Welcome to the Culture Burn Ward

There I was, sitting at the brass-railed open bar with a posh knot of gents in blazers and bowties, jawboning the culture wars. By the third Tanqueray and tonic, a warm haze of nostalgia had swept me away. Drinking top-shelf gin on somebody else’s dime and discussing the Great Ideas stripped off ten years and twenty pounds… I felt like an undergrad again. I’d met these fine fellows through a highbrow conservative journal, and for hours felt right at home, telling school tales of tweedy old Commies and multiculturalists in dashikis. But as we emptied the seventh priceless round, the conversation turned; it left the smooth black asphalt road with its bright yellow lines, and plowed me right into the woods. I should have known better, I guess, than to mention abortion.

The topic was Teddy Kennedy, and I cited his abandonment of the unborn as one more glittering facet of his gem-like moral squalor. At that, the blondest guy present — a crew jock, gone slightly to seed — gave a little harrumph. Another gent nodded knowingly. The third just looked away. A better-bred man would have taken the silent hint, and changed the subject to Hilary Clinton, but I am a mailman’s son from Queens. So I barreled ahead.