_______________ NO IRONY PLEASE -- WE'RE LEFTISTS BY JAMES PONIEWOZIK (05/13/98)
	With enemies as incompetent as James Poniewozik, the Nation does not need friends. He does not like the Nation because, I am not making this up, it fails him as "a fashion accessory." His critique of the magazine's alleged lack of a sense of humor or irony is based on exactly, I am not making this up, one article. The article in question is written by a Ms. Ruth Conniff, who is an editor of the Progressive, and whose name appears nowhere on the Nation's masthead. His critique, if it can be called that, also mentions a single book review, also by an author whose name is nowhere to be found on the magazine's masthead. He does not deal with the names that do appear, such as Christopher Hitchens, Calvin Trillin, Victor Navasky, Katha Pollitt or myself, who, I immodestly add, have respective senses of humor and irony that are to Mr. Poniewozik's what the Nation's paid circulation (104,000) is to Salon's (zip). His discussion of Nation writers' television performance also ignores all of the above, though they comprise by far the lion's share of the magazine's representation on television. Don't get me wrong. I love Salon, where I am a frequent contributor, and consider it an important addition to the nation's literary landscape. The Nation's cultural coverage could learn a great deal from its example. And I don't mind that it sees fit to print such obvious lunatics as David Horowitz and Camille Paglia, since everyone knows these people to be crazy and hence reads them with the requisite grains of salt. But no one I know has ever heard of Mr. Poniewozik. We therefore expect that he is being published because he has something intelligent -- or at least intelligible -- to say. The fact that he seeks to hang his final point on, I am not making this up, the trailers for a movie he has apparently not yet seen is almost too much to be believed. The trailer?! I have heard of lazy reporters before, but this is truly a new height. Go see the movie, James. You probably won't learn anything -- or even find it funny for that matter -- but it will at least keep you out of trouble for two hours. -- Eric Alterman James Poniewozik's beef with the left seems to be that the left's version of the revolution will not be televised, and thus rendered incomprehensible to intellects such as his own. Because his essay is entirely devoid of ideas -- as opposed to snide remarks -- I'm forced to conclude that his mind has severely atrophied, thanks no doubt to a diet heavy in the banalities of the infotainment industry. In this spirit, I can offer him only one piece of advice: Happy viewing. -- Mark Rickling Charlottesville, Va. Oh dear. Where to begin? First off, Mr. Poniewozik's opinions are extraordinarily misinformed, not to mention malformed. I wonder, really, how he thinks the right would react if the Bible were "marketed" the way "The Communist Manifesto" has been recently? Would he suppose there would be a great silence? If so, he should not be writing essays such as these. I can think of three brilliant -- not to mention witty -- left-wing commentators who could easily avoid "having their rhetorical clocks cleaned" on TV talk shows: Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn. Gee, I wonder why we almost never see them? Could it be because of the very fact of their brilliance and, especially in Chomsky's case, debate acumen that their counterparts on the right are afraid of them? They should be: In 1969 Chomsky debated William F. Buckley on "Firing Line" about America's involvement in Vietnam and -- if you'll pardon the expression -- whipped his patrician ass. Buckley was humiliated and has never invited Chomsky back since. As for the Nation, well, I guess we lefties are damned if we do and damned if we don't. If we create a glossy, hip and visually interesting "mag," we are hypocrites. If our publishing style reflects our beliefs (gray and serious), then we are to blame for our perceived irrelevancy. I think that Mr. Poniewozik's essay was replete with so much patent nonsense that it isn't even worth writing about beyond this sentence. -- Robert Anderson James Poniewozik's article made the rather remarkable claim that the left wasn't serious about winning because Sen. Paul Wellstone, touted by the Nation for president, was bald. Preemptively labeling the observation as shallow doesn't make it any less shallow. An eclectic assortment of names popped into my shiny head: Lenin, Mao, Churchill, Mussolini, Tojo, Nehru, Eisenhower, Ben-Gurion, Gorbachev, Mitterrand. These gentlemen, and their followers, would have been flabbergasted to learn that they were disqualified from high political office because of their lack of hair -- that in fact they weren't to be taken seriously. -- Robert Cole
_______________ R.I.P., BUZZ BY CATHERINE SEIPP (05/11/98)
	What Catherine Seipp fails to reveal about Buzz magazine is that several days before its sale to Los Angeles magazine, Buzz won the top Western magazine awards for best overall magazine and best city magazine. Others beg to differ with Cathy's withering assessment of Buzz, it seems. Why a journalist would welcome the closing of a publication by its competition is also baffling. Can't she get over being fired? As for quoting New Times' bilious prose about Buzz, that's rich. New Times is one of a stable of corporate-owned tabloids masquerading as alternative weeklies. Rather than take its chances in L.A.'s newspaper market, New Times bought the competition and shut it down. So you've got an embittered reporter who earns her living belittling others quoting a petulant journalist who pretends he works for the alternative press. To quote Seipp: There's something a little ugly about this. -- Veronique de Turenne Former Buzz contributor
_______________ LES BIRDS ET LES BEES BY DEBRA S. OLLIVIER (05/12/98)
	Deborah S. Ollivier's article on French attitudes toward sexuality and childhood remind me of my own experience growing up in Germany. I would wager that her experience reflects a generally more open attitude toward sex found in Europe (on the continent, at least). A 5-year-old running around naked at the public pool or on the beach was no big deal. Girls went topless pretty much until they started showing. We had mixed-sex sleepovers and took baths together at age 7. There was frank sex ed in the fifth grade (where, incidentally, I learned from a biology textbook how sex worked). When I came to the U.S. at age 11, I found that the sexes rarely hung out together at school, that mothers encouraged 2-year-olds (!) to think of members of the opposite sex as girl/boyfriends. When people talked of cooties or birds and bees, I only stared blindly. We had to get our parents to sign permission forms for us to learn about sex in the seventh grade. -- Stephan von Pohl SALON | May 15, 1998