The Misanthrope's Corner

National Review, Dec 31, 1998 by Florence King

Miss King can be reached at P. O. Box 7113, Fredericksburg, Va. 22404.

DEAR Gentle Readers: Here we are again, the last issue of the year and time for my Christmas letter. I always look forward to it because it's the only time I don't have to argue a point or prove anything. I can just relax and write an ordinary letter, the kind I write to Andy Ferguson-minus the unprintable jokes, of course-and be as meandering as I wanna be.

I'll start with the cheerful news. I've stuck to my Passive Suicide Diet and am thinking of writing a cookbook called This Will Kill You. Here's a sample menu. B: two fried eggs with scrapple; L: chili over rice; D: three martinis, ham steak, creamed corn, and cheese rolls. My object is an obit containing words like "suddenly" and "massive." Before you start chiding me, ask yourselves this: Can you see me in a nursing home, playing bingo, watching soap operas, and being called "honey" by the arts 'n' crafts lady?

This year I had a golden opportunity to dabble in my favorite anthropological hobby of idiom-dating. Did it strike you as strange that Monica's famous soiled dress was invariably called a "cocktail dress" by media people in their twenties and thirties? They don't even drink cocktails; where did they get that anachronism? It conjured up a picture of Monica rustling around in a taffeta number with a circular skirt down to mid-calf and a halter neck that bared the back-i.e., the dress I had in 1953, which I called a cocktail dress. Now tell me this: Who, of all those involved in the scandal, is exactly my age? Answer: Lucianne Goldberg.

Judge not, lest ye be judged judgmental. That's okay, I don't mind. The year brought three new hatreds, or at least clarifications of old ones. I finally put my finger on what it is about Geraldo Rivera that makes me recoil. He reminds me of the street stud in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, Vivien Leigh's next-to-last movie, based on a Tennessee Williams novella about a rich American widow who buys love from European gigolos. Although able to afford the best, she cannot shake her fascination for the scruffy young tramp who follows her on her fashionable rounds and stares at her through the windows of five-star restaurants. The lower she sinks the more often he turns up, a symbol of her fate. Finally one night she sees him under the windows of her house. Zombie-like, her will gone, she tosses her key down to him.

I tried to like Ken Starr but his interview with Diane Sawyer finished him for me. What I feel now is not hatred but contempt, which is worse. The open-collar plaid shirt, calling his wife his "spouse," the whole dimple- flashing, soft-voicing, imploring routine made me want to throw up. We're going see a lot more of this when Compassionate Conservatism starts cranking up for Campaign 2000. What is this terrible need to be liked by liberals? If you have the good fortune to be a real S.O.B., don't spoil it.

Anybody who hates Windows as much as I do is bound to hate Bill Gates, but I have another bone to pick with him. He's neither eccentric in the Ford- Edison-Carnegie mold, nor a striding, steely-eyed psychopath of industry in the Ayn Rand mold. He is simply the living, breathing, whining personification of the word "brat."

I bought a ball of string the other day, and would you believe? It has a warning label: "Do not use in situations where personal safety could be endangered. Never use this product to secure large flat surfaces or objects which could 'airplane.' Misuse could result in serious injury or death."

Thank God for my diet. At least it will save me from one of those ignominious finales insurance companies call "household accidents." Imagine some graduate student of the future looking me up in American Women Writers of the Twentieth Century and reading: "She died suddenly from a massive misuse of string."

The mailman can't get all my catalogues into my box so I had to put an old card table in the lobby for the overflow. I've gotten expert at separating the wheat from the chaff, though I enjoy browsing through the latter for sociological insights.

A whole group of catalogues plays into the feeling of being overwhelmed. There's an organizer box for every conceivable kind of clutter, including the clutter that comes from having too many organizer boxes.

Another group plays into our desire to have all our problems solved by magic bullets. In the world of gizmo catalogues, utopia is a universal pot lid. No matter what is plaguing you, there's a non-stick, scratch-begone, wipe-away, wrinkle-free, iron-on, add-a-shelf cure for it. My favorite is the Bra Bridle: "At last! No more bra or slip straps sliding off your shoulders!" I suppose this would have been useful once, but nothing slides off me now; even water gets stuck.

NOW for my Catalogue-of-the-Year award. I bought a tam in the Lindsay tartan (no relation, I just like the colors) from a Celtic woolens catalogue. A month or so later I got the bagpipe catalogue, but the best was yet to come.

It came. Now I can order everything I'll need to take part in a re-enactment of the battle of Bannockburn from Medieval Warfare Replicas: claymores, maces, poleaxes, chain mail, bevor sallets (helmets), and a complete suit of Duke of Burgundy armor ("fully articulated and wearable") at the unbeatable price of $2,495.