"The Nelly Menace" by Richard Goldstein

It's only a matter of time. Someone, somewhere is going to e-mail me a gif of Tinky Winky doing Jar Jar Binks doggie style. The latest wave of frenzied debate over the ill-received "Phantom Menace" character centers on the computer-generated Gungan's sexuality. If you believe Rolling Stone, Jar Jar is lovable. Just about everyone else disagrees. Some say he's a racial stereotype; most just think he's annoying. A little-noticed (until now) subcategory of the debate focused on Jar Jar's being gay. Now adding his voice to this ridiculous controversy is Richard Goldstein, for more than 30 years a key Village Voice commentator on pop culture and sex.

In his piece -- the cover story, no less! -- Goldstein attacks the attackers: Jar Jar-bashing, he says, is thinly veiled gay-bashing. For evidence he points to several adolescent Web sites containing homophobic references to the Gungan's effeminate qualities. Goldstein seems to believe that gay-bashing, as well as Ate My Balls pages, are somehow new to the Internet -- so he takes it all seriously, even while poking fun at it all with his hardy-har-har writing style. In his clueless frenzy to find heart-bleeding significance in the Jar Jar jeremiads, Goldstein seems to be trying to make Jar Jar a martyr, a poster child for gay pride. But the piece ends with a non sequitur about notions of "masculin-ity" evolving and gender progression backlash. Huh?

If nothing else, Goldstein's article demonstrates plainly that treating such pop-culture burps as anything more than entertainment is futile and a waste of time. Don't we all have better things to report on? For example, the positively kinky relationship between C-3PO and R2-D2 ...

"Uncovered Sex" by Sharon Lerner

Fortunately, the Village Voice does give some editorial space to legitimate issues, such as Sharon Lerner's intelligent article on gender inequity in health-care costs in general and legislation that would require health insurers to cover the cost of the birth control pill in particular. Or the largely anecdotal, but nonetheless poignant writing by Eileen Sutton and Karen Houppert on how laws meant to protect battered women are actually harming them. I realize that such topics aren't quite as reader-enticing as a discussion of the sexuality of an animated character, but they're worth reading.

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Speak, Summer 1999

Disillusionment is a bitter thing! It breaks the heart and clouds the senses -- especially if you happen to be editor of a foundering, quasi-national alternative glossy. In the editor's note of the Summer '99 issue of Speak, editor and publisher Dan Rolleri reveals, with heartbreaking earnestness, that magazines like Gear and Maxim make journalistically shoddy deals with advertisers and reel in readers with stupid copy while magazines like his -- O the injustice! -- continue to struggle.

Now, Speak is a nice little magazine, always more notable for its imaginative, sometimes illegible, design than its content -- though the substance of the writing and subject matter has improved in the past couple of issues. Is it on par with other national glossies? No. Rolleri writes: "When I entered publishing four years ago I was convinced everyone else was getting it wrong. Young people were starved for a smart and vibrant magazine, not another crass promotional vehicle." Perhaps it takes four years to realize that most people, the magazine-buying majority of the country, want/buy/like crap. Why? Nobody knows why. Why are there serial killers? Why do men go bald? Why is Monica fat? Explanations aside, readers of Gear and Maxim aren't particularly concerned about journalistic standards and qualities, anyway -- so why not cut a deal with Nike? Publishing is a business, after all. Speak itself seems to be funded almost entirely by the tobacco industry.

Like Rolleri, I don't want to see intelligent writing on left-of-mainstream topics go unpublished. Alas, there are no easy answers. You either have to lower your standards or reduce your expectations of success. Perhaps more soul-searching is in order for our dear editor-publisher friend, though I hope he'll confine future rants to his diary.

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