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Marjorie Garber and Erik Tarloff

the breakfast table
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from: Erik Tarloff

The Animal Kingdom

Posted Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2000, at 1:17 PM ET

Marge,

Citing novels and plays yesterday, I neglected to mention the most telling, the absolutely clinching refutation of your nameless shrink's reciprocal-emotion theory: country music. Without thwarted passion, there would be only three or four songs left for country radio to play in any given decade. And even if we limit the discussion, as you suggest, to negative emotions (a major restriction, I'm sure you'll agree), I remain unpersuaded. Every unrequited passion has two sides. In addition to not being loved in return, which has surely happened to all of us at one time or another, haven't you ever been liked by someone whom you disliked intensely? Such people may suffer from a certain lack of sensitivity--how else do they manage to explain away all those unreturned phone calls and declined invitations?--but they're still part of the human equation.

I don't disagree, however, about the subliminable [sic] signals we higher primates send one another. It's just, not all of us notice them. Not all the time, anyway. Sometimes, our fond hopes confound our perceptions. The good news is, that grit can sometimes help produce A Midsummer Night's Dream, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, and "Your Cheating Heart."

Which smoothly carries us (you're not the only one with suave segues, my friend) from primates to rodents. I actually believe George W. when he says he was unaware of the now-celebrated RATS moment in his commercial. But that doesn't mean I think it was accidental. It's precisely the kind of cute stunt a creative advertising type who works in videotape would pull, laboring alone in his studio late at night. For its own sake, largely, just for the hell of it, without great mischievous expectations; studies have pretty convincingly demonstrated that subliminal messages don't really have any effect. But in the event, said creative type did his candidate no favors. A day that was meant to showcase a new health initiative was squandered, foolishly, denying intentional RATSing. The man made a pest of himself.

And this aspect of the story raises another example of primate behavior, the pile-on phenomenon. Judging by the conversations I've had with journalists who travel with Bush, it's clear to me most of them really like the guy on a personal level. And some of them, contrary to conservative bromides about liberal media bias, have privately supported his candidacy. But once a candidate is perceived to be in trouble, once the rap on him is that he's a bumbler, virtually every new development is interpreted in that light. It happened to George McGovern, it happened to Michael Dukakis, and now George Bush, justifiably or not, is the latest victim.

In this particular case, at least, it's absurdly unfair. The RATS commercial should be a non-story, and the Bush campaign had no particular reason to pull the ad other than its hectoring ineffectiveness. But once the word "hapless" has become part of the morning line on a candidate, he has the devil's own time changing it. And the press, with no personal malice at all, starts engaging in the kind of mob bullying that Jane Goodall has documented in the wild.

Since you mentioned movies with actual plots, I'll close this note by mentioning that, inspired in part by David Edelstein's review in this very magazine, I saw Nurse Betty last night. Oy!

Erik

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Erik Tarloff

The Animal Kingdom

Posted Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2000, at 1:17 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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