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

Michael Chabon and Frank Rich

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Frank Rich

Eminem, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Other Discards of Youth

Posted Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2001, at 7:14 PM ET

Editors' note: Due to technical difficulties we were unable to post these entries earlier in the day. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Dear Michael,

You can't make any of this stuff up indeed. But a novelist or a filmmaker (Ang Lee?) surely must take charge of the saga of young Johnny and Luther Htoo--the story has everything! Huck and Tom and Fagin's gang, as you say, along with Peter Pan and his lost boys, perhaps Chang and Eng, and "The March of the Siamese Children," albeit updated with assault weapons and chain-smoking, as appropriate for our time.

I don't follow popular music that well myself these days, but I am drafted into it by two sons, high-school and college age respectively, who have the same kind of rebellious tastes I had at their age and who have parents who are just as uncomprehending of that taste as my parents were of mine. The boys have, however, turned me on to Radiohead (in exchange for which they've taken a gratifying shine to Monk and Miles). They are fairly blasé about Eminem--they're above that kind of childish stuff now, in the same way I was once above Peter, Paul and Mary--but they find it ridiculous that adults are so up-in-arms about him. They think the nasty lyrics are a put-on. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Eminem is that he is a white boy who's broken through (to kids of all races) in an African-American medium. Does such racial crossover in the cultural marketplace make up for a multitude of misogynistic and homophobic sins? Beats me. Maybe kids should be able to adjudicate their own culture, just as we aspired to lay down the law on ours, way back when.

Well, now that you've awakened me to the story of Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, I can't get "A Little Priest" out of my head either; it's actually the perfect B side to "The Real Slim Shady." I hope you're right that the fact that Bar-Jonah's name is assumed means that he's not Jewish, but I'm not 100 percent sure his real name, David Brown, resolves the question. I fear we'll find out soon enough.

Elsewhere on the "bad for the Jews" front: While driving the freeways today, I got tired of listening to Rush Limbaugh explain (not too successfully) how the Bush education plan was not another form of busing--which conservatives are supposed to abhor--and so slid across the dial only to land in the clutches of Michael Medved, another conservative talker who, while Jewish himself, was kvetching about New York Jews who, he suggested, were kvetching that there were no Jews in Bush's Cabinet. I think he had his facts wrong. It was my impression that many Jews back East merely shrugged at the absence of Jews in the new administration's front line. Indeed, some may even think that this is one occasion when the exclusion of Jews from an elite club may be good for the Jews. We shall see.

Best,
Frank

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Frank Rich

Eminem, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Other Discards of Youth

Posted Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2001, at 7:14 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
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.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES

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.)

(1/22)

Washington Post