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"Punch" Bradley, "Judy" Gore and the injustice being done John Rocker | page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
While I've always thought of Monica as a ninny and a spoiled, upper-middle-class brat, I was unexpectedly charmed by her performance last week on CNN's "Larry King Live." Her self-transformation is striking. The smart-alecky narcissism of last year's Barbara Walters interview was gone, with a rueful thoughtfulness in its place. I especially liked Monica's declaration of independence from her parents (behind whom she had childishly hidden for so long) and her vow to make her own way in the world. The King interview aired two hours after Lifetime cable channel's rebroadcast of its "Intimate Portrait" profile of country singer Wynonna Judd, so that Monica's broad face, with its big, wide, liquid eyes, ended up bizarrely conflated with Wynonna's in my mind. There are deep analogies of conflicted femaleness in those two women -- the weight problems, the moodiness and impulsiveness, the tension between dependence and rebellion, flamboyance and introversion. Camille Paglia Camille Paglia's column appears in Salon People every third Wednesday.
No male in history -- except perhaps for Judy Garland impersonators and estrogen-mainlining transsexuals -- has ever fully plumbed the depths of this female abyss, where voluptuous sensuality is so intertwined with dark, self-thwarting emotion. In other news of the new millennium: "Billions of dollars" in American aid, as well as a semi-permanent commitment of U.S. troops, may be the price, we are warned, of a peace agreement between Israel and Syria, whom President Clinton recently herded into stalemated talks in West Virginia. So U.S. taxpayers will be footing the bill for Clinton's quest for a Nobel Peace Prize to wipe out his impeachment disgrace in the history books. What a scam! American tax dollars should be invested instead in vital at-home social services such as education, health care and public transit. Another foreign-policy blunder by this administration, the unethical bombing raids on the former Yugoslavia, is evoked in a disturbing query from Salon reader Frederick Duquette: In the past, your column has criticized NATO's bombing campaign last year over Serbia. British and Canadian newspapers have recently drawn a connection between Russia's campaign in Chechnya and NATO's bombing campaign, suggesting that NATO underestimated Russia and that somehow the Serbian bombing campaign has provoked Russian militarism. I have not seen this interpretation in the usual American media sources. Could this chain of events be linked to Yeltsin's resignation and portend a destabilizing cycle of passive-aggressive Russian foreign policy in the midst of a Kremlin power struggle? Hence the fruits of NATO's shortsighted efforts in Serbia. Yes, Mr. Duquette, U.S. meddling in the Balkans, with its thousand-year history of irresolvable tribal strife, was very foolish. It was Russia and China that should have been our ultimate focus. Thanks to the clumsy solipsism of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (dutiful daughter of the former Czech ambassador to Belgrade), we have reawakened the hungry, sleepy bear of Russian militarism and rabid anti-Americanism. The Russians and Serbians are interconnected by ethnic history and Slavic pride. Another American generation down the line in the 21st century may have to pay the debt for U.S. arrogance in the Balkans -- whose refugee problem was tragically worsened by NATO's futile bombing. It remains to be seen, of course, whether the American military will be ready to deal with any external threats at all, if the present trend of blatant political interference continues. The argument that broke out last week among the presidential candidates about the "don't ask, don't tell" policy governing gays in the military has only further strengthened the Republican cause. While I believe that gays should be able to serve with honor in the military, I also think that the practical problems of dropping the "don't ask, don't tell" rule have yet to be fully explored or even, for that matter, cursorily studied. Overt combat conditions, with ground units deployed on the attack, are radically different from the kind of relatively stable, centralized peacekeeping tasks that American troops are routinely assigned to now. We have reduced our soldiers to caretaking mercenaries, glorified nannies. Military policy about gays must be formulated for the critical worst-case scenario, not the best. When the nation's security is at stake, I will side with the considered judgment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff rather than with the adenoidal mewlings of stridently gay congressman Barney Frank, who on NBC's "Meet the Press" last Sunday looked and sounded like he's still at the lollipop and baby-rattle stage. (Imagine Frank in a foxhole! Russian strategists must be having quite a horse laugh at Frank's prominence as a military "expert.") As for the appalling freak show over 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez, rescued from the sea six weeks ago after his mother drowned while escaping from Cuba, the Immigration and Naturalization Service was correct last week in ordering him returned to his father's custody in Cuba -- a ruling that should have come more quickly to avoid the child's present gross exploitation by all sides. Normalization of relations with Cuba, no longer a Soviet puppet state, is long overdue -- a process that will quickly occur when Fidel Castro passes from the scene and when the island becomes a magnet for outside investment. Capitalism and democracy, those ebullient twins, are around the corner. Scott Sawyer writes from Los Angeles: What do you think of the uproar over Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker's remarks in the Dec. 27 issue of Sports Illustrated? Even though Rocker is a hip-shooter, he seems like a decent guy who doesn't deserve the calls for his hide that the politically correct ninnies launched immediately upon the SI interview's publication. The lunatic brainwashing brigade has at long last fully confused speech and action, judging by its castigation of Rocker, who despite his Archie Bunker-type remarks, is known for generously giving his time to youth groups and charities. I agree with you, Mr. Sawyer -- although Rocker's taunting remarks about New York (which he portrays as a Tower of Babel of alien races and infectious queers) are perfectly consistent with his swaggering, loutish, Incredible Hulk persona on the baseball field. Although I'm primarily a football fan who tunes into baseball only for the playoffs and World Series, I enjoyed Rocker's catty running feud with New York fans last season. We need more regional rivalries in team sports, which have lost intensity since athletes became agent-controlled independent operators hopscotching from coast to coast.
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