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Joel Achenbach and Marjorie Williams

the breakfast table
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from: Marjorie Williams

Eugene O'Neill's Misbegotten Diagnosis

Posted Thursday, April 13, 2000, at 4:58 PM ET

Northumberland cranberry, perhaps?

I didn't see Reno at noon. I almost never watch news events unfold on TV, because I don't have one in my office. This makes me totally unqualified to comment on the meta-reality of news events, of course, since I absorb them in their Precambrian manifestations. But I do sometimes look at bulletins on the Web. Which reminds me: You should read Myra McPherson's scathing Salon piece today on why Elián's Miami relatives are more dysfunctional than the Sopranos. I found it weirdly comforting.

Speaking of family dysfunction, I commend to you today's New York Times story, based on a New England Journal of Medicine report, about the death of Eugene O'Neill. The playwright himself believed that his youthful drinking was the cause of the Parkinson's-like brain disease that disabled and eventually killed him; but doctors (including the doctor who performed the actual autopsy on O'Neill in 1953) who recently reviewed all the medical records and the autopsy report concluded that it was the result of a rare genetic disorder. So O'Neill tormented himself in vain about his debauched youth. It's staggering to imagine how O'Neill's plays, so full of the dark lure of alcohol and addiction, might have been different had he not carried this conviction that he had doomed himself. For the rest of us, the report is a bit like finding out, after all these years, that Ernest Hemingway really died from a slip in the bathtub.

And did you see the story about the hundreds of Massachusetts 10th-graders who boycotted their standardized statewide essay test? You've got to love this one: You take a population of students that has been drilled since elementary school in the new truisms of education (up with diversity! Up with different learning styles! No one model fits all students!) and suddenly, in a fit of "standards" zeal, decide to administer a one-size-fits-all test. And now administrators and school bureaucrats are shocked--shocked!--that these students should presume to question authority. (Another, related subject we missed: Now that your children are getting into the real school years, don't you just love the jargon? My first-grader is "de-coding" nicely, which means he can read. I met a guy once who taught middle-school math in Prince George's County, and he shared with me his absolute favorite bit of academic-speak: When he used dice in the classroom to teach lessons about probability, he said, he was told to refer to them as "random number generators.")

Well, gotta run and tell my broker to get me into cornbread futures. The week has flown by. Be well.

Best,
Marjorie

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Marjorie Williams

Eugene O'Neill's Misbegotten Diagnosis

Posted Thursday, April 13, 2000, at 4:58 PM ET
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Joel Achenbach is a reporter for the Washington Post, where he also writes "Rough Draft," a thrice-weekly online column. Click here to buy his recent book on extraterrestrial life, Captured by Aliens. Marjorie Williams writes a weekly opinion column for the Washington Post Op-Ed page and is a contributing writer at Talk magazine.
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Reader Response from The Fray--to be read after the final entry:


Let me get this straight: they give out Pulitzer's for criticism [Monday]? Please--my heart is pounding, my blood pressure is rocketing, my hands now shake, please dear, please, please tell me, where do I sign up?

--Old Timer [who is well-known in The Fray for his expertise in this area.]

(To reply, click here.)


Re: Elian Gonzales. I believe that immigration laws should be as open and welcoming as possible. But at the same time we need to look at the long-term situation of the country the people are fleeing. There is not always a whole lot we can do, and we also run the risk of becoming control freak America with it's thumb in every pie--oh, hang on, we already are that. Well, anyway, my point is that instead of trying to pass a bill to make Elian a citizen, why don't we lift the embargo and make life a little better for all Cubans?

--Anne

(To reply, click here.)


"That's exactly what Castro wants us to do", I believe, is the stock response to either ending or continuing the embargo.

--Steve Dowling

(To reply, click here.)

[This response almost silenced David Edelstein, but not quite:]
The embargo is a 40-year hissy fit, and it's time to give it a rest. Say what you will against Castro (I can say plenty), he'd have been long gone if the embargo had been lifted 25 years ago and Disney and all the other U.S. corporations had moved in with their sundry inducements to free (sic) enterprise.

--David Edelstein

(To reply, click here.)


The question of why people hate Janet Reno [Thursday] is a bit intricate and since I do hate her, I'd like to take a stab at it--the question, not her (I don't hate anybody that much). Reno reminds me of the Greek tragedy Antigone which shows us that strict enforcement of the law, by the book, isn't always the best thing. The Waco invasion wasn't the best thing, for example. I believe the law justified her actions, that the operation was by the book. But that doesn't mean it was a good thing. With Elian, there's that potential again that Reno will embark on the legal course, but that it won't be the morally right course.

Reno does not respect people who defy her. She assumes they are wrong and she acts on that and she has a tremendous amount of power to enforce her interpretation of law. This is the crux of my anti-Renoism: She doesn't talk to people, she barks orders at them. When people ignore the lectures they get punished. Hey, that's her job. But it'd be nice to have a more philosophical sort wielding all that power--someone with a better sense of proportion who realizes that every act of defiance is unique and deserves unique treatment.

--Michael Maiello

(To reply, click here.)


Don Porges writes in The Fray about Thursday's entry:

"Random number generator" isn't academic-speak; it's perfectly standard math-speak, and if you're using dice to demonstrate probabilities, then they are being used as random number generators.

The definition and connotations of "dice" are much more precise in naming the objects in question. My old TI-99 had a "random number generator" command in its BASIC programming. Since it was just code, it resembled nothing that would help baby get a new pair of shoes. Besides "dice" fits into a headline nicely.

--Charles

(To reply, click here.)


[No proposals this week. But that doesn't mean the Breakfast Table went unappreciated:]

These guys were the best. And that's granting that there were some close competitors. But Joel and Marjorie are the BT gold standard. The King and Queen are dead! Bring on next week's random number generators!

--Mike

(To reply, click here.)

(4/14)

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