_______________DECONSTRUCTING THE KENNEDYS BY CAMILLE PAGLIA (01/06/98)

How could Salon have posted Camille's little squirt about the Kennedys? Her bad girl act is no surprise but finding it in Salon's digital space is yet another example of your too frequent lurches into the bozo zone. The knucklehead pieces stand out because there is, at other times, such wonderful writing in the zine. It's not so much that Salon's mired in sex, sex, sex (I don't care if you're obsessed with the old in and out and think that's a good way to garner readership), but Salon's Vanity Foolish obsession with the worst of pop culture unstories is uncalled for. Salon's endless Diana coverage alone was enough to shame most decent publications for a couple years. That great unevent deserved at most a wonderfully bile-ish piece from Hitchens and then you should've dropped it. I know that in order for Salon to be heard in the roar of cyberspace, it must make a noise. But surely Salon doesn't have to yell so loud it loses control and soils itself. How else can one characterize Paglia's ooze when she writes that the decline of the Kennedys comes in part from the fact that RFK was shot in a kitchen instead of a limousine? Or that RFK's "character and talents have been wildly exaggerated. In my opinion, he was a weasel cloaking himself in the banner of the poor"? That may well be little Camy's twisted view, but it certainly doesn't merit publishing. Don't get me wrong, I hold no reverence for pop culture figures and I'm not about to argue that the Kennedys deserve respect at this terrible time blah, blah, blah. I'm all for Salon titillating us once in a while with its vicious cynicism. But I do argue that most of these unstories don't belong in Salon. I thought the publication was here to make us think and to tell us stuff we didn't know -- which it still does with Jonathan Broder's reports from Washington and Joyce Millman's wonderful essays about TV and many of the writers in the news section as well as Scott Rosenberg's take-no-prisoners column on cyber stuff. I write this passionate hate letter because I love Salon and have such high hopes for it. But its schizophrenic nature will ruin it. Maybe you could put the magazine on a regular Thorazine regimen so those crazed voices that pander to the worst elements of our celebrity-obsessed culture will just shut the fuck up. Tough love and kisses, -- David Israels As I started to read Camille Paglia's diatribe about Michael Kennedy's death, I felt like I was going to vomit. It's unfortunate that she feels the need to vent her own bitterness toward someone's (and a family's) suffering and grieving. Perhaps someone needs to shed a tear for her. -- Kirk Walsh SALON | Jan. 8, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| IS KACZYNSKI CRAZY ENOUGH TO BE SAVED? BY ROS DAVIDSON

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