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

Michael Chabon and Frank Rich

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from: Frank Rich

Muting Confrontation

Posted Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2001, at 12:19 AM ET

Dear Michael,

Ayelet's complete denial of Bush reality would play very well in New York, particularly in my neighborhood, the Upper West Side. One friend of mine--who is a former friend of Lucianne Goldberg and is as fanatically pro-Clinton as that lovely woman was the reverse--decided to mark the inaugural's high noon on Saturday by snapping in a video she had made and kept of the first Clinton inaugural. (I must say it never occurred to me to keep a tape of any inaugural, let alone replay it.) Another friend only watched with the mute button on.

Speaking of the Upper West Side, it is of course the scene of the crime of the banishment of Pluto. Now, the Rose Center is quite beautiful--so beautiful I might actually enter it one of these days instead of just walking by and admiring it in principle. (Indeed the architect who created it, James Polshek, is the subject of a profile in the Times today--or was it yesterday?--I'm losing track of time zones.) What most amused me about their decision to demote Pluto was the quote from the director of the Hayden Planetarium, trying to fudge the issue: "We're not that confrontational about it. You actually have to pay attention to make note of this." Is the Hayden Planetarium, like everything else in the neighborhood, now being run by a shrink? If I read this quote correctly, there is something wrong with us for noticing what they've done to poor, helpless Pluto. And if we go so far as to get pissy about it, then it's our fault for initiating a confrontation with the Rose Center, which did not want to pick a fight and was just minding its business, rewriting the celestial map and not expecting anyone to notice. In other words, if we have a problem with what they've done to Pluto, it's our problem, not theirs.

The biggest star of all orbiting the Rose Center--Jerry Seinfeld--lives in the Beresford, right across the street, and I'd be tempted to believe that this whole Pluto incident is a Seinfeld episode, were it not presented as nonfiction on the front page of the Times.

Greetings from LA!
Frank

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from: Frank Rich

Muting Confrontation

Posted Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2001, at 12:19 AM ET

DISCUSS

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Michael Chabon's latest novel is The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Frank Rich is an op-ed columnist for the New York Times and author, most recently, of Ghost Light.

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Reader Comments From The Fray:

Thank you Mr Rich for bringing up the no tanks in the streets comment repeated by all the talking heads on TV. I too was shocked by it. We should be celebrating because there are no tanks in the streets? We settle for so little. They had an election in Canada recently, with very high turnout(by American standards) modern voting machines, and yes no tank in the streets. The winner was declared within hours. Unlike the US they can be certain that the man in charge was elected fair and square.

Why do the talking heads repeat empty pieties? Healing, closure, no tanks, peaceful transfer? Is it to create a false sense that the system works even when there are signs that the system failed?

--James Lynch

(To reply, click here.)

The news coverage of the inauguration seemed so rote. It reminded me of my local cable access channel, which replays the same prom footage over and over and at odd times. It's odd to channel surf and come across high-schoolers decked out in tuxes and gowns, standing awkwardly on lawns, getting into limos, walking into a dance hall over and again. I'm sure the kids in the video might like the event, and must love seeing it.

So too this inauguration. The hard core Bushies and the hard core Clinton-haters were likely cheered and moved by the whole coronation process. But really. It was so forlorn.

And even Bush's well-crafted--it's a pleasure to read--acceptance speech sounded tin coming from him. Every time he speaks, even when the rhetoric's lofty, I can't help but hear the C- student he usually is, the one who describes or explains things by restating the obvious (I'm a uniter, not divider, and that means I try to bring people together, not push them apart.). I'm so used to circular logic from Bush that I'm edge whenever he speaks.

And too, Clinton's 7.5 minute farewell, it seemed to me, had more oomph and staying power than W.'s 14 minute at bat. So as Rich suggests, W. pales not only because I usually find him dim, but also, in this case, by comparison to Clinton's superior oratory style.

--Nick Carbone

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