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

Eric Mendelsohn, Daniel Mendelsohn, and Jennifer Mendelsohn

the breakfast table
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from: Jennifer Mendelsohn

Monica, Schmonica--Be a Fag Hag!

Posted Tuesday, March 14, 2000, at 6:01 PM ET

Dear Eric and Daniel,

After mulling over Eric's comments, I have to agree that I think he may be onto something. Dan, why else would you mention Judy Garland? Isn't that some sort of code word with you people?

As to "x, shmx," this wasn't a Grandpa thing. It was Mom, telling our brother Andrew that despite the fact he was going to Princeton on an impressive scholarship, he should still be more concerned about being a good person. In her mix of Yiddish and English, this became famously known as "Princeton, Schminceton--be a mensch!"

Anyway, in between trying to come to terms with the fact that someone in my family may be at the "lower end of the behavioral spectrum," I have been indulging in perhaps the best perk of working at home: I'm watching the Learning Channel's afternoon lineup. It begins at lunchtime with Dating Story, in which we get to see two people go on a blind date, and then continues with A Wedding Story, in which you follow a real couple through the planning and execution of their wedding, and A Baby Story, in which, well, I bet you can figure it out. While I'm well aware that this is precisely the kind of programming that Francine Prose excoriated in an excellent New York Times Magazine piece a few weeks ago, I confess that I am completely, hopelessly addicted. I have watched so many women give birth I feel like I could scrub up and do it myself. And since all the births are taped in Los Angeles, often at the same hospitals, I even have a favorite Baby Story obstetrician, the very capable, no-nonsense Dr. Wong, who delivers babies without a hair falling out of her perfectly placed headband.
But right at this very moment, I am listening to the guttural screams of a woman giving birth in a bathtub at home. And I mean guttural. It's hard to hear myself typing. OK, wait, we're having a crisis: prolapsed cord. Baby in distress. The home birth has been suspended and we're on the way to the hospital or else the baby's not going to make it. Ah! Thank God! Emergency C-section--healthy girl. And before we're accused of insulting the home-birthing proponents out there, let's affirm that our niece, Natasha, was born safely at home and is a very happy and healthy 11-month-old. You can see for yourself here.

Dan, I don't think I'm going to engage in the whole Clinton waffling, lying, gays-in-the-military debate. It just feels, much like you noted about the Newsweek cover, a little bit done. But I will segue out of it by telling you that while at Rite-Aid buying Newsweek, my hand, um, slipped and I also found myself picking up the Jane magazine with Monica Lewinsky on the cover. I think I like this most because despite Jane's self-conscious explanations about why Monica is a complex sociocultural phenomenon worthy of their cover, the fact is--and I think of this every time I see her--the woman is famous because she gave the president blow jobs. (The checkout woman at Rite-Aid felt compelled to say "Ooooh! Miss Monica!" as she rang up my purchase.) Please, please don'tgo out and buy this. The only highlight, for me was learning that Miss Monica is "big on Darwinian theory." She believes this explains why women get angry at their husband's mistresses rather than at their husbands, because "another woman is vying for that partner." And she says that she has "a lot of male friends who are gay."

Which brings me to my final, telltale question: Daniel, do you know Monica Lewinsky?

Till tomorrow.
xo
Jen

the breakfast table
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from: Jennifer Mendelsohn

Monica, Schmonica--Be a Fag Hag!

Posted Tuesday, March 14, 2000, at 6:01 PM ET
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Eric 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.
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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)

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