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Michael Chabon and Frank Rich

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from: Michael Chabon

Kvetching About the Cabinet

Posted Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2001, at 7:38 PM ET

Dear Frank,

I went to a meeting of my synagogue's board tonight (I'm a trustee). I wonder how many of them have been kvetching about the judenrein Bush Cabinet. As far as I'm concerned, one Ari Fleisher is genug, if you know what I mean. Of course none of my fellow board members qualify as New York Jews, though some of them began life that way. And God knows we Berkeley Jews can kvetch with the best of them. I'm sure that the governorissimo came in for a healthy dose of excoriation.

Tell me, was Medved really so referring to his Eastern Standard Time co-religionists, did he use those three words? Did he seem to intend them disparagingly?

That was one of the elements, by the way, that I liked best in your memoir ... the way you delineated the unease, the tensions among different subelements of the Jewish community in Washington, D.C., and the uncertain path of assimilation as they all played out in your own family dynamic.

Is Eminem popular among black kids as well as white? That's awfully disappointing. With no other basis for judgment than the little of him I've heard and seen on MTV, I would have assumed that he was regarded as firmly in the Vanilla Ice category. I'm sure you're correct that whether or not he is a misogynist or homophobe, or more importantly whether adults so view him, makes absolutely no difference to those who buy his act.There have always been a few white acts performing in black idioms that managed to cross back over ... Hall and Oates in their heyday come to mind, and I remember hearing John Waite's "Missing You" in heavy rotation on WAMO, the R&B station in Pittsburgh when I was in college. But it's awfully rare. I suppose it must mean something, if only a shocking lapse in the usually exacting standards of young black music fans.

Regards,
Michael

the breakfast table
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from: Michael Chabon

Kvetching About the Cabinet

Posted Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2001, at 7:38 PM 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

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