R E C E N T L Y
I serviced the president and all I got was this lousy Martha's Vineyard souvenir
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
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A L S O
About Camille Paglia
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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
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A S K_C A M I L L E +|+ C A M I L L E+P A G L I A | PAGE 2 OF 2
Dear Camille:
Are you a fan of Matt Drudge? You seem to have similar anti-Clinton sentiments, as well as being the same type of media maven who shoots from the hip. Have you caught his new show on Fox -- what are your thoughts? Would you ever consider hosting your own TV show?
-- Drudge-aholic
Dear Drudge-aholic:
Alas, the Fox News Channel, which broadcasts Matt Drudge's show, is not carried
in the Philadelphia area. But I've seen Drudge on other TV shows and relished
his take-no-prisoners bitch-slapping of the cliquish media panjandrums,
snorting away in their lofty sense of false superiority.
Since my early inspirations include high-powered Hollywood harridan Hedda
Hopper and Roz Russell as the raucous reporter in "His Girl Friday" (1940), I
have a definite vibe with Drudge in his combative, abrasive, stentorian Walter
Winchell persona. Drudge is the kind of bold, entrepreneurial, free-wheeling,
information-oriented outsider we need far more of in this country. He's a
great role model for students, who are being processed, warehoused and
homogenized by the execrable PC education of the elite campuses.
Vis-à-vis matters presidential, I suspect Drudge may never have been a warm
political admirer of Clinton, whom I voted for twice. As for me hosting
my own TV show -- what a nightmare! TV production is a maniacal juggernaut that
destroys your private life and eats you alive. Radio would be more my métier
(I've been intermittently approached about it), but it too is overly time-consuming. My vocations are teaching and writing, and I'll stick to
them -- except for lightning raids on other people's shows, of course!
Dear Camille:
What do you think of home-run champion contender Mark McGwire's recent
admission that he's been taking body-building supplements? If he beats Roger Maris' record, should his name have an asterisk attached to it in the record books?
-- Baseball traditionalist
Dear Traditionalist:
Pep pills of all kinds have probably played a hidden role in sport for longer
than people admit. The slang word "bennies" (for Benzedrine) entered the
language in 1949, and "dexies" (for Dexedrine, a commercial amphetamine) followed in
1956. Cocaine's role in some of the record-breaking achievements in pro
football (as suggested during the legal travails of various Dallas Cowboys as
well as O.J. Simpson) has yet to be fully explored.
Contemporary professional athletes enjoy tremendous training advantages and
sometimes shady medical interventions (see an unexpurgated video of "North
Dallas Forty," 1979) that were similarly unavailable to early sports figures.
If we start adding asterisks, the record books would sink under their weight.
I can't get too excited about testosterone-juiced Mark McGwire, who's just giving Mother Nature a sharp little goose.
Elsewhere on the baseball front, I was charmed by the style and class of the
scrappy Toms River, N.J., team that won the Little League World Series last
weekend. But as I was flicking back and forth to the WNBA Finals being simultaneously broadcast on another
channel, I was dismayed yet again by those players' unbeautiful, leaden
galumphing. Why don't women basketball stars have the grace or panache even
of high school guys, I complained as usual to Alison, who sternly chided, "It's
a different game! You've got to get that in your head!"
But in the meantime, while I'm struggling to revise my expectations about
women downward, can't we begin by banning ponytails on the pro tennis and
basketball courts? They make women athletes look like silly teenyboppers.
All that banal flapping! Like the real-life women runners of antiquity, the
great huntress goddess Artemis bound her long hair up for the chase, as did the
mythical Amazon warriors who were such a major theme in Greek art. Let's lose
those dorky ponytails, gals, if you want sexual equality and public respect!
Got a problem? Trying to chase Maris' record without pills? Ask Camille.
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