Joel Achenbach and Marjorie Williams
Dear Joel,
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StumbleUponThe great thing about the "Breakfast Table" is that we can collude to ignore the World Bank entirely, if we want to. (And I think we both know how a vote on this would go.) This is our table, and if we both turn first to the metro section or to the Wall Street Journal's great A-head on why Paraguay venerates Rutherford B. Hayes--there's even a national holiday--well, that's just what makes America great.
I have no wisdom about Elián. It's seemed to me all along like a theatrical confrontation between two systems of values: not communism and democracy, but the world view of people who think lives are determined by the vast forms of social organization that surround them (growing up under Castro will forever warp Elián's life) vs. the worldview of those who feel that we're made by our immediate surroundings--family, home, the particular way the lights of passing cars hit the ceiling of your bedroom when they climb the hill in front of your house. (Elián needs his dad and a return, as much as possible, to obscure boyhood.) If forced to choose, I'm heartily with the second camp. But of course in normal life these are not seen as fixed, eternally opposed propositions.
It seems very appropriate (speaking of black and white) that Fail Safe aired as the Elián drama is reaching its crisis. I watched every minute, because I love the original movie beyond reason. I suspect I first saw it when I was about 13, which is the perfect age to have it strike you as the last word in philosophical depth. It's a total mystery why they bothered to make it again (maybe George Clooney saw the original when he was 13?), since its total lack of irony only looks embarrassing (or--what's the word?--freakish) now, whereas in the early '60s they couldn't help themselves. You can't make new '60s camp, can you? That its new makers took it very seriously was indicated by the one plot change they made from the original. In the first version, as the patriotic bomber pilot is streaking toward Moscow with his mistaken orders to immolate the city, the U.S. military brings his wife in to beg him, over the radio, to stand down. (Of course he ignores her, as he has been trained to do, because it could be a trick from those crafty Russkies.) In last night's version, the wife is dead and it's the pilot's 10-year-old boy who begs him not to carry out his mission. You know a network is in earnest when it drags in a little kid--another clue to why Elián is in the mess he's in.
My favorite story of the week so far is the New York Times' heavy-breathing four-parter about "rampage killers," which started yesterday. It's a peachy example of investigative journalism that chews more than it bites off--elaborately computer-assisted, with two-color graphics charting every spree killing in the last several years. The paper of record did an exhaustive analysis of what distinguishes these killers, and do you know what they came up with so far? People who mow down strangers with semiautomatic weapons are nuts! Yes! You heard it here first. Over and over the poor reporters plug in tortuously written paragraphs about how their findings fly in the face of what we all believe about spree killers. But it turns out that ... many of these killers showed earlier signs of trouble.
It is not known whether they made heavy use of the caps-lock key, Joel, but I'm betting the answer is yes.
Best,
Marjorie
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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:
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)