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Zoë Heller and James Wolcott

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from: Zoë Heller

Talk Show Sanctimony, Drugs, and the New Essays About Monica

Posted Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2001, at 1:39 PM ET

You cover so much ground, James, I hardly know where to begin. Perhaps I should respond first to the little jab at Victoria Gotti that you slipped in last night. For God's sake, don't go impugning Vicky. Her hiring is the only halfway witty thing that the Post has done since the new guy took over. Did you read her column on Sunday? It was a gem.

You're really feeling sorry for Condit, aren't you? I share your general disapproval of the talk show sanctimony--the phony moral outrage, etc. But actually, the notion of Condit's constituents getting together to hold a support rally for the guy strikes me as a bit nuts. It's one thing to remind the froth-mouthed CNN women that a person is innocent until proven guilty. But even if Condit is innocent and even if he has done super-duper work for the people in his district, he is still a guy who held off for 67 days from telling the truth about his relationship with a missing young woman. You have to put up an awful lot of new traffic lights to make up for that.

I read that Economist piece about drugs. I thought it was pretty thrilling that such an august and influential journal should come out in favor of legalization. It's interesting that on the drugs issue, some of the most radical thinking is coming from conservative quarters, whereas liberal discussions of the problem (e.g., last year's much vaunted Traffic) are content with the old wish-wash, i.e., keep going after the bad guy dealers and cut down your kids' available free-basing time by playing a lot of softball with them.

What do you make of the price that Clinton is getting for his new book? Is this what they call a loss-leader for Sonny Mehta, or is there some devilish, intricate way that I don't know about for extracting a profit from such a deal? Yesterday, you mentioned that new book of essays about the "meaning" of Monica Lewinsky. What a lot of bollocks it looks like. Did you read some of the excerpts in the Times? Increasingly, these essay volumes seem to be no more than a bunch of people vying to appropriate the subject under discussion for their own particular area of identity politics. Toni Morrison says that Clinton was our first black president. Someone else argues that he was our first white-trash president. Then a gay guy pops up to say that Bill was actually the first "queer" president. Meanwhile someone else is arguing for Monica being a lightening rod for America's ideas about Jewishness. I'm so bored with this kind of low-level, faux-semiotic baloney. It's either fancy statements of the obvious or fancy statements of the palpably false.

I haven't read the Tina and Harry book yet either. I did read a very unexciting excerpt the other day. My general impression is that Judy Bachrach delivers a lot of snarly attitude but not much of the goods. Her juiciest dish about Tina seems to be that she once went to the Oscars with dry cleaning foil still on the buttons of her Chanel suit. As Tina stories go, this strikes me as positively endearing.

Zoë

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516171819
from: Zoë Heller

Talk Show Sanctimony, Drugs, and the New Essays About Monica

Posted Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2001, at 1:39 PM ET
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Zoë Heller is a columnist for the London Daily Telegraph and author of the novel Everything You Know. James Wolcott is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and author of the novel The Catsitters.
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