Will Hannibal the Cannibal eat Hollywood?
BY NIKKI FINKE
(06/04/99)
"Hannibal" synopsis
BY NIKKI FINKE
(06/04/99)

While I am gleefully fascinated by the politicking behind the "Hannibal" film, and enjoyed much of Nikki Finke's article, in the future I recommend Salon indicate approaching narrative "spoilers." To summarize Harris' entire plot in the penultimate paragraph was an unnecessary and bone-headed move, and one that bushwhacked me, at least. Despite my sick interest in this probable train wreck of a movie, even I am more interested in reading the book than listening to industry gossip. Or I was, anyway.

-- Pat Harrigan
Minneapolis

As much fun as it is to take a peek behind the scenes of a potentially hot Hollywood property, let us not forget that this is also a novel that the author spent a decade working on, and I feel rather certain Harris would prefer readers get a chance to actually read the fruits of his labor. Revealing the story line to a novel in such detail strikes me as incredibly rude and disrespectful of a writer's efforts, and a particularly odd and nasty thing for a writer -- Finke -- to do to another writer. This is not "news." The public doesn't have a "right to know," and if they want to, they should be encouraged to read the actual book.

-- Craig Spector

Printing the plot of Thomas Harris' new book was a wonderful public service, allowing me to save money by not purchasing it. This is not literature, but a giant "what's grosser than gross"-fest -- behavior that most people give up at 13 years of age. Apparently, the movie moguls and the book publishers don't realize that Harris is most likely messing with their heads and mocking them by writing the book with a "Let's see how revolting this story can get and still get me paid millions for it" mentality.

I'm really sick of uselessly violent movies being shoved down the public's throat for the sake of sheer, unadulterated greed. Too many producers and studio heads deny responsibility for mindless, violent or otherwise irresponsible productions with, "We just give the public what they want." I trust there will be a portion of the public that is not going to want "Hannibal" in any form.

-- I. Moya
San Francisco

New York stakes
BY JOE CONASON
(06/01/99)

Joe Conason's article applies good, level-headed thinking to a very exciting proposition -- a current, popular first lady reshaping her political relevancy into a citizen-authorized institution. Hillary Rodham Clinton's "potential" bid for the Senate seat in New York coincides with the termination of her and her husband's "thanks for the ride" years in the White House. It cements Giuliani's role as the villain proper in a dramatic landscape ripe for his contest with a perceived white knight. And Clinton's bid comes at a time when -- for better or worse -- an American public indifferent toward its presidential prospects for 2000 will concentrate on a struggle defined by fashionable domestic issues and perennially sexy gender politics.

Conason lapses into fantastical territory, however, when posing a number of questions that haunt or strongly influence Clinton's candidacy.

"What will Hillary do when the administration proposes policies that are unpopular with the New York electorate?" he asks. She will do what she was elected to do -- exercise the judgment for which we hold our officials responsible. I doubt a player as canny as Clinton will agonize over any disparity between her constituents and the White House. Her exposure to top-level politics throughout the husband's tenure gives her the kind of experience we expect but don't often get from our representatives.

"What will she say if she doesn't agree with a position taken by her husband or his chosen successor?" Conason's question hints that Hillary Clinton is a shrinking violet next to the majesty of Bill or his successor. I don't think it would be too hostile to suggest that Clinton will demonstrate she has just as much moxie as her male compadres.

"What will protect her from the vagaries of a sudden economic downturn or an unsuccessful conclusion to the war in Kosovo?" Nothing will protect her. That's one of the beauties of her risk.

-- H. Andrew Lynch
San Francisco

Black and white and read all over
BY STEVEN PYRRHO
(06/04/99)

Two things are obvious from Steven Pyrrho's article -- that his Korean-American classmate Regan is an out-and-out racist of the worst type, and that the author himself is a hopeless weenie.

I was always under the impression that racism was defined as the hatred of a person or persons based on their race. If I understand Regan's self-righteous pontificating correctly, however, it seems to be fashionable now, at least within the cloistered halls of academe, to define race as a social construct or a power relationship, with "whiteness" being defined simply as the state of being on top of the heap. For Regan to hold this view shows how pathetically she has internalized the real racist paradigm of this society: that white people are successful and powerful and non-white people are not. I have to ask: Are poor, powerless Caucasians rendered non-white by their powerlessness, their skin becoming darker the more disenfranchised they become? As Asians rise higher up the social and economic ladder, does their hair turn blond, their eyes blue and their skin pale? The very real racism in this society directed against non-whites will not be eradicated by such a fantasy.

The strangest thing is her bizarre belief that, since only whites can be racist, the Japanese oppression of the Koreans could not have been a racist oppression. I assume that she holds this view out of a feeling of pan-Asian solidarity. Well, I have news for her: The concept of homogeneous "Asianness" in this country is purely an American construct, a function of two complementary phenomena: the laziness and ignorance of whites who see all Asians as interchangeable members of an undifferentiated mass and discriminate against them accordingly; and the loss of culture-specific traits on the part of members of distinct Asian communities in this country as they, like all immigrants, gradually assimilate and become Americans.

There is no pan-Asian solidarity among Asians in Asia. I suggest that Regan go to Japan and talk to those Koreans who have been living in Japan for generations but who are still not given citizenship, who still must submit to being fingerprinted and who must still carry around an internal passport upon pain of being arrested.

I also suggest that Pyrrho grow a backbone and stop sucking up. Trying to establish your racial bona fides by parading your non-white siblings around veers dangerously close to "some of my best friends are ..." Still, at least he knows that he chickened out when the chips were down. I commend him for his honesty if not his bravery.

-- Earl Hartman

It struck me, as I read Pyrrho's recounting of the PC-infected Regan's comments, that I had heard her exact argument before. It was offered by a young neo-Nazi wearing full SS regalia, who was explaining in a television interview why the Jews are and should be persecuted. "They've been hated for 2,000 years," he said. "There must be something going on there to account for that."

The fact that this kind of ignorant double-think supersedes proper critical thinking in our "higher" educational programs infuriates me. The purveyors of this sloppy, overly subjective horseshit ought to be deeply ashamed of themselves, as they have forsaken any notion of academic rigor in favor of producing faddish, palatable pap. I would like to see Pyrrho's classmate produce an even moderately coherent, 2,500-word essay on Aristotle's thoughts about women and slavery, or on Plato's notions of erotic love. She couldn't do it, because the system has taught her that it is perfectly acceptable to retroject modern ideas into the past. This is why papers on such nonsensical topics as "Aristotle's Views on Animal Rights" continue to pass academic muster. The idea of making a difficult and brave attempt to extract meaning from a text within its own cultural context -- as far as that can be determined -- has been abandoned, and replaced by the shabby, third-rate blathering that is postmodern "scholarship."

It is precisely this kind of ill-considered acceptance of an ideological authority, as demonstrated by Regan, that leads to the mushy-headed nonsense spouted by neo-Nazis, Klansmen and bunker-dwellers in Montana. I was disappointed to see that Pyrrho succumbed in the end to the emotional blackmail of his soft-brained classmate. As any philosopher worth the descriptor knows, courage is required to maintain an appropriate intellectual posture in the face of ignorance, emotionalism, and sloppy thinking.

-- Ian Wood

What did Democrats sacrifice to win gun control?
BY JAKE TAPPER
(06/04/99)

Jake Tapper is right: The juvenile justice bill stinks. It is a collection of law-enforcement wish-list items and shameless political pandering. In this, it resembles other recent crime and terrorism bills. But Tapper is a bit disingenuous here. It was his former employer, Handgun Control Inc., that took advantage of the Columbine massacre to drum up public hysteria in the hopes that doing so would allow the passage of gun control legislation. The problem is that it's easier to whip up public hysteria than to control the result.

-- Glenn Harlan Reynolds
Professor of Law
University of Tennessee

Isn't there something deliciously ironic about the ACLU, of all American institutions, complaining that the Democratic Party has sold its soul to the gun control movement? After all, that's a transaction the ACLU completed years before the Democratic Party even contemplated it! As witness their absurdist defense of "states' rights" in the case of the Second Amendment, despite the overwhelming consensus of constitutional scholars that the amendment unquestionably was intended to guarantee an individual right to own firearms.

The ACLU's anti-gun stance has condemned it to a membership only a tenth the size of the NRA's. Who knows how much safer our rights would be if it were the ACLU with 2.5 million members, and not the NRA? It's something that can't happen so long as the ACLU refuses to defend the entire Bill of Rights.

-- Brett Paul Bellmore