fairchild...all 11 of them...God told me I could, I swear!
Well enough of this. People are the problem, not God, not Jesus, no matter what religion, faith, creed.
--St Pat
(To reply, click here.)
Is it possible that the pope's "doctrinal rigidity" and "gestures of expansive humanity" [Monday's entry] are of a piece? As I understand John Paul II's thinking, the humanity Mendelsohn admires arises almost entirely from the pope's dogmatic beliefs about God, man's nature, and the consequent requirements for living a good life. Liberals (and I don't intend that as a lazy epithet) should consider the possibility that the "humanity" they praise must rest either on certain irreducible truths or on a collection of insubstantial, albeit attractive, sentiments.
--Michael Pollard
(To reply, click here.)
Many have decried the pope's apology as a political ploy. I doubt it, if only for the reason that if it were, he would have vaguely referred to the Crusades and Inquisition as "youthful indiscretions" of a church that is now much more mature and therefore knows better as a result of the important lessons it has learned.
G Wiz
(To reply, click here.)
1. Gays (yawn). How over. How '90s.
2. Catholics. "Anti-Catholicism is the anti-Semitism of the intellectual."
--P.J.O'Connell
(To reply, click here.)
To P.J.O'Connell: Let's jump back in time to 1960...
Negros (yawn). How over. How 50's.
2. Jews. "Just ignore them and they'll go away."
It ain't over by a long shot!
--Dave
(To reply, click here.)
I'm glad Eric Mendelsohn cleared up the confusion over Beauty and the Beast. But I'm still not sure which Psycho he had in mind. Perkins or Vaughn? Or Christian Bale? I hope he clears this up before the Breakfast Table is wiped clear of bagel crumbs, the dishes go in the dishwasher, and he goes off to film The Magnificent Mendelsohns.
And, by the way, the poet Catullus [see Wednesday's entry] was really the Matt Drudge --or maybe Fray contributor--of his times. How low can you get?
--Eagle80
(To reply, click here.)
[The Catulluses of the modern age also discussed dogs, names, the Oscars, The Sopranos and many other Breakfast Table topics in The Fray this week.]
(3/17)