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Michael Chabon and Frank Rich

the breakfast table
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from: Michael Chabon

Abortion Funding vs. Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Posted Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2001, at 5:16 AM ET

Dear Frank,

Do you remember the novelty, as a child, of eating breakfast for dinner? Here we are, at 10 p.m. PT, sitting around the "Breakfast Table" at the end of another day replete with snappy repartee and pointed aperçus that are pretty much the standard furnishing of life around here; ditto for you, I presume. I like to think of you in your brocade smoking jacket, with the Persian lamb lapels, raising a forkful of blini with caviar.

So, right off the bat, pretty much the first thing G.W.B. does on settling back in that big black chair (perhaps the very one that once received the narrow WASP behind of his father lo those many years ago) and giving it a few spins with his little legs poking out in the air is get to work on abortion. Did you catch that? The first thing! He's going to block funding to international family planning organizations that offer abortion and abortion counseling. I suppose that in a way, as a message, as a deliberate indicator of future intentions, it's as significant as Clinton starting right in with Don't Ask, Don't Tell. But far more accurate, I'm afraid, and, God help us and the 7 billion other people on this planet now under the stewardship of the world's most powerful Eric Carle fan, far more consequential.

Maybe it's just because I find it such a reprehensible and contemptible act that it strikes me as so much more significant than Clinton's move, which was, taken on its own terms, far more equivocal and ultimately pointless.

Do you think that my political counterpart on the other side of the mirror, eight years ago, heard about the D.A.D.T. policy and just felt his homophobic little heart sink in his chest with the certainty that, after all the doubletalk and blind prognostication, the horror had at last begun?

Gloomily,
Michael

P.S.: Did you notice that Pluto has a bunch of little hangers-on called the Plutinos? Have we finally run out of Greek and Roman deities? What got named after Priapus?

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Michael Chabon

Abortion Funding vs. Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Posted Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2001, at 5:16 AM ET
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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

(To reply, click here.)

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