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This won't hurt a bit! Ever been brought to tears while lying on your back with your legs open in front of a stange doctor? Share your tales of gynecological woe in Drama Queen for a Day contest.

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T A B L E_ T A L K

How do you create your own family-friendly work environment? Discuss working from home and other options in the Mothers area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Mommy's little accessory
By Dayna Macy
Jo Copeland designed glamorous couture clothes for the rich and famous. But while she was an extraordinary designer, she was a disaster as a mother
(10/21/98)

The worst trip ever
By Susan McCarthy
A sweaty cross-country trek in a 1937 Plymouth with two cranky siblings, a kangaroo rat in a box and a pogo stick turns into family legend
(10/20/98)

Beautiful Dreamer
By Lisa Kleinman
Babies No. 1 and 2 had to suffer through less-than-perfect strollers. But baby No. 3 will have the ideal ride -- that is, if there is a baby No. 3
(10/19/98)

Turtle time
By Anne Lamott
Salon welcomes back Anne Lamott after a six-month hiatus, and she announces she has overcome Linda Tripp, an expanding waistline and her compulsion to keep writing books
(10/15/98)

Time For One Thing: Acupuncture
By Lisa Moskowitz
My muscles relax. My eyes close. There is no real pain, just the apprehension of pain
(10/14/98)

BROWSE THE SECOND THOUGHTS ARCHIVES

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Salon Columnists

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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CITIZENS OF THE WORLD, TURN ON YOUR TELEVISIONS! | PAGE 1, 2
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I love the great equalization of a world beamed to all of us -- a world where, if you skim gently up and down the channels, you are exposed to enough contradictory Weltanschauungs to fill a galaxy and none of them seem more correct or powerful than the next.

But only George Bush could talk about war and put me to sleep.

There's a good slide show on the city's cable access, the Police Chief's Forum on "Less Lethal Use of Force," with pictures of blunt trauma injuries from bean-bag shot and rubber bullets. "This is not just a way to hurt someone," he tells the solemn audience, who nod carefully.

Back to Daria. Back to Virtual Bill. Back in time for an ad for tonight's "Celebrity Death Match," a violent clay animation show where Elvis punches out a stoned Jerry Garcia, and Janeane Garofalo gives Cindy Crawford a bloody compound fracture. Back to Stone Phillips smilingly describing a harrowing fishing boat accident, followed by an ad for a show promising a look "inside the head of a serial killer."

I love this great heterogeneous culture of tastes, where everything goes, where almost nothing is forbidden because someone, somewhere, is interested. I love the way it forces me to see how much I define what is good and bad in the world, what is right and wrong, how strongly I hold my opinions about what people should think and do and want. Television demands that I reconsider the centrality of my point of view. Television tells me, without apology, that these are only my opinions and have nothing to do with the lives of other people, who feel just as strongly as I do in completely different ways.

ESPN. The Seahawks and Kansas City in pouring rain and dark. That looks like a good time, but I pass -- click -- another football game -- click -- Ken Olin weeping on the witness stand. "She had a mind like quicksilver," he moans. "She could be funny, generous and very feminine." Click. "Mossy Oak's Hunting the Country" is going to talk about rattlin' for game on TNN. But down in the low numbers, on the increasingly ineffectual networks, Houston and San Diego are tied in the fifth. A few channels up, the Rev. Josie C. Holmes of the Spoken Word Ministry sings R&B gospel with organ accompaniment.

I like television a lot better than the Internet. I am still taken aback by the claims people make about the Internet, about its "interactivity," its variety. The Internet, the Web, all of computerland, is still a tiny paradigm, still dominated by a small portion of people of a certain education and class, still mostly male, still a king's ransom available only to the very few. The Internet responds to my opinions, searches for what I want to see, gives me only what I'm willing to wait for, pay for, know. The Internet shrinks my world. Television expands it.

Television is truly the common denominator, the commonest. It is the world's middle. Watching television is the third most time-consuming activity in the world, behind only working and sleeping. (Is that wrong? Is that bad? Is your opinion more correct than that of the billion people watching right now?) I take all these frames and passing words together and throw them in a pot and I find something of everyone. Television is and must be and cannot be anything but average and at the same time it can't be anything but endless variety and change. I can't be a citizen of a world and not pay attention.

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"We're giving you," says the announcer, "what you have asked for!"
SALON | Oct. 22, 1998