Slate's Bizbox
the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Marjorie Garber and Erik Tarloff

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Erik Tarloff

Don't Tell Dan Burton

Posted Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2000, at 1:50 PM ET

Marge,

I confess--and this really is a confession--to having very little interest in sports of any kind, professional, amateur, or sandlot. In fact, through some professional association or other of my wife's, she and I were offered free passage, free board, and free entree to all the events at the Olympics in Sydney this month, and I've given the whole business a pass. I know I risk alienating the entire Slate readership--perhaps the entire human race--by saying so, but, hell, you've wormed it out of me.

My father was blacklisted in 1952 for being a Communist. I'm afraid the above confession may get me in similar trouble, even though my actual politics are relatively mainstream. (Please, whatever you do, don't tell Dan Burton ... if he hears about it, I'm toast!)

But one thing you mentioned does resonate with me, and that's these public displays of religiosity before games. They bother me a lot. They bother me philosophically and they bother me aesthetically.

On the level of simple logic, you're right, of course: Do high-school and college players really believe God is taking sides in their contests? And do they interpret victory as a sign of celestial favor, and loss as some sort of divine warning? (And if so, how do they explain Bobby Fischer?) But in addition, I find something coercive about these public rituals, just as I do in the recitation of the "Pledge of Allegiance." One must either participate or, by declining to, make an implicit public statement about one's beliefs.

I have similar misgivings about Joe Lieberman's protestations of faith, although I otherwise like and admire the man. I just don't need to know--and don't want to know--about his piety. I don't happen to get it, and I don't locate it on the plus side of the ledger, but I'm prepared to be tolerant in that regard. I just don't want to have my nose rubbed in it. It's none of my business.

Which dovetails neatly with this morning's big story: The FCC's report that advertising for violent entertainment is deliberately targeted at adolescent and preadolescent males--I'm shocked, shocked to learn this--and Gore and Lieberman's consequent threats of undisclosed sanctions (not really consequent, of course, since they must have been in preparation for some time) on the entertainment industry.

Protecting children is clearly a reasonable goal, but the sanctimoniousness of this whole business makes me very uneasy. (Not that it will affect my voting plans. Bush and Cheney leapt on the same bandwagon so fast they got palpitations, and only seemed peeved that their opponents had the unmitigated chutzpah to have got there first.)

I don't object to warning labels and rating systems; people have the right to know what they'll be exposed to. But once we start judging art, whether popular or fine, on its sexual and/or violent content, we're wandering down a very dangerous road. And for the record, my son played the most hideously violent video games available when he was younger, and he now listens to the sort of rap music politicians rail against, and he's a very pleasant, polite, and pacific fellow, without a trace, so far as I can tell, of homophobia, racism, or misogyny. This stuff may be ugly, but it isn't necessarily radioactive.

Over to you,
Erik

</?xml:namespace>

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Erik Tarloff

Don't Tell Dan Burton

Posted Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2000, at 1:50 PM ET
Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
Marjorie Garber is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English at Harvard. Her most recent book is Sex and Real Estate: Why We Love Houses (click here to buy it). Erik Tarloff is the author of Face-Time (click here to buy it) and the newly published The Man Who Wrote the Book (click here to buy it). Click here to read this discussion from the beginning.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES

Reader Comments From the Fray:


As for why women like Gore and men Bush? Simple: Romance and Presents. A big kiss for the wife, free pre-school for the kids and free medicine for Gramps. Gore's the national dream husband. Meanwhile, the men of America put their hands on their wallets which have just become perceptibly lighter, and furrow their collective brow as they tot up the trillions in taxes for the aforementioned goodies. Pikers! Don't they love their wives? How can they begrudge them the important things in life, paramount among them the free time to sit on the couch and watch Gore on Oprah? Gore's next initiative: a national program of heart-shaped chocolate boxes.

--Josh May

(To reply, click here.)

[Note from the Fray Editor: Hmm. That should go down well in The Fray. So, we are sure, will Tek's view that gravitas, like penetration, is male. Other ideas:]


Thanks Marge. You didn't mention reparations [see last week's Breakfast Table] and you got in the obligatory digs at George W. Bush. You have gravitas. Big time.

--WillV

(To reply, click here.)


The last female politician to have "gravitas" was Margaret Thatcher. She didn't care whether or not she was part of the old boy network. She did not sit around and whine about the glass ceiling. She did not toe the liberal/socialist line or care whether or not people loved her. She ignored all the experts, and just went with what she believed in and to hell with the polls.

--Dean W.

(To reply, click here.)


The gender gap is due to gun control.

I can't tell you how many working/middle class white men I've heard that say something like "I'm pissed with the Democrats that they keep making me vote Republican, but I strongly believe in the second amendment." For women (and men) who support or don't mind gun control, it's not a voting issue, because no one believes gun control will substantially reduce violence. And what's most irritating to this yellow-dog Dem is that actual steps Dems take are not that threatening, even if you are strongly against gun control. It's merely the rhetoric about "taking on the NRA" etc etc which is driving away working class white men in droves.
What's annoying to me is how the media is ignoring the issue. Media people will talk about the kiss, empathy, social programs (men don't want health care and education?), the Mommy vs. Daddy party, blah blah, but are completely oblivious to this particular 900 pound gorilla. And the polls don't ask questions on gun control either, so no-one sees how big (or small) its effect is. I find the combination of media obtuseness on gun control combined with endless (uninsightful) analysis on the gender gap really pretty irritating.

And Ms Williams, if you believe Wen Ho Lee was being railroaded, how come you haven't written any columns on it? Or on the fraudulent Cox report?

--Roublen Vessau

(To reply, click here.)
[Note from the Fray Editor: probably because she's actually Marjorie Garber. Marjorie Williams is over at Slate's Book Club.]


Erik, your story about Washington's steely (not wooden) character is true in essence, except it was Mad Anthony Wayne boasting after a cavalry skirmish that he was afraid of nothing in this world. Hamilton then gestured to Washington, who had just entered the room and was warming himself at the fireplace. "Go, then, and clap our general on his back, and hail him as a good fellow," said Hamilton. "No, I think I will decline the honor," replied Wayne.

Many share your outrage about Wen Ho Lee. Can you see why we reprehensible unreconstructed conservatives are always in such an uproar about the left's perpetual ambition to increase the power and reach of the Federal government? And I agree that the ACLU is a useful organization, though they should be admonished to change their name to the American Civil Liberties- Except-for-a-Phrase-in-Amendment-One-a-Clause-in-Amendment-Two-and-All-of-Amendment-Ten Union. Truth in advertising, you know.

--Aristophanes

(To reply, click here.)
[This is the post mentioned by Erik Tarloff in Monday's entry.]

(9/11)

Washington Post