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Jeffrey Goldberg and Jack Shafer

the breakfast table
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from: Jeffrey Goldberg

McMansions and Other Catastrophic Problems of the Wealthy

Posted Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2001, at 1:14 PM ET

Jack:

OK, heavy lifting. (Thank you, btw, for answering my previous queries. I knew there existed inside that philo-Semitic heart of yours tender feelings for Arik.)

Before I address the Charles Murray piece (with which I sympathize), and the Washington Post "McMansion" piece (with which I don't), let me point you to perhaps the most inadvertently silly lede of the last news cycle. It appeared atop a Reuters dispatch concerning the dot-com company eToys. I quote, "Struggling Internet toy seller eToys Inc. said on Monday it has told the remaining members of its staff they will be out of a job this April in yet another sign the company's days may be numbered."

Note the "may be." As a practitioner of journalism, I would say that this story is a wee bit too tentative: It is, generally speaking, a warning against future profitability when a company fires ALL its employees.

Onward, to the terrible McMansion epidemic plaguing the suburbs of Washington, D.C. On the one hand, the Washington Post runs the stories of reporters like Kate Boo, who discovered last year that dozens of mentally handicapped people died in mysterious and often horrible circumstances in city-run and taxpayer-funded facilities. On the other hand, it runs stories such as this one, which highlights, if nothing else, the frivolity and callousness of life in suburbia. The earnestly written story, by Peter Whoriskey, opens by quoting a succession of pouty whiners in the wealthy and secluded town of McLean, which is situated across the Potomac from Washington. These people, who are among the luckiest people in the world by virtue of the fact that they get to live in a place like McLean, are moaning about the size of new houses on their block. "They make my house look like a toolshed," Whoriskey quotes one McLean resident, identified as John Nasrinpay (which if I didn't generally trust the Washington Post, I would guess is a made-up name) as saying. Another whining neighbor says, "They don't blend in at all architecturally."

The story is headlined (at least on the Web site--I'm in a prolonged jihad with the man who delivers the Post in my neighborhood, and I haven't gotten the paper version in months, nor have I particularly missed it, which I suppose isn't a good sign for the the future of newsprint), "The Quandary Next Door."

At the risk of sounding Naderish and communistical, let me mention a few problems that count as "quandaries next door" in much of Washington, D.C.: crack houses; toxic waste sites; abandoned, needle-strewn lots; and city-run group homes for mentally handicapped people who die in said homes at suspiciously high rates.

Me, I don't particularly care if someone builds a stupendously big house next door to mine. In fact, I wish someone would build a really big house for me. In fact, Jack, you have a really big house: Can I have it, or, at the very least, could you take in one or two of my children?

These McMansions are pretentious and ugly, and they don't use space well, and they cost too much to heat, and on and on and on, but it really just doesn't matter.

I go blind with fury when I read about the catastrophic problems of the richest 10 percent. (And the people who are complaining about these houses--not just the ones who are building them--are among the nation's richest.) I'm sure you've heard similar complaints: "My God, another CVS in our neighborhood!" is one that comes to mind. Another manifestation of this terrible and shallow self-absorption is the opposition in the rich precincts of Washington and its suburbs to the building of schools (!) on the grounds that they will cause an increase in traffic.

There is a way to write these stories, which is to viciously mock not only the builders of McMansions but the people who complain about them. But the Washington Post believes it must pander to the ignoble causes of the rich and self-interested grandees who make up the core of its readership.

I've gone on too long--I'm out of breath--so I'll leave Charles Murray to you. Except to say that, when I read his column, I found myself nodding in agreement. Which proves the dictum, I suppose, that a conservative is a liberal with daughters.

Jeff

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Jeffrey Goldberg

McMansions and Other Catastrophic Problems of the Wealthy

Posted Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2001, at 1:14 PM 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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