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Jeffrey Goldberg and Jack Shafer

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from: Jack Shafer

I Wish They All Could Be Jewish Girls

Posted Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2001, at 11:27 AM ET

Goldberg,

Answer to Question No. 1 From Your Last Mail: What do you mean, if I were Jewish, who would I vote for? I'm so down with members of the tribe that I'm practically a Jewish whigger, if you catch my drift. Can't you use your Zionist connections and get me the equivalent of a papal dispensation or an act of Congress and make me a Jew? I don't think it matters who anybody votes for in this election because Israel could elect Shecky Greene and the war would come anyway and he'd have to pretend to be Ariel Sharon. If you press me, I guess it makes sense to vote for Sharon because he's an insaniac of the first order and won't waste any time on peace processing. Or, in a Nixon-goes-to-China move, he might find a way to force everybody to behave. OK, now who would you vote for?

Answer to Question No. 2 From Your Last Mail: What sort of gun would I carry in Israel? One that fires depleted uranium bullets.

Answer to Question No. 3 From Your Last Mail: What kind of Jewish woman would I go for? Let's restate the question as what sort of Jewish woman wouldn't I go for? "Well, West Bank girls are hip, I really dig those Uzis they wear. And Scarsdale chicks, with the way they shop, they really impoverish me when I'm up there. The Midwest scrap-dealers' daughters really make you feel all right. ..." You get the idea.

I'm filing a little later than I'm supposed to, so I'm going to sign off now and let you do the heavy lifting and agenda setting today. But I want to revisit the Wall Street Journal editorial page, so here's your reading assignment: Charles Murray despairing over youth thug culture. (He's against it.) And also look at the Washington Post's Page One story about the latest crisis in the D.C. suburbs: starter mansions going up on tiny lots. (I'm for them.)

By the way, have you ever visited rotten.com? Please don't.

Love,
Jack

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Jack Shafer

I Wish They All Could Be Jewish Girls

Posted Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2001, at 11:27 AM ET
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Jack Shafer is deputy editor of Slate. Jeffrey Goldberg is a staff writer at The New Yorker. His book on the Middle East, Prisoners, will be published next year by Knopf.
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[Notes from the Fray Editor: There was a spirit of friendly enquiry in the Fray: "Do you guys like each other?" asked Beth. "What is a CVS?" came from Dea--and do you need to be rich to find out? (Fletch tells us it's a drugstore.) And Mark wanted to know "What's wrong with a little Masada?"

Posters who weren't asking questions were trying to draw blood. "Breakfast Table" Fray regulars are a nest of trouble-makers. Neill Hamilton demonstrates this here and here, and so does Joseph Britt, whose comment below provoked a thread well worth reading, including a debate on whether basketball is prominent in American culture.]


In response to last week's "Breakfast Table", I and several other Fray posters made the suggestion that this feature would be more interesting if it involved writers who actually disagreed with each other about something.

By "something," I was referring to American politics or something especially prominent in American culture.

Disagreements about whom Israelis should vote for do not count. This is because Israel is a foreign country. Now, I wish Israel well; I like most of the Israelis I have met in my life; I even think how the American government should respond to whatever Israeli government emerges from this week's election is a topic worthy of exploration.

But who would I vote for? Stupid question

--Joseph Britt

(To reply, click here.)

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