R E C E N T L Y
Swinging with the sodomites
Why American athletes don't kiss and hug like soccer stars
Linda Tripp, the White House's ghoulish bad conscience
I'll take religion over gay culture
The affirmative action of Gwyneth Paltrow
- - - - - - - - - -
A L S O
About Camille Paglia
- - - - - - - - - -
C O L U M N I S T S
Sexpert Opinion
Bestseller Hell
Left Hook
Right On!
Lovers and Writers
Under the Covers
Second Thoughts
American Squirm
Unzipped
|
A S K_C A M I L L E +|+ C A M I L L E+P A G L I A
Dear Camille:
While the world watches scornfully, the fate of the Clinton presidency now hangs in the balance as Ken Starr mulls over the president's testimony about a semen-stained dress and other great affairs of state. How should Clinton respond to Starr? How do we get this country focused again on bigger issues?
-- A disgusted citizen
Dear Disgusted:
It's here! It's now! It's hot! Superchannel USA presents "Dallas, D.C.,"
the 24-hour baby-boomer-on-the-skids soap starring Bill Clinton, the JFK
wannabe who tried to lech but could barely unzip, who hid out for seven months
in the Al Gore Schoolbook Depository of Policy Wonkdom, and whose low-rent
assassination-video remake means shooting himself ignominiously in the foot.
Fans of "I, Claudius" will love this sizzling saga of boyish hijinks at the
palace, while the Praetorian Guard of the Secret Service jovially winks and
grins. Watch Hillary Clinton, last seen as the brutally ambitious über-bitch
Alexis Carrington Colby on "Dynasty," masquerade as saintly Jane Wyman, the
long-suffering wife, while liberal lady journalists sigh and weep at her
heroism. See the hapless Chelsea Clinton, in Shirley Temple curls, used as a
silent pawn to extort sympathy for the beleaguered first family, shut up in
their fortress ringed by a moat of snap-jawed reporters and prosecutors.
And don't miss "The Blame Game" on Washington Weepies, our sister channel.
See the Nattering Hedgehogs fault the Clintons' attorney, David Kendall, for
his politically suicidal hard-line strategy, when in fact Stonewall Hillary is
now and always has been the real top brass in the White House War Room. See
an army of aides and appointees get themselves off the ethical hook by
claiming to have been "betrayed" and deceived by the president's assurances
that no sexual affair had occurred, when in fact they in cold, selfish
calculation put partisanship above principle and did not expeditiously
pressure their boss to tell the truth and thereby spare the nation this
obscenely protracted farce.
Then enjoy "Hypocrites on Parade," starring Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright, who was intellectually and professionally well-prepared to analyze
the available evidence in January and to draw rational conclusions from it
directly pertaining to the treatment of women in the workplace, but who
ignored gross details of the exploitation of a 22-year-old intern for back-door servicing of a middle-aged married man -- for which the young lady evidently
received no honor, no perks and no compensation beyond a book and a few tatty
souvenirs from Martha's Vineyard.
Next, on the Therapeutic Channel, sponsored by the National Association of
Lazy Liberal Psychoanalysts, don't miss "Covert Clammy Co-Dependency." This
week's programs: "Madonna and Ingrid Casares"; "Alexandra and Rasputin,"
"T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound"; "Oliver Cromwell and Charles I"; and "Bill and
Hillary Clinton," where male sexual exhibitionism is explored as secret
aggressive revenge on Puritan Big Mama's frigid overcontrol and gender
dysfunction, originating in strained Rodham family dynamics that the media
won't touch with a 10-foot pole.
After that, see "Architectural Follies," where blasphemy and profanation of
sacrosanct historical spaces are demonstrated by the Radio City Music Hall
Rockettes. This week's episodes: "Vatican Fever," where the Borgia pope eggs
on a carousing squadron of acrobatic prostitutes, and "Oval Office
Oafishness," where Bill Clinton befouls his hallowed environs by being too
stupid to schedule his sex sports in the 10,000 other spaces freely available
to him, from Georgetown to Miami to Bel-Air.
Finally, don't miss "Zucchini Heads of the Law," where the studio audience
throws rotten tomatoes at dolts of every stripe whose zealotry, inefficiency
or general foolishness brings the law into disrepute or ridicule. This week's
special guest: independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who despite
conservatives' claims of his high probity, has come across as the biggest
dilatory, smirky, twirpy, bulbous jackass of the decade. As my Italian
relatives would say, may he drag his tongue along the ground, and may the cat
eat his guts!
Dear Camille:
I couldn't help but shake my head when I recently read that the latest hot thing in porno is, get this, NATURAL BREASTS!
Seems that breast augmentation has become so ubiquitous as to leave
those interested in a little imperfect titillation wanting. Apparently a
new no-implants magazine as well as the London Sun's topless page have
begun to respond to the needs of this seemingly small masturbatory
market.
Personally, I'd like to see less of those hard knockers. They literally
make me shudder sometimes (I'm a bisexual woman) and my husband doesn't
find them appealing at all. In fact their presence in so much of the
mainstream pornography has discouraged my viewing it over the years.
What are your thoughts on breast augmentation and the so-called
resurgence of interest in a little saggage.
-- Still Hangin' in Jersey
Dear Hangin':
Like Bill Clinton, I share your voyeuristic appreciation of shapely, natural
mammaries, which so many artists from Titian to Picasso have correctly seen in
mythological terms as the ripening fruits of the fertile cosmic orchard.
Big boobs have bounced their way into American history this year. The pro-porn wing of feminism should lobby for a gargantuan, double-domed Monica
Lewinsky Memorial for artistic and ideological symmetry on the Mall with the
phallic Washington Monument. Get behind this, NOW, for gender equity!
The great pop artist Claes Oldenburg, with his soft vinyl sculptures and
bawdy surrealism, must win the commission. Then Christo, the outdoor plastic-wrap specialist, could do annual helicopter drops of a mammoth black brassiere
over the double-D cupolas. For a partial blueprint, see Woody Allen's
"Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex" (1972), where a dirigible-sized bazoom looms over the hill like a fleshy tropical sun and wobbles its
winsome way down a green meadow, as tiny men scatter in an ecstasy of fear.
In the meantime, since young women are now on the dessert menu for Washington
bureaucrats, a Lewinsky Sweet Surprise is recommended for the government food
court -- two luscious scoops of French vanilla ice cream nippled with oversize
butterscotch chips, with of course a splash of Whipped Presidential Cream on
the side. Hold the chocolate: Big Bill, for all his race talk, never opts
for coffee or mocha at Cafe Flesh and Fantasy.
As for breast augmentation, the problem is that while it may improve the
silhouette of the clothed, it isn't always convincing au naturel. Still
photographs can blur details, but nothing is tackier than tits that look tight
as a drum. When onscreen sex accelerates into sweaty motion, pumped-up bosoms
betray themselves. For example, the divine Sharon Stone is flawless in "Basic
Instinct" (1992) until the finale when, as she arches backward in bed over a
nervous Michael Douglas, we can clearly and depressingly see the apparent outline of a
gel pack above her rib cage.
Or when that hornet-nosed devil doll, Anne Heche, is tumbling in the sheets
with the delectable Joan Chen in "Wild Side" (1995), I am pleasurably diverted
(despite the effort one must make to avoid looking at Heche's character-revealing stunted thumbs and bitten nails) until Heche's right boob suddenly
sticks up straight toward the ceiling in a fascist salute. Natural breasts
flow and settle into the armpit: They have the soft, sensual sponginess of
liquid nature. Organic nurturance is or should be the secret metaphor.
Plastic surgery, which was intelligently used in Hollywood history, has become
increasingly artificial in style: Women's faces are being pulled too tight
and turning generic and characterless, while breasts look more and more like
blocks of frozen squash. Visuals have gotten homogenized among not just porn
stars but soap opera ingenues and TV newswomen. It bores me silly.
N E X T_P A G E | Why blonds are still at the top of the desirability pyramid
|
