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Friday, Nov 27, 2009
The Million Moms are "cowardettes who don't know the difference between a Glock and a glockenspiel."
Jun 7, 2000 | Greetings, campers!
Although I'm on summer hiatus working on book projects, I want to showcase a sampling of the fascinating letters that flowed in from Salon readers after my final column of May 17. As a lagniappe, I'm including outstanding letters to me from this spring.
Today (Wednesday) we are featuring the letters on gun control, one of the hottest issues of this year's elections. On Thursday, letters on Elian Gonzalez, American politics and the Roman Empire will be posted. On Friday will appear letters on education, homosexuality, the media and pop culture.
Naturally, I can't nip out the door without commenting on a few recent events -- like the spectacular entry of Rep. Rick Lazio into the New York senatorial race. Within two weeks, polls showed Hillary Clinton and the relatively unknown Lazio in a dead heat. I was thrilled by the May 26 New York Post headline, "Rising Star Lazio Catches Hillary in a New York Minute."
I was impressed by Lazio, an energetic four-term congressman, from the moment I saw him on the Sunday morning political talk shows over a year ago. He has an agile grasp of the issues and knows how to handle the media with force and humor. The dour diva Hillary, in contrast, has of this date never had the guts to appear on any of those Sunday programs, even though she's been a repeat guest on the airheaded "Rosie O'Donnell Show," where she's servilely treated like a feminist Messiah. Herd Hillary off to the p.c. corral of the U.N., where she belongs!
When Lazio fell on his face and split his lip while sprinting up and down the street during a Memorial Day parade on May 29, I was absolutely horrified, but within 48 hours, the incident mysteriously began to add to his power. With his battered face, Lazio had morphed into a smash-mouth football tight end or a Roman gladiator (the title of this summer's hit movie). And he recalled boxers like handsome Rocky Marciano or Rocky Graziano, a beloved New York native. Indeed, the rousing theme song to Sylvester Stallone's 1976 film "Rocky" (about a working-class Philadelphia boxer) was played at Lazio's entrance into the New York State Republican convention on May 30.
My cousin Wanda Mastrogiacomo Hudak, the Broome County legislator, had a chance to inspect Lazio up close the very next day, as his upstate tour bus, the "Mainstream Express," visited Chenango Bridge near Binghamton. Wanda, who was in the welcoming delegation, writes that 600 people waiting on the grassy commons went totally "berzerk" when the bronze bus zoomed into sight with the grinning face of "the Young Warrior" pressed against a window.
As the ebullient Lazio and his spunky nurse-practitioner wife stepped off the bus, Wanda (an R.N. herself with 32 years' experience) instantly "evaluated his condition as only a nurse can do": She judged the stitched lip A-OK and the famous smile "intact." And as a mother, she was relieved to see Lazio wearing "crepe-soled tasseled loafers" instead of slippery dress shoes: "He learned his lessons well."
The Hillary Clinton Carpetbagging Campaign had better stop touting the precedent of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy as a rationale for the election of an egregious out-of-stater. (Kennedy, in any case, had spent his formative years in Bronxville, N.Y.) It's Rick Lazio, overflowing with boundless, eager, ruthless, boy-wolf energy, who's the real Robert Kennedy in this race.
Lazio is no Newt Gingrich clone: He has a varied voting record, as when he flouted the Republican leadership to vote for continued funding of the National Endowment for the Arts, which conservatives wanted to abolish. Furthermore, Lazio hails from an ethnic-immigrant but non-urban segment of the American electorate that has never been adequately studied, understood or respected, despite its massive size. They're my people too, and I resent the elitist sneering at Lazio and his Long Island district that's already started in the celebrity media.
Incidentally, Salon's vast influence is illustrated by the speed with which my phrase about Lazio in my last column --"quick-witted, dynamic, fresh-faced" -- was absorbed into other news stories. Within days, the New York Times called Lazio "fresh-faced," followed by Time (which used it as a caption), the Associated Press and the New York Observer. This happens all the time. Salon rules.
Other matters: though I normally avoid organized groups, I've joined the National Italian-American Foundation, because I've gone into full battle mode over the outrageous ethnic slurs in HBO's vile series, "The Sopranos." I'm sick to death, for example, of Italians being falsely portrayed as gross, sloppy, boorish eaters. Why are Italian-Americans used as scapegoats and comic relief from the headache-inducing, anorexic tribulations of WASPy Ally McBeal? Just fatten up Calista Flockhart, and get the hell off our case!
It has been brought to my attention that certain media articles are listing me as a writer for Nerve.com, a site I have no interest in whatever. After a November 1998 benefit for the Museum of Sex project (I sit on its advisory board), I agreed at the museum's request to participate in a roundtable discussion of sex and religion on Nerve.com -- a feature I found so tedious and ill-organized that I withdrew midway.
That is my sole connection with Nerve.com, which I regard as a dull enterprise by networking Manhattan yuppies. While I have indeed participated occasionally in online forums or live chats for a variety of sites, I write exclusively on the Web for Salon, as I have done since its inaugural issue in 1995.
Finally, no day is complete without a dose of pop. I loved last week's profile of Candice Bergen on A&E's "Biography" but was irate at the wildly disproportionate attention paid to CBS's "Murphy Brown" (which I was no fan of) at the expense of Bergen's sensational 1966 debut as a glamorous lesbian in Sidney Lumet's "The Group" -- where, despite her lack of acting skills, she burnt up the screen with her innate class and smoldering beauty.
There was a time when Bergen genially joked that she started her career (in more than one film) by playing "the world's richest lesbian." And did I miss any reference to Bergen's understated performance as Sydney Biddle Barrows in the 1987 docudrama, "Mayflower Madam"? If it was there, it was buried. This kind of censorship is unworthy of A&E.
