Jeffrey Goldberg and Jack Shafer
Dear Jack:
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StumbleUponHot shit-pit? I'm reporting you to Charles Murray. The charge: felony coarsening. (Don't worry; I'm sure it's pardonable.)
You know, on second thought, perhaps you shouldn't baby sit for my children.
And give me a break, please: You cannot compare the small-children-who-dress-as-hookers '00s to the "zoot suit jazz junkie '40s." Have you, by any chance, turned on the television lately? I'm canceling cable as soon as my oldest child figures out how to use the remote control. Also, I'm going to home-school. Actually, I'm not going to home-school because I don't know math. Also, I'd go insane in two days. But I'm sympathetic to the idea.
Alas, the problem with Charles Murray--and you can read it between the lines in his current piece--is that he seems perpetually ready to blame black people for everything wrong in the world. He always seems a half-keystroke away from inserting such terms as "mongrelization of the race" into his copy.
On another subject: What's so wrong about protecting the little "flowers" I've "spawned"? (Which, by the way, Jack, I believe to be a botanical impossibility.)
As for your calumnious charge that I am a pork eater: Never, never, never. Actually, in the past, I've had bacon, which is in fact the best-tasting food in the world, which God knew, which is why he banned us from eating it, to test our faith, which he does everyday. Me he's testing right now by engineering this "Breakfast Table" with you, thereby subjecting me to your torrent of calumny, to which, if I were Christian like you, I would be mandated to turn the other cheek.
Interesting point about McLean you make: I haven't been there too often (not a lot of the Tribe has settled in McLean), but, from what I do recall, its houses all seem to be Brady Bunch split-levels. (There's a show I'd let my kids watch.) The addition of a few McMansions would make McLean marginally interesting. (Isn't "McLean" the name of a McDonald's hamburger? Maybe McMansions are especially appropriate for McLean.)
One more point, to wrap up the day: I'm not unsympathetic to your charge that the writing on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal is only tenuously connected to any kind of observable reality, but we forget sometimes that the major, left-leaning papers have their own problems assimilating obvious truths when those truths conflict with strongly held ideological beliefs. The Israeli election today--and the sureness with which commentators are predicting imminent war now that Sharon has won--remind me of a New York Times editorial from 1981, the one in which the Times in uncharacteristically intemperate language condemned Israel for bombing the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak.
I was just on an NPR show discussing the Middle East, and judging by the phone-in questions, you'd think it was 1972. To answer your question, I don't think I could have voted for Sharon, but I think he is right about something: The Palestinians, and the Arabs generally, have not yet reconciled themselves to the idea of Israel's legitimacy, and nothing good will happen in the Middle East until they do.
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Reader Comments From The Fray:
[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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