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

Zoë Heller and James Wolcott

the breakfast table
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from: Zoë Heller

Perils of TV and the Sea

Posted Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2001, at 3:56 PM ET

Dear James,

I guess some of the Imus-worship on the part of people like Tim Russert has to do with how fawning and feeble the rest of the media tend to be when it comes to celebs. So many publications are obliged, these days, to grovel and tow the celebrity line for fear of having their "access" cut off by some harridan at PMK. In this context, you can see how Imus calling people "fat losers" might be mistaken for courage.

I see that Philip Weiss has written a set of tips and rules for celebrities in the New York Observer. One of his suggestions, sweetly enough, is that famous people should be honest with reporters. I'm not sure I really expect anything as grand as honesty from celebrities anymore. At this point, I settle for someone who can evade and lie by omission with a certain amount of wit and/or aplomb. (To read Zoë Heller's "Breakfast Table" with Weiss, click here.)

I haven't seen the Talk magazine with the Bush girls in jail. Is it funny? It doesn't sound it, but perhaps you have to be there. This Lloyd Grove: He seems to be on telly all the time. When does he ever write? Actually, I'm very admiring of hacks who go on television. I've tried doing it a couple of times and found it a completely humiliating experience. You sit for an hour or so having your face made orange and your hair whoofed up. Then, for another hour or so, you sit in a malodorous green room, eating stale carbohydrates. Eventually you get rushed onto the set, where for 30 seconds, you sputter your twittish contribution, before being whisked off in a town car to sit in a Lincoln Tunnel traffic jam for the rest of the afternoon. Back home, various people call up to let you know that your speech impediment was very prominent and to ask, what was going on with your hair? Anyone who can do this on a regular basis, without inflicting severe damage to his/her amour-propre, has my respect.

We have not talked about the latest shark attack story--the Wall Street banker who got his leg chomped while on holiday in the Bahamas. Apparently this guy bonked the shark on the nose, swam back to shore (holding his severed calf in his hand), and then had the presence of mind to write his hotel telephone number in the sand, before passing out. Just the other week, some man rescued his nephew from death by wrestling a shark in the surf. Hell's bells. All this heroism is setting a very alarming precedent. The next shark victim who is content to be attacked, who doesn't manage to enact some sort of dramatic retribution on the offending shark, is clearly going to be branded a pussy.

Zoë

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516171819
from: Zoë Heller

Perils of TV and the Sea

Posted Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2001, at 3:56 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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