_______________PRINCESS MONICA BY LORI LEIBOVICH (10/06/98)
	Lori Leibovich can't have it both ways: bemoaning and propagating the JAP stereotype. Of all of the people I've heard give an opinion of Monica Lewinsky, only the Jewish women have mentioned her race. As a matter of fact, I didn't know she was Jewish until one of these women brought it to my attention. I hate to burst Leibovich's bubble, but to the rest of the world, Monica's ethnicity has not defined her persona. It is defined by her behavior and her (lack of) character -- regardless of her religion. -- Diane Kamerzel Lori Leibovich's article on "Princess Monica" gave light to something Jews everywhere have been thinking for weeks, so it was very gratifying to see it in print. As I read along I kept wondering when she would address Monica's apparent non-frigidity, since that was certainly the one additional attribute about the stereotype I remember from my high school days. Stereotypes are never kind, but the term "JAP" was undoubtedly invented by Jews to describe a particularly unpleasant group in our ethnic ranks that looked down upon the rest of us plebeians. (We also have an expression for obnoxious Israeli men, if you recall.) But for those of us who found ourselves rejected by the so-called JAPs because we were neither rich enough nor influential enough, I can hardly get all worked up over Leibovich's sensitivity for her poor little rich girl peers. Since many privileged young Jewish women took advantage of their wealth and class, guys like me do not feel badly for them, despite the sexist and even anti-Semitic implications that the general usage currently bandied about implies. The distinction of a JAP bringing down the president of the United States is something that as a Jewish male I can only chuckle about, while leaving the guilt and shame to those like Leibovich, who feel they have a connection to that moniker. -- Lou Berkman I had never heard anyone allude to Monica Lewinsky's ethnicity until I read Lori Leibovich's article. (Or if I had, it bore no importance and was immediately forgotten.) And while Leibovich is understandably angry at being referred to as a JAP, I couldn't help but feel that she was really stretching her own experiences to fit Lewinsky's. She even went so far as to twist a Cosmo article heading that bore Lewinsky's name so that, according to Leibovich, one would think it was about the sexuality of Jewish women. To hear Leibovich tell it, Lewinsky owes her shiny hair, manicure and overall carefully attended appearance, the fact that her father is a doctor and her mom "a flashy woman of means" to being Jewish (and therefore a JAP). Despite her implied unkindness of the use of the term "JAP," Leibovich's article left me to wonder if she really resented the epithet (she went to great lengths to show that by definition, a JAP is a Jewish female that comes from an extremely affluent [i.e. spoiled] and probably intellectual background that takes great interest in her physical appearance), or if she was protesting it so much because she thought she was supposed to. I, for one, have no idea. -- Lisa Mahon At the end of her very true and very funny article, Lori Leibovich said the following: "They also said that while JAPs might go down on them, these girls were spitters, not swallowers. To swallow was too dirty, too messy, too risky. Obviously, they never met Monica. " Um, I would submit that if Monica were indeed a swallower, there would have been no stain. -- Sherrie Gogerty Camarillo, Calif. I have been listening to every single person I have ever known express opinions about the Clinton/Lewinsky matter for almost a year. Until today I had never heard the word Jew mentioned. Not in the press. Not at work. Not by any of my friends. Nobody. I must admit that I wondered about the origin of the name Lewinsky back at the beginning of this mess, but never gave it a second thought. The article did leave me with another thought. What's worse, growing up rich and pampered, or spending the rest of your adult life being paranoid about your pampered youth? I wonder. I started reading Salon because it was different. I suppose now that Salon is so famous I can expect the same politically correct crap I read in the mainstream press. I've seen people twist events to fit their own agendas before but this is really twisted. I'm not naive enough to think that racism, bias, etc., don't exist. Why does it have to be applied to every single event? In my opinion Lewinsky's religion has absolutely nothing to do with this event. "Which came first? The chicken, or the egg?" -- Mark Freels
_______________SCHOLARS OF SMUT BY CARINA CHOCANO (10/05/98)
	Unfortunately, Carina Chocano, like many other writers today, confuses rhetorical artifice with critical thinking. Chocano states, "Yet pop stars are in the clearly defined and lucrative business of promoting a hip image and 'subversive' persona," and then goes on with, "This begs the question, what business are today's cultural scholars in?" Please, please, please teach your writers the difference between "posing the question" and "begging the question." Now, if someone were to answer a question like "Why is water falling from the sky?" with "Because it's raining," that is begging the question. What Ms. Chocano did was make an observation and raise a question. I don't quibble with Carina Chocano's basic approach. With a few notable exceptions (Susie Bright being one of them), people in the sex industry generally don't seem to be the sharpest tools in the shed, and a good solid critique of sex as a business is welcome and definitely overdue. In the case of this article, however, hiding behind Jean Baudrillard to put forward a critical attitude to the fuzzy New Age thinking of "sex-positive" glad-handers only serves to obscure and undercut what I think Chocano was after. One is always on shaky ground using the pseudo-profound apocalyptic pronouncements of disaffected communist-turned-bitter-romantic Baudrillard. Fuzzy, vague criticism of fuzzy, vague ideas only begets more fuzzy, vague thinking which in the end leads nowhere; in that respect, Baudrillard falls right into the same line as those Chocano sought to critique. (At least, I think she was being critical.) For Chocano to confuse begging a question with raising a question belies whatever intellectual pose she sought to strike; bookending that pose with a "philosopher" as mushy as Baudrillard leaves one with the impression of a timid writer weakly imitating the thinker du jour. -- Mark Olson Carina Chocano's story on the World Pornography Conference was great. Really eye-opening, balanced, brought thought-provoking issues to my attention, effectively zoomed out from the small issues to the large. Very good! -- Larry Edelstein
_______________BED REST SUCKS BY KRISTIN WIEDERHOLT (10/05/98)
	If Kristen Wiederholt found the book "The Bed Rest Survival Guide" too perky and adorable, she should try to dig up an old copy of Betty MacDonald's dark, funny "The Plague and I," her 1940s memoir of life at a tuberculosis sanitarium. It's not a "how-to," certainly, but anyone confined to bed will find something to laugh at or commiserate over. -- Eve Golden Lyndhurst, N.J. I just read the article about the "The Bed Rest Survival Guide" and how the author felt she would have taken it during her five months of bed rest through her pregnancy. I also was suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum through my entire pregnancy, was fed through an I.V., was committed to a hospital, felt the intense hunger of near starvation, but was too afraid to eat, bled out my eye because of the force of my vomiting, and was forced to remain sedentary, totally dependent on husband and friends, who were often too busy to coddle me to the degree I needed. All I can say is, if someone had given me a book admonishing me to try to find some positive growth from feeling my body atrophy and my depression making me suicidal, I would have sent the book back to them with a mail bomb. Even now, when I feel myself tire after even the shortest walk and I feel the pain from my weakened body, I am tempted to write to the author of the book and tell her to go drown herself. Maybe I haven't had enough time since my pregnancy (my son is 14 weeks old), but my fingers itch to push that Pollyanna-spouting nightmare into a deep well and limp away. Hostile? I'm hostile and I know it, but my memory of eight months of bedridden misery and 15 separate I.V. punctures (that doesn't include the PIC line or the MID line catheter) makes me want to hurt that girl! -- Charlotte Johnson
_______________A MATCH MADE IN POP HEAVEN BY STEPHANIE ZACHAREK (10/01/98)
	As a longtime on-and-off Rolling Stone reader, I have to report that the hallowed magazine of old just lost whatever credibility it had left when it put that bimbo from "Dawson's Creek" on the cover. So who gives a fuck what they think about Elvis Costello? By the way, "Painted From Memory" is pure magic. I bought it online right after reading Stephanie Zacharek's review, and even paid for it to be mailed to Kuwait. -- Ziad Al-Duaij Kuwait SALON | Oct. 8, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| MISTAKES WERE MADE BY GENE LYONS

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