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

Marjorie Garber and Erik Tarloff

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Erik Tarloff

Odds and Ends

Posted Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2000, at 4:21 PM ET

Marge,

Women's studies are what my college years were all about. Informally, of course. Autodidactically. And I nevertheless pursued them pass/fail. There was no alternative. I'm afraid I didn't learn a damned thing, either.

I have no problem, no hesitation, and certainly no guilt about hating the Aryan Nation and their ilk. What's not to hate? But I'm still a near-absolutist when it comes to free-speech issues. The "clear and present danger" doctrine is a reasonable restriction to put on the First Amendment, but I would unhesitatingly defend the right of Nazis to march through Skokie and so on. That they would deny me the same right is a familiar irony, and irrelevant. I can't let the Aryan Nation determine what's permissible in a free society.

Sentiments are always reciprocated, did you say? Could I have heard you correctly? Why, Marjorie Garber ... I'm shocked and amazed. This is the first sentiment you've shared in these e-mails which I find downright incredible. In matters of the heart, at least, I think the opposite is more often the case, which is why there are so many good novels and plays. Along with so much emotional misery.

Judging by the correspondence I've received in the course of my writing career (especially as a result of writing for Slate, perhaps because that's been the most overtly political stuff), it seems that the Right feels it has some sort of proprietary relationship to libertarian impulses. But in my experience, those impulses, the desire to be left alone and willingness to leave others alone, have more to do with temperament than ideology. The urge to coerce and control is a human urge, not a liberal or conservative one. You'll find its manifestations at Bob Jones University every bit as much as at Harvard. Of course, the two sides are tempted to interfere in different ways and in different arenas, but neither has a monopoly on wielding power intrusively.

One of the advantages of having an adolescent in one's house is enforced exposure to the popular music one instinctively resists, not to say abhors. This also happens to be one of the disadvantages of having an adolescent in one's house. My son has played me enough rap and hip-hop so that I now can, at least, distinguish some bits from other bits, and even dislike some bits less than others. Alas, his frequent and lifelong exposure to classical music--wafting up to his room from my listening post downstairs--seems to have left no mark on him at all.

I missed Gore on Oprah. Did you happen to catch the encounter? Tell me tomorrow, along with something about women's studies, and in the meantime have a very good evening tonight.

Erik

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Erik Tarloff

Odds and Ends

Posted Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2000, at 4:21 PM ET
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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.
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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)

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