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Meghan Daum and Rob Walker

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from: Rob Walker

All Apologies?

Posted Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2001, at 12:55 PM ET

Hello Meghan,

I didn't watch Bush last night either, but I don't have any excuses, noble or otherwise. I can't even claim to have been rounding off a particularly Fat Tuesday in one of the better bars of New Orleans.

But to (sort of) answer your Fat Tuesday question, the weather cooperated yesterday, and the Times-Picayune's top story this morning seems to conclude that Carnival's climax was a big success, although the habit here is apparently to make a final judgment on that by calculating the amount of trash scraped from the streets when it's all over.

Interesting about the radio stuff. I've also only recently assembled enough computer firepower to make this possible, but I've lately been listening to KCRW on a fairly regular basis. That's what the awesome technological advances of the World Wide Web have delivered to my life: radio. If you're a music fan, or maybe I should say a jazz and blues fan, I also recommend wwoz.org (a New Orleans station, so I just use the regular radio in this case); today at 2 p.m. CST, for instance, is the Blues With Lou show, which I've been very high on lately for having introduced me to T-Model Ford.

So I guess now I should get to the pseudo-pithy analysis. Here's what I have for you:

  • According to the "People" column in the Times-Picayune, Brad Pitt had the following to say about his marriage to Jennifer Aniston: "It's very, very exciting. And wherever it takes us, we'll see. I'm not so hung up on 'happily ever after.' Go where you need to go." What a romantic, that Brad Pitt!
  • According to the Times, a U.S. admiral's personally delivered apology to the prime minister of Japan for that American sub having accidentally sunk a Japanese fishing boat is "the latest in an extraordinary series of apologies issued by the United States." This is of interest because:
  • According to Francis Fukuyama, writing on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal, Japanese skepticism toward American apologies is no surprise as "the U.S. has become the land of the cheap apology." He then picks on the Clinton administration's sorry apology record for a while; explains that in the Japanese practice of seppuku, "you say you're sorry then take a sword and disembowel yourself in front of the victim"; further notes that Japanese executives have lately been seen "prostrating themselves" before disappointed shareholders and employees; and then notes in passing that "This, not to mention seppuku, remains an option open to Mr. Clinton to regain the respect of the American people." Is that supposed to be a joke? Is it funny to suggest that ritual suicide might be Clinton's best move? Does Fukuyama owe Clinton an apology?

And does Brad Pitt owe his wife an apology?

Ah, well. Perhaps I owe you an apology. You seem a little annoyed with my earlier line of questioning. I certainly didn't mean to suggest that I think there's anything wrong with living in rural Nebraska, however cold it might be, or that there's anything wrong with tuning out the zeitgeist. I'm just interested in how or if technology mitigates geography. (And maybe you're not really annoyed, I'm just reading it that way owing to the limits of the technology facilitating this discussion.) I hope you'll accept that because I don't own a sword.

My best to Loretta.

rw

the breakfast table
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from: Rob Walker

All Apologies?

Posted Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2001, at 12:55 PM ET
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Meghan Daum's essay collection, My Misspent Youth, will be published in March. Rob Walker, a journalist living in New Orleans, writes Slate's "Moneybox" column.
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Reader Comment From The Fray:


I have a suggestion for some 'reality based' TV programs. How about Refugee Boat? We could take contestants and put them in a third world, war torn country and give them thirty days to figure out how to make a raft, find food and get set afloat before despotic soldiers order them to dig their own graves.

Or, how about Street Survival? In this one, the contestants must survive three months on the street with only the clothes on their backs and no identification. They would be required to jump trains, sleep outdoors in alleyways and in shelters, and generally try to survive their new found compatriots, welfare rolls and dumpster diving.

And, how about this beauty? Prison Guards would be a reality based show where one would become a prison guard in one of the most feared prisons in the United States. In this show contestants get thirty days training and then must work as a prison guard in the most violence-prone sectors of the prison for at least two months. Talk about ratings! I know that I would personally be glued to the screen.

Let's give vanity and greed a real price. Instead of paying people to play the mind games most of us have to wade through in our regular work week, let's up the ante a little. I can't wait until the spotlights burn and we get to see one of these numbnuts have to face a freight train's worth of trouble rushing headlong into them.

--Rogue

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