Where have all the Eddie Haskells gone?
BY KAREN KARBO
(09/24/99)
I shook my head as I read Karen Karbo's sorrowful lament about her lack of coolness in the presence of her stepdaughter's friends. There are few scenes more pitiful than that of an adult in search of lost youth and acceptance among her child's peers. It seems that ocean America is teeming with parental invertebrates who lack the courage and the good sense to stand up for what they believe is right.

How can parents expect children to make the right decisions, to use the N-word (no) when many parents can't bring themselves to use it? To her credit, Karbo gets it right when she says, "The baby boomers' Achilles' heel is that we need to be cool. We want to be mothers, but we don't want to be the mother, the one who says no." Boomers need to get over this silly obsession with being cool. Deal with it and move on.

The fact that Amber felt free to use the F-word in front of her friend's mother and then punctuate her statement with a graphic visual aid says as much about the mother's lack of presence as it does about Amber's substandard upbringing. All in all, it makes for sad commentary on the state of the American family.

-- Richard Morris

Eddie Haskell certainly could have been sure that neither June Cleaver nor his own mother would ever have claimed to "use the F-word as liberally as the hero in anything written by David Mamet" when the kids aren't around. I personally am lost past the initial shock that almost universally today, otherwise well-bred, extremely classy professional career women, in senior management positions no less, swear like longshoremen in public. If today's adult leaders can't hold themselves to a higher standard (and believe me, our kids know what we're up to), how can we expect civilized behavior from our kids?

-- Robert Maistros
Ashburn, Va.

I don't think Karen Karbo quite understood the dynamics happening at her stepdaughter's birthday party. Amber was flirting with you. It was your "cool mom" test. My guess is that she was trying to make you laugh, inviting you to be more than a cake-serving, interloping stepmom. Study the comic timing of the seemingly offhand remark -- it popped out of her mouth just as you plopped truffle cake on her plate! She offered up an icebreaker, and did you flirt back (a shriek, some eye widening, a bit of laughter, for God's sake), thrilled at her audacity in using bad language just for you? No. You ignored the brave child.

And you failed the cool mom test.

The only question lingering in my mind is: What would your mom have done at the party? Sounds like she was way ahead of her time.

-- Roz Hawley

D-I-V-O-R-C-E TV
BY JOYCE MILLMAN
(09/27/99)

Joyce Millman's review of "Family Law" fascinated me; having watched the premiere, I couldn't help but wonder how a show with such a fundamentally ludicrous premise -- a husband-and-wife law firm on the splits, where one spouse literally steals the entire firm (lock, stock and client list) out from under the other's nose, virtually overnight, without the wronged party even having the tiniest whiff that something was amiss until she walks into the freshly emptied room -- ever made it on the air.

But apparently this was a mere device to usher in the real raison d'etre of the show: the gleeful embrace of naked misandry writ as uplifting empowerment. Can anyone imagine a network television program in 1999 with a male character hiring a divorce lawyer who promises not only to win, but to leave the soon-to-be-ex broken and whimpering on the carpet? Or hiring an attorney whose self-professed qualifications for the job are 1) "I hate women", and 2) "I play very dirty"?

It makes perfect sense, though, in the world of "Family Law," since there are no good men. Every male character is either malignant, sleazy or stupid, or at the least weak and hopelessly confused. Even the male children are faulted -- when the 11-year-old son of the addict mother acts out in anger at mom's attempts to regain custody (after abandoning her children for her habit) by leaving a rock of crack cocaine within temptation's reach, he is accused of being (gasp!) "childish."

Indeed, the only "acceptable" males in the premiere episode are either hunks to be ogled, or sources of much-needed cash. The lone male attorney who is accepted into the ranks of the newly reconstituted firm of Holt & Associates makes the cut because he is both -- first mistaken for a beefy moving man (and summarily ogled), then accepted, albeit grudgingly, because even though he is a sleazy personal injury attorney who does commercials advertising his services, the firm will get a bite of his sizeable, um, billables.

The underlying message of the show isn't even underlying: "Family Law" announces in bold and certain terms that Men are Scum -- except for the ones we need for cash or sex. As a signpost of the popular Zeitgeist, it sends a chilling message: Payback may be a bitch, guys, but wait till you meet her lawyer.

-- C. Spector

Nice married guys
BY J.M. FITZROY
(09/25/99)

Why "J.M. Fitzroy" -- who lives and loves under another name -- listened to that pathetic loser for as long as she did amazes me. As a single man, let's just say I'm embarrassed for my half of the species.

-- Erik Milstone
St. Petersburg, Fla.

Fitzroy states, "Married men have a fantastic ability, better even than journalists, to detach themselves from reality as if they were not participants in life." On finishing her story, I found this claim highly ironic. I'd wager that it applies to her much more aptly than it does to most married men, particularly when she is not acting as a journalist. Rationalization, projection, self-denial: She needs to reread that article and focus those psychoanalytical tactics on herself (objectively this time). At least one of us has learned something indeed.

-- Michael W. Anderson
Alameda, Calif.

Internet icons on parade?
BY JANELLE BROWN
(09/24/99)

Sure, maybe "a lot more kids will know who Jeeves is" after the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade -- but if Janelle Brown's article is any indication, they will remain unacquainted with the stalwart butler's creator, the British writer P.G. Wodehouse, and his hilarious evocations of 1920s upper-crust Britain. This is unfortunate, since Wodehouse's Jeeves stories, many written during the first third of this century, stand as masterful examples of the use of the English language in comic writing and, as such, transcend their era. For anyone who can appreciate the idea of highbrow (or maybe just "arched brow") literature laced with howl-inducing farce, I advise the immediate acquisition of "Right Ho, Jeeves." See if it isn't one of the funniest books you've ever read, and see if you do not return to it and the other Jeeves stories again and again.

-- John Mason
Austin, Texas

Is this what we are to expect of the cyber age: the rapid oblivion of the culture of the printed word? Janelle Brown should at least do her homework. Even the inimitable Reginald Jeeves can be found on the Internet.

-- Mark Stoll
Lubbock, Texas

Maslin bails, critics rail
BY SEAN ELDER
(09/23/99)

I am sad to hear Janet Maslin is leaving the Times. When I read a movie review, I want three things: some prediction of whether I will enjoy the movie being reviewed, guideposts by which to interpret and respond to the movie and good, intelligent writing. In my experience, only the New York Times provides all of these; in fact, only the Times provides any of these. I really appreciate Maslin's willingness to judge a movie in terms of its own ambitions, and not by narrow snobbish or populist taste: If it's an art movie, does it succeed in pushing our boundaries and taking us to a place we've never been? If it's a big, dumb action movie, does it succeed in giving us a rush and getting stuff blowed up good, real good? Naturally, there are moments when I disagree with her taste ("Titanic" and "Face/Off" as two of the top 10 films of 1997?), but I have found her reviews to be extremely helpful and perceptive.

-- Aaron Hertzmann

Buchanan, McCain go head-to-head
BY JAKE TAPPER
(09/24/99)

Jake Tapper, though in a distinct minority as a member of the Fourth Estate willing to call Buchanan for the bigot he obviously is, could easily have pointed out still more ironies. Though Nixon indeed thought that Buchanan was a bit far out from reality on the race issue, it was Nixon who sent his errand boy to "count the Jews at Justice," and who blew minority voters off with "They don't vote for us anyway." And it was Buchanan who wrote the words dutifully read by the First Idiot in that German cemetery: "The S.S. were victims, too."

-- Frank Smith
Bluff City, Kan.

Once again, Buchanan has shown himself to be a bully, a bigot and an embarrassment. No sensible American should regard him as anything but a joke. Unfortunately, there are enough of his type rattling around in the body politic to make things scary. Sen. McCain has nothing to apologize for. It is about time someone of his stature took on this loudmouthed bigot. As for painting himself as a victim now -- isn't that always the case when you call a bully's bluff?

-- Al Schlaf
Des Moines, Iowa

Political circus
BY MICAH L. SIFRY AND DOUG IRELAND
(09/25/99)

In Micah L. Sifry and Doug Ireland's article, there are six different instances where someone is speaking about Trump, or on his behalf, and in each case the source is unnamed. The article included descriptors such as "one of the Donald's political consultants," "a Trump advisor," "a non-Washington counselor" and "the top executive of one of Trump's companies." Why isn't anyone willing to speak on the record about their association with Trump? With so many unnamed spokespersons, it leads me to wonder: Is "the Donald" running a one-man campaign?

-- Mike Tronnes
Minneapolis

Murky future for tax cuts
BY SARAH KEECH
(09/24/99)

At a time when Americans are finally realizing that the Social Security program has been raped by past administrations and that the books have been cooked by the Unified Budget Act, for the administration to veto an across-the-board tax cut is unconscionable! The targeted tax cuts that the administration is pushing does not grant relief to the right people. As a late-40s baby boomer with no kids at home, I am a member of the most highly taxed group of Americans, and Clinton's tax proposal gives this group no help. This group must try to make up the shortfall for retirement years created by the abuse of SSA funds.. We will probably be dependent on the government without some relief from excessive taxation. I hope the plight of upper 40s empty nesters is examined more closely.

-- Dave Atkins
Pleasant Hope, Mo.

If we leave the money in Washington, that's something like hiring rats to guard the cheese. The thing to do is go for the flat tax with a generous standard exemption, so that the people at the bottom get to keep their money. If they can do it fast enough, Y2K will become a non-problem for millions of people -- and the IRS.

-- Jerome C. Borden
Antelope, Calif.