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_______________ ASK CAMILLE: HARVARD'S DATE-RAPE IDIOCY BY CAMILLE PAGLIA (03/17/99)
	Camille Paglia writes, "From the published facts about the case, the drunken Harvard girl seems just as responsible for the muddled chain of events as her male companion." Yet had she read the Crimson articles about the case (which relied on court documents) or the interview with the victim in Perspective instead of the coverage in the Boston Globe (which relied on libelously false secondhand information), she would have known that the responsibility in this case lied squarely with D. Drew Douglas. For instance, it is a confirmed (and, yes, published) fact that Douglas admitted before Harvard's Administrative Board to raping the student. It is also the case (and published) that he followed her and her date home and, once the date left, forced himself into her building and her room, slammed her against her wall, refused to leave when she pleaded with him and when she collapsed on her bed, took off his clothes and raped her. While I certainly have quarrels with Paglia's take on acquaintance rape, what is most alarming is her disregard of the facts in this matter. Paglia suggests that "real rape" ought to be reported, and "consigned to the criminal justice system, which has established procedures for neutral inquiry and assessment of evidence and which can guarantee the civil rights of the accused." And yet Paglia seems blissfully unaware that a Massachusetts state court found Douglas guilty of indecent assault, and that he is currently under house arrest! And pace Paglia, Rudenstine has not "pandered" to the rape "special interest." In fact, this is the first time Harvard has ever dismissed a student for rape. Besides, the student was dismissed by the faculty of Harvard, not Rudenstine's administration. The administration doesn't even have the power to dismiss students. I beg of you, Ms. Paglia, in the future either get your facts straight, or keep your mouth shut. -- Ethan Ard Editor of Perspective (Harvard-Radcliffes Liberal Monthly) CAMILLE PAGLIA RESPONDS: Contrary to what is claimed here, I did indeed read the relevant articles in the Harvard Crimson on the date-rape case. And I also read the Perspective interview, in which the "victim" describes in banal detail how she doggedly lobbied Harvard administrators over an extended period of time and only went to the police when the university's parent substitutes wouldn't do her will. I do not accept the inflammatory version of the disputed events (as carelessly embodied in the above letter). And I will continue to insist that the intoxicated female student in question bore equal responsibility for the incident. Women should be treated as adults, not porcelain dolls. The era of victim feminism is over -- except apparently at Harvard, where students, if this letter writer is typical, are so naive about the university power structure that they fail to realize that feminist faculty have long held administrative positions and that those chi-chi Gorgons have President Rudenstine pinched by his very small balls.
_______________ THE QUESTION THAT WON'T GO AWAY BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS (03/16/99)
	To the letter writer who claimed I was merely engaging in "mean-spirited" name-calling when I referred to the "Christian right neo-Nazis" who invariably and wrongly accuse Salon of being "soft on Clinton," I suggest that you research the Christian Identity and other right-wing self-proclaimed "Christian" racist movements and note how snugly they are in bed with Clinton's political enemies. One of the earliest and longest-lived anti-Clinton smears, which formed the basis of Joe Klein's book "Primary Colors," alleged that Clinton had fathered a son of a black prostitute. (Recent DNA tests proved this story to be false.) This smear was started and spread by President Clinton's earliest Arkansas political enemies, who, like Judge Jim Johnson, are unrepentant racists who use religion and "morality" as justifications for their racist beliefs. It is no accident that Bill Clinton, a man who spent his childhood among blacks and who can walk into any black Southern Baptist church and sing without reference to a hymnal, is targeted so heavily by the racist faction of the religious right. There is no denying that the religious right, whether it speaks in code or states its true views clearly, draws its strength from the fears of white people over a changing world in which whites don't have as much power over other races as they used to. And there is no denying that race-baiting à la Willie Horton is one of their favorite tactics. And there is no denying that publications such as Salon that dare to publish the truth about this subject will be called all sorts of names, by both the Christian right's neo-Nazi contingent and by those misguided progressives who confuse precisely worded statements of fact with "mean-spirited name-calling." -- Herbert Rogers SALON | March 29, 1999

R E C E N T L Y+| UNSPUN: WHY ELIA KAZAN SHOULD NOT RECEIVE AN OSCAR BY STEVE ERICKSON

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