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

Alfred Gingold and Helen Rogan

the breakfast table
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from: Alfred Gingold

Quick Fixes and Snap Solutions

Posted Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2001, at 4:45 PM ET

My reading list is in flux, but it's a safe bet that Straight from the Gut won't make the cut. Just the title makes me want to reach for the Maalox, springing as it does from the same macho impulse that makes too many lawyers I have known describe what they do as being "in the trenches." Puhleese.

Executive autobiographies and weirdo how-to books sell for the same reason lottery tickets do: magical thinking. Who doesn't want a snap solution, whatever the problem? Back in the '80s, Dress for Success said that success depends on the color of the tie or cut of the suit. Everything was very carefully researched and laid out according to regional preference, so there were grave warnings against wearing brown suits in New York or black ones in the Midwest (Save 'em for NY, I guess). The Prayer of Jabez, at least, keeps it simple.

Which is not to be said for the prognosticators I consulted the last time we refinanced, which was also the last time I made a stab at economic understanding. I spent much too much of every day reading the business section and flicking on the Money Wheel or whatever that show is called. I read all the 20-20 hindsight evaluations of what happened the day before and thought there was some way I could figure out what was going to happen with interest rates. And what did I learn? That U.S. markets rise and fall on how certain people feel about how other people are feeling, and that the chain of feeling usually ends with Greenspan. Perhaps if he wore a more success-oriented suit next time he goes to the Hill. ...

My magical thinking seems to have peaked around the time I took my SATs. The new national averages have just been announced, and I realized that I still recall my scores precisely. Two of three people I checked with remembered theirs, too. It's not that I have any respect for the damn things. I was delighted when Scarsdale (or was it some other Westchester 'burb?) High stayed away from them en masse. But they are imprinted, just the way the songs that get stuck in your head are never ones you like.

the breakfast table
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from: Alfred Gingold

Quick Fixes and Snap Solutions

Posted Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2001, at 4:45 PM ET

DISCUSS

E-MAIL

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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Reader Comments From The Fray:

[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

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(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

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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

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(8/31)