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Real superpower in a godless universe | page 1, 2
Further political news is the burgeoning candidacy of Sen. John McCain of Arizona, being touted as a quick sub for Gov. George W. Bush should the latter stumble in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. My reaction: You've got to be kidding! McCain's snobbish removal from the Iowa straw poll in August should have been a warning sign that he is not in fact the "all-around good guy" that certain inside- The TV camera does not lie: Just as it showed from the get-go that ex-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was a nervous, shifty, sweaty, petulant mental adolescent, so has it exposed McCain over time as a seething nest of proto-fascist impulses. Despite his recent flurry of radiant, P.R.-coached grins, McCain has the weirdly wary and over-intense eyes of Howard Hughes and the clenched, humorless jaw line of Nurse Diesel (from Mel Brooks' Hitchcock parody, "High Anxiety"). Alert, all good Republicans! Please produce a strong, credible nominee for president. Until you do, my own Democratic Party will go on spiraling downward in its accelerating ethical vertigo. Items from the culture desk: In preparation for this fall's Shakespeare course, which I teach in rotation at the University of the Arts, I've been reading and tremendously enjoying Park Honan's "Shakespeare: A Life" (published in 1998 by Oxford University Press). Unlike the ham-handed New Historicists, Honan weaves literary and sociological issues with great deftness and precision. His portrait of Shakespeare as a reserved, cautious, rather conservative countryman feels exactly right and is a welcome corrective to Joseph Fiennes' appallingly vulgar depiction of the poet as a silly goose in "Shakespeare in Love." Camille Paglia Camille Paglia's column appears in Salon People every other Wednesday.
I also heartily recommend Joy Behar's hilarious new book, "Joy Shtick: or What Is the Existential Vacuum and Does It Come With Attachments?" (Hyperion). There's a fiendish invented dialogue between me and Gloria Steinem ("Listen, you pillar of weltschmerz," I tell Steinem, "Hugh Hefner is a saint"), but my favorite chapters are the imaginary interview with director Leni Riefenstahl ("Does the word Treblinka ring a bell?" Joy asks) and the illustrated travelogue, "Picnics in the Cemetery," which accurately details the morbid Italian fondness for family outings in cemeteries. The book also prints Joy's now-classic flight on Catherine Deneuve's Chanel No. 5 commercials ("Je Ne Regrette Rien"). It's in the hip-intellectual style of the Mike Nichols-Elaine May sketches of nearly 40 years ago, a brilliantly ambitious mode of comedy that unfortunately passed from the scene after Steve Martin began to make rabbit ears out of sausage balloons. Like me, Joy is an Italian-American attracted to the great tradition of Jewish comic discourse, which contains infinitely more truth about modern life than does foggy, froggy poststructuralism. Stand-up comedy after Lenny Bruce is a major art form, improvisatory at its best. On ABC's "The View," Joy has been pushing the limits of daytime TV, her deadpan voice cutting through the often chaotic hen party with exquisite timing and zinging one-liners that bring down the house. The perspicacious Joy has been doing genuinely radical work in what is still a stubbornly middlebrow medium. I'm a huge fan. On the pop front, I've been reveling in the sensational photographs of Michael Douglas' mercurial fiancee, Catherine Zeta-Jones, which have been featured for months in Hello magazine (the glossy British bible of "Absolutely Fabulous"). American magazines, with their stilted portrait shots, have not done Zeta-Jones justice. The luminous color printing of Hello (whose parent publication is Spain's ¡Hola!) gives the stylish Welsh actress an Ingres-like amplitude and Mediterranean lushness. What a treat for tired eyes she is, after the endless images of armadillo-jawed Gwyneth Paltrow and her pedestrian army of fellow ingenues, like margarine-browed, ox-hoofed Renée Zellweger. Finally, the recent repeat TV airings of "Titanic" have enraged me anew about the injustice done to Kate Winslet, who deserved the Oscar for her emotional bravura and physical fortitude in that film. The tense footage of Winslet carrying an ax as she fights her way through the cold flood of seawater in a dusky corridor will be one of the few canonical moments of 1990s cinema, equal to cigarette-flaunting, leg-crossing Sharon Stone's flouting of the police from her interrogation throne in "Basic Instinct." Retchingly vanilla Helen Hunt, who walked off with Winslet's Oscar, goes on piling up undeserved awards, as at last week's Emmys. But a quarter century from now, when people are still admiring Winslet in "Titanic," no one will remember who the hell Helen Hunt was. Hollywood, get your priorities straight: Please reward artistic merit, not popularity in your chummy entertainment elite.
Got a question for the Oracle? Ask Camille.
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