THE GRIPES OF ROTH: "Another instance of the
new patriotism?" That's what TAP columnist Frank Rocca asked when
he sent me the following:
"Criticizing McDonald's is pure idiocy. McDonald's is a
café for the poor, the elderly and the lonely, and as such
it carries out an admirable form of social service. It's clean,
cheap and well-lit. It has the best French fries in the world and
it allows you to use the toilet without ordering anything. I go
there all the time. It's my café, too."
The speaker is none other than the austere Philip Roth, in an
interview with "Corriere della Sera." Frank saw the quote in the
paper's English-language "Italy Daily" sister publication, though
it remains unclear whether the words are as they were originally
spoken, or whether they're a rerendering into English from the
Italian translation of the original. This is no small matter;
curious literary scholars will want to know. They'll conclude that
Roth is again playing games with them.
As Frank notes, retranslations can be great fun. "Remember the
old joke about the English-to-Russian-to-English translation of the
Gospels that yielded: 'The ghost is ready but the meat is
raw'?"
KNOCKDOWN PITCH:The new patriotism reasserts
itself in unexpected ways. A letter in the April 1 issue of the New
Yorker slaps down the knee-jerk liberal creator of "West Wing" for
what he said in a much talked about Talk of the Town column a month
ago. This time not even Peggy
Noonan is around to save him. Listen:
"BALLPARK BRAVERY
"Aaron Sorkin, the creator of 'The West Wing,' complains to Tad
Friend that 'we're simply pretending to believe that Bush exhibited
unspeakable courage at the World Series by throwing out the first
pitch at Yankee Stadium. . . . The media is waving pompoms, and the
entire country is being polite' (The Talk of the Town, March 4th).
If this act wasn't courageous, then what is? At an uncertain time,
soon after the attacks, Bush walked out into the middle of a
baseball field surrounded by fifty-five thousand people, any one of
whom could have been a threat. Has Sorkin ever been in a comparable
position? Sorkin, who admits that Bush has handled the crisis well,
also says that 'it's absolutely right that at this time we're all
laying off the bubblehead jokes.' He's not doing the President any
favors; lately, Bush just hasn't done anything bubbleheaded."
The letter is signed by Joseph Duh of Bridgeport, Conn., and
there's no second letter to balance Duh's point of view. But what
about the New Yorker's patented fact-checking? Surely Yankee
Stadium would contain more than 55,000 for a World Series game.
(Both the A.P. and L.A. Times said more than 57,000 attended the
game in question, no including more that 1,000 extra police. A
two-thousand plus disparity may seem negligible -- but as the
magazine's Hendrik Hertzberg would be the first to tell you, that
amount would have been enough to clinch Florida and the presidency
for his man Al Gore.)
OUT WITH THE OLD:How unfortunate that National Review Online doesn't
have a Correspondence section. Maybe then we'd see many heated
reactions to NRO's redesign, which debuted yesterday. Clearly the
new look is cleaner, but the site also seems diminished, at least
if the main-impression forming home page is any indication. Before,
the home page let ever user know NRO had a corner on the market.
Now I'm not so sure. Without the old clutter, the site now appears
less busy and clearly more staid than it should. Worst of all, the
previous day's entries are relegated to a tiny-print area near the
bottom of the home page, as if to tell readers: don't bother,
yesterday is old, only today matters. Conservatives and carpe diem
didn't used to get along so well.
LETTER RIP Correspondence sections can be a thing
of beauty. Clearly they're a must for any publication that respects
its readers, or at least publishes writers who crave feedback. Of
course not every letter to the editor writer necessarily respects
his potential readers. James Carville, for instance, spat out
another unseemly wad of gunk in a
letter to the Washington Post earlier this week in which he
again attacked Kenneth Starr as a "cigarette lawyer" but also
implied the Post was corrupt for not divulging its indebtedness to
Starr owing to a 1987 libel case in which his ruling supposedly
saved the Post a million dollars. (Carville must write from
personal experience, having worked for a guy who apparently could
be bought for a lot less.) After an encounter like that the first
thing that comes to mind is why Mrs. Carville is tolerated around
the White House. Then you walk yourself through a carwash.
One curious thing about Carville is his insistence on claiming
the ethical highground right after he's resorted to malicious
slander against a former legal officer of the United States. There
seems to be a pattern to such moral posturing. On the Post
correspondence page one can get away with it easily enough, since
most of the letters that appear there are respectable in content
and tone. But go, say, to the "Fray" part of Slate.com, and you'll
be amazed at the low quality of discourse that seemingly
respectable site attracts. Yesterday, for instance, Slate's Timothy
Noah pummeled man of
"conscience" David Brock as a liar. Brock immediately replied.
Before that reply was posted right after Noah's piece late last
night, it appeared first amid the free-for-all letters the unvetted
Fray attracts. So there was Brock, literally bottom-feeding
alongside the likes of a letter writer named "Pussdick," who wants
to date him. There's got to be a better way.
topics:
Law, Russia, Oil
