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the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Daniel, Eric, and Jennifer Mendelsohn

the breakfast table
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from: Jennifer Mendelsohn

Channeling "Cosmic Wisdom"?

Posted Tuesday, June 19, 2001, at 12:31 PM ET

Dear Mssrs. Mendelsohn (that's short for "Monsignors," if anyone wonders),

Good morning. Let me say right out that I am actually skeptical of this whole idea that we're related, based solely on the idea that Daniel agreed to meet someone for breakfast at 8:15. Can we really be of the same gene pool? I prefer not to have to speak to anyone before about 10 a.m. The idea of being showered and dressed, much less having already read the New York Times, by 7:30 a.m. is actually actively frightening to me. Not the start of a good day in my book. But then you're topping it off with a trip to the cemetery with some random distant relatives you've never met and having lunch with Mom and Dad? Yikes. (Kidding, Mom and Dad, totally kidding!) Oh, and about those Swedish relatives. Who's going to be the one to tell cousin Randi that they're on Mom's side, not Dad's? She e-mailed us this morning, having read yesterday's exchange, asking if "Inga and Olaf" want to come to the Mendelsohn family reunion this summer. ... I say we just invite them. Who'll know the difference?

So that said, it's creeping up on 9 a.m. here in Baltimore and I am awake and semi-literate, even, but only because I wanted to get this off to you both before heading back to my real home in the nation's capital, where I have to meet Steve the electrician who's going to grapple with my circuit breaker, which was apparently constructed in the Thomas Edison (or maybe Ben Franklin?) era.

D, I couldn't help agreeing with--and laughing at--your psychological portrait of our fearless leader, but ever since our Slate colleague Marjorie Williams' rather insightful Washington Post column about the whole Bush twins fiasco, I'm very skeptical about the idea of psychoanalysis by media. It's a slippery slope indeed. Yes, one might surmise that the prez has what my boyfriend Greg likes to call "issues" of the family variety, but personally, in the grand scheme of things, I think those are the least of his problems. (I'm still waiting for Eric to send me that photo of Bush in the Rose Garden lugging a Presidency for Dummies book.)

Here in Balto, there is nothing on the front page about Putin, Star Wars II, or Memoirs of a Geisha; the big news is that Cal Ripken is retiring after 21 years with the Baltimore Orioles. (They play that baseball game.) But as a reporter, I can't help thinking that the real story is why Ripken gave the news to the Washington Post and not the hometown Sun. Seems odd, n'est-ce pas?

But certainly not as odd as the fact that according to a story in today's Washington Post, former Wall Street Journal reporter Debbie Tennison now calls herself "Selacia" and channels the "cosmic wisdom" of a "group of ascended masters in the Spiritual Hierarchy who come from a place of unconditional love" for a magazine called the Sedona Journal of Emergence! Do you think they have as good a benefit package as the WSJ? And don't you like that strategically placed exclamation point?!?

Cheers,
Jennifer, who comes from a place of unconditional crabbiness

P.S.: Daniel, you are the world's biggest hypocrite: You swore up and down you wouldn't venture into "The Fray" this time, and yet you sprinkle your entry with references to our being called "provincial hicks," and you even posted in there. What gives? For the record, I think there are a lot of complaints you could make about us, but being "provincial hicks" would not even make my top 100.

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Jennifer Mendelsohn

Channeling "Cosmic Wisdom"?

Posted Tuesday, June 19, 2001, at 12:31 PM ET
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Daniel Mendelsohn, book critic for New York magazine, is the author of The Elusive Embrace. Eric Mendelsohn is the writer/director of the film Judy Berlin. Jennifer Mendelsohn is the author of Slate's "Keeping Tabs" column. To read their previous "Breakfast Table," click here.
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Reader Comments From The Fray:

[Thursday notes from the Fray Editor: A true "Breakfast Table" thread got going here: starting with made-up words, moving on to dead languages, salaries, and cheerful insults, plus a chance to find out which BT regular is a public defender, and what he likes about the the job (the pens are nice, and he doesn't meant penitentiaries). Another cross thread started here (OK, Amber, you are a high-maintenance troublemaker too. It was nothing personal, but you don't confine yourself to the "Breakfast Table". ) Good discussion on death penalty starts with new star Ender here. In fact, there are good threads everywhere this week, none of them staying on topic for long, and all of them involving being rude to other posters: "the only reason you are elevated [to gold stars] is so the rest of us know who to make Ad hominem attacks against."]


Daniel,

Please restrain yourself. According to my calculations, at this rate you will have used up the world's supply of parentheses (left and right) by 2:21PM on Thursday

--Keith M. Ellis


(To reply, click here.)


[Tuesday notes from the Fray Editor: By sheer chance, the Fray index at one point reads:

The Mendelsohns are back!
Appropriate Police Action

We would like to stress that the second post was on a completely different subject: we don't want the Mendelsohns getting cross with us. And we're not going near the whole 'provincial hicks' area.

One highlight of the Mendelsohn's previous "Breakfast Table" was the occasional appearance of the Missing Mendelsohn Brothers, and we have an early sighting of one here. He was replying to Arthur Stock's evocatively named "Vote for your favorite Mendelsohn here" post. Neill Hamilton is the official troublemaker to the Breakfast Table Fray, and outdid himself, below.]


It's starting well: someone has called Texas elected officials retarded. Next, as a parent of teenagers I think that sibling arguments can be awful heated. I am open to suggestions as how to provoke one among the three siblings talking this week. Perhaps one of the topics they could address is which one of them was treated best by their parents. Or perhaps they could rehash embarrassing moments that one other sibling caused. Whatever, there is lots of potential here.

--Neill Hamilton

(To reply, click here.)

[Now read how Neill Hamilton, with the grumpiness we love him for, changed his mind...]


We [Joseph Britt, Arthur Stock and Will V] shamelessly shilled for the Mendelsohns when we occupied the [Fray posters'] Breakfast Table. It didn't take long for Slate to invite them back.

Wonder if they'll return the favor...

--WillV

(To reply, click here.)


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