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_______________ KIDDIE PANTS OR KIDDIE PORN? BY DEBORAH A. LOTT (03/12/99)
	Deborah A. Lott is very perceptive in her analysis of why sexualized photographs of children make us uncomfortable. But our hysteria over this subject is of fairly recent vintage. For decades, an image of a dog pulling down a little girl's bikini bottom was plastered along every freeway in the country, and no one complained (it can probably still be found, faded and peeling, on walls and billboards in rural backwaters). Now we all think like pedophiles -- a prurience Calvin Klein's ad department exploits. -- Tom Moody New York Whoever is responsible for Calvin Klein's ads has read his Marcuse and is applying it to use repressive sublimation in attaching taboo sexuality to essential clothing products. Klein then turns Marcuse on his head by making a public apology that generates publicity and money. Klein can be sure of the success of such deliberate tactics as the cynical, psuedo-ironic detachment of his target audience is an entrenched component of their consumerism. Deborah A. Lott misses or ignores the solution to her dilemma present in her own writing. Blushing and becoming uncomfortable by underwear ads for little boys in the Sears catalog illustrates what the creeping sexual commodification of children and young adults by Klein, Victoria's Secret and others has done to our society: made otherwise nonsexual activities (buying our kids shorts) feel as if they harbor pornographic content. This is not the first time Klein has used ads resembling the kind of kiddy and adult porn that tends to be homemade in suburban basements across America. Several years ago bus and billboards were awash with underwear ads featuring pubescent teenagers in provocative poses. The print ads pale in comparison to television spots featuring an off-camera interlocutor asking models suggestive questions -- a deliberate imitation of a popular format for pornographic videos where an older male camera operator makes lewd suggestions to, but does not touch, the models. The first round of print and television spots also ended in a public apology by Klein. If these ads did not involve children it would be best to ignore the pathetic, puerile imagination that generates them. But Klein has deliberately raised the suggestion of pedophilia to sell underwear. The New York Times and other media outlets should exercise a little discretion and refuse to carry such ads in the future, and consumers should refrain from buying the products of a man so lacking in basic decency. -- Travis Sanford
_______________ THE NEW NORTH VIETNAM BY JEFF GREENWALD (03/10/99)
	The last time I visited Vietnam was three years ago as a backpacker. I spent time in Hanoi and then took the Reunification Express train to Saigon. (No one in the South calls it Ho Chi Minh City -- even the railroad time tables say Saigon.) Jeff Greenwald says that the South won. Well, when I was there the majority of police officers in the South were still from North Vietnam. South Vietnam is still an occupied country, and the people there are very well aware of it. Greenwald's right: If we fought the war to make the world safe for Coca-Cola, then we succeeded. But if we fought the war for higher minded goals like freedom, then we failed miserably. Today, more than 20 years after the fall of Saigon, Vietnam is still a repressive totalitarian regime that survives by killing and imprisoning its own people. My most enduring memory of Vietnam is of sheltering under an awning on a rainy evening about a block and a half from one of the main government buildings in Saigon. I watched as Mercedes-Benzes and limousines pulled up at the residence, and men in suits and women in evening gowns got out of their cars and walked inside. Meanwhile, the doorman of the building where I was sheltering was chasing away the rickshaw drivers who were trying to cluster under the awning so that they would not have to sleep in the rain. He caught my attention and pointed at a wall that was covered with pictures of beautiful Vietnamese women. If I came inside these ladies would be willing to keep me company that night. Long live Ho Chi Minh. -- Mike Friedman Hong Kong
_______________ CAN AMTRAK SURVIVE? BY DAVID FINE (03/11/99)
	I was delighted to read that Amtrak might be picking up again. I've been quite charmed by Yogi Berra's appearances in recent Amtrak commercials. Flying is always hell for me because it induces horrid headaches. Trains take me back to when I was a little girl. I always asked my father to take me to the Alexandria train station because of its architecture, which heralded back to the '30s. On one trip to Atlanta to visit my mother's family, I vividly remember waking up in our sleeping car and my mother saying (her twang already coming back), "Look! There's the Jo-ja red clay!" Had I been in a plane, I could not have looked out the window and seen the red earth Georgia is famous for. For me, trains evoke the spirit of Walt Whitman. Planes are snooty in the way they fly over America without looking at it. Hence the arrogant term, "fly-over states." Trains go through America, tasting and absorbing every bit of it. On a more practical note, using freight trains for shipping materials would be far safer than putting more unstable tractor-trailers on the road driven by sleep-deprived drivers. As the border between the North and the South, my hometown of Alexandria, Va., was a booming railroad town for years. But as the railroad business has ebbed, Potomac Yard, which was one of the most famous railyards in the country, was sold to developers. Just what Alexandria needs, more pseudo-colonial townhouses! Before we moved to a more expensive neighborhood, train whistles sang me to sleep at night. I'd love to hear them again. Go Amtrak! -- Lillie (last name withheld) SALON | March 16, 1999

R E C E N T L Y+| WHY I DIDN'T REPORT MY RAPE BY JENN SHREVE

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