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Alfred Gingold and Helen Rogan

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from: Alfred Gingold

Sex Scandals: The British Do It Better

Posted Monday, Aug. 27, 2001, at 5:23 PM ET

H--

Téa who?

I always turn first to People's reviews, hoping for a write-up of something new from Van Morrison, and instead there's a few words with Green Day's front man.

Quite apart from the wrecked lives, families, and careers that can follow in its wake, the English sex scandal is lot more fun than its American counterpart. Washington sex scandals tend to be about powerful men and susceptible women--not a pretty picture. British scandals focus more on the men-in-suits-doing-kinky-things aspect, and the women are often professionals. Archer, for example, is a bad guy who seems to have enjoyed his badness. That doesn't make him admirable, just more interesting than Condit, who just seems like a furtive, horny bureaucrat. The Brit scandal seems to involve less victimization somehow. Is this because of how they're reported, or is there something to this? I mean, the Condit affair is sure compelling, but at the same time absolutely raunchless, untitillating and, pondered for any length of time, depressing.

Americans in search of the sort of cheap thrills Britain's leaders regularly provide will have to look beyond Washington. I suggest the U.S. Open, which always throws me into my usual Grand Slam surface tizzy: Is hard court faster than grass? Or is grass faster than hard court? And how do they compare to clay? And which is this one?

And then, of course, there's the Humbert factor.

the breakfast table
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from: Alfred Gingold

Sex Scandals: The British Do It Better

Posted Monday, Aug. 27, 2001, at 5:23 PM ET
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Alfred Gingold has written eight books (including three with Helen Rogan) and for numerous magazines and Web sites. Helen Rogan, his wife, is the executive editor of My Generation, the AARP's magazine for baby boomers, and has written books and magazine articles.
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[Notes from the Fray Editor: Reparations and museums were the hot topics here. There was news from Tony Adragna that there is an African-American museum in DC. Elusive Fray poster Amyntas started a splendid discussion on reparations and taxcuts here, featuring posts titled "A nonsensical argument" and "Typical disingenuous twaddle." A high moral tone, and criticism of young women, were the common themes in two posts: a most unusual view on the Chandra Levy affair, here, and one on Tea Leoni here.]


The ambiguity of the reparations debate is what I like most about that entire issue. Whether reparations ever get paid or not (I suspect that they won't), to the extent that national attention gets focused on this issue, we'll be talking about basic moral issues.

Any serious discussion of this issue will involve questions of duty and obligation, culpability, history, values, rights and wrongs. In short, it will be (finally!) a public debate worthy of a democratic nation. Whatever conclusions we reach, either individually or as a nation, it seems likely that we will be better for having thought about these matters in depth

--Thrasymachus

(To reply, click here.)


 The CD-ROM thing is scary. How's Bloomberg going to top it? Will he try to make his hologram appear in all our living rooms?

--Claude Scales

(To reply, click here.)

 (8/28)

Didn't it ever bother anybody else that the Weathermen took their name from a line in "Subterranean Homesick Blues" that implied that a weatherman is superfluous under the circumstances? Is this part and parcel of the Marxist-v.-Leninist- historical-determinist conundrum? (i.e., that if historical/economic forces are pushing toward an inevitable result, why do they need me to help them along? As it is sometimes put, if Marx didn't exist, it would be unnecessary to invent him.) That felt good--somebody call me a jackal, it really brings me back...

--Ex-Fed

(To reply, click here.)


 I happened to walk by the site of the Village explosion the morning of the event. The exposed apartments, with their wall clocks and tables precariously clinging to the ordinary around the gaping proof of anti-civic rage; the apartments seemed like a stage set for some kind of apocalyptic Beckett drama. The scene was mute, webbed with the yellow crime scene tapes of the municipal police. A mix of fear and curiosity animated the passers-by. I stood and stared, hearing the news in bits and pieces. Suddenly I noticed a sign, hand lettered, pinned to the police sawhorse. I looked closer and saw a few others, same hand, same posting method. In repeated, and therefore intentional orthography, the phrase "nothning is free" was scrawled in black marker on typing paper.

The phrase burned itself into my subconscious. I have never seen it since, nor heard it mentioned in the context of the Weathermen or other underground groups.

Nothning is free. Even if it has escaped justice. Especially if it has escaped justice.

--Zeitguy

(To reply, click here.)

 (8/31)





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