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Jonathan Lear and Andrew Sullivan

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from: Jonathan Lear

Pity and Fear, or Pity and Contempt?

Posted Thursday, Aug. 23, 2001, at 4:06 PM ET

Andrew,

I looked up the article you mentioned, "Police Say Antigay Threats Were a Hoax." The most significant fact in the article, I think, had nothing to do with the hoaxer's sexual identity: It is that he is a newcomer to the school. I love the image of the hoaxer, Mr. Drago, at "an anti-hate rally"--were there any protesters in favor of hate?--saying: "I'm not scared of you. Come and get me." In deference to your sensibilities, I'll avoid further reference to a certain someone who is going to be on television tonight. It's a little like O.J. demanding that Nicole's killer stand up like a man and come out and fight him.

And for the second time this week, the question arises of how to punish a pathological liar: Mr. Drago is not allowed to go back to school. I'd be in favor of making him take a class from Joe Ellis and telling Mr. Ellis that, no, he cannot have a year's unpaid sabbatical as his "punishment"; he's got to spend the year teaching Mr. Drago. All we're missing is the Mikado.

Come to think of it, if you can pull any strings with the Blair government, perhaps we could get Jeffrey Archer to attend, too. Or we could have a reality TV show where the first one to believe any of the others gets thrown off the island.

By the way, do you think Mr. Drago is gay? After all, he also claimed to be epileptic. If they had given him another month, he might have contracted cancer. A number of years ago, when I was teaching at another university, a student asked me for an extension for a paper and gave as her reason that her roommate had cancer. The roommate didn't want to let her parents know and had only told her boyfriend and my student. She had six months to live. And she was getting skinnier by the day. ... But that is because she had an eating disorder and was subsisting on Diet Coke. Each day she'd "go to the hospital for chemotherapy" and come back gaunt and with a gauze bandage on her arm. In short, she drove her boyfriend and my student around the bend for months, until one day they tried to find her in the hospital ... and, guess what, the hospital had never heard of her. When confronted she threatened to commit suicide. And so on. I've heard through the grapevine that this same student repeated this same drama at another school years later with a new cast of characters.

You ask whether to feel pity or contempt or both for Kathy Boudin. I don't know how one should feel, but I am so glad you did not use the phrase "beneath contempt," which I hate. Most things said to be "beneath contempt" are actually quite contemptible. Aristotle says that tragedy carries out a catharsis through pity and fear. Perhaps to capture those times we need a literary genre that stirs our pity and contempt.

Andrew, enjoy the rest of your time in P'town. It's been fun "talking" with you.

Jonathan

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Jonathan Lear

Pity and Fear, or Pity and Contempt?

Posted Thursday, Aug. 23, 2001, at 4:06 PM ET
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Jonathan Lear is a member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. His most recent book is Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life. Andrew Sullivan writes daily for andrewsullivan.com, writes the "TRB" column for the New Republic, and is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine.
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