Saturday, May 17, 2008
Is Britney Spears just "lovestruck"? Plus: Gates' personality quirks conceal real issues in Redmond; selling science with sex appeal.
Sep 2, 1999 |
Sharps & Flats: "Baby One More Time"
BY JON DOLAN
(08/27/99)
First, Jon Dolan ignores a good decade's worth of bitch-slapping, ho-exhorting rap music to pin Limp Bizkit as "grimly misogynistic," totally ignoring the fact that their "Nookie" single doesn't mention one word about retribution toward the singer's mythical girlfriend who's put his tender heart in a blender. Then he decides that Britney Spears' "Hit me, baby, one more time" means that she, in fact, wants the aforementioned bitch-slapping.
Was Pat Benatar also asking to be whapped upside the head in "Hit Me With Your Best Shot"? Perhaps the time-honored metaphor of being "bowled over" or "blindsided" by love, passion, etc., is simply being used yet again. There's even an official word for it: "lovestruck."
-- Hannah Kerby
Sterling, Va.
Jon Dolan's commentary on Britney Spears' pop hit "Baby One More Time" was so appropriate. I've never gotten a grip on what she is trying to imply with that chorus. The line "Hit me, baby, one more time" plays into the frighteningly rampant sentiment among teens these days that jealousy equals love, and that anger as a result of that jealousy equals proof of that love. Violence then becomes misunderstood as an expression of tenderness, commitment, love, devotion, vulnerability, and caring. In fact, of course, it is just the opposite. But lessons learned at these sensitive ages are hard to undo.
I'm so afraid that young women in America, despite the choices we're taught to thank feminism for, are learning to accept a horrific set of rules at an age when freedom should be the very nourishment of a young person's heart.
Spears seems to me a tragic figure waiting to happen, like a child star who has to rebuild an identity after the inevitable crash of an artificial one -- a Dana Plato, a Drew Barrymore. I hope Spears manages not to evolve into this stereotype. But more importantly, I worry about the girls out there who furiously covet her popularity. I worry about their loneliness and what it will make them do.
-- Elizabeth Randolph
Stalking Gates
BY JANELLE BROWN
(08/25/99)
Janelle Brown suggests that Ken Auletta's feature in the New Yorker, much like Rivlin's book, "posits itself as an examination of Gates' attempt to 'upgrade' his public persona and company image." But judging from the topic matter and tone of both these pieces, as reported by Brown, they could be better described as being part of Gates and Microsoft's revisionist PR attempts.
Fixating on the colorful personalities who'd like to have Bill's head while giving short shrift to the real issues -- including those leading to the DOJ charges -- plays perfectly in the eyes of Redmond. Portrayal of Gates as some kind of peculiar "geek" just furthers the attack on real history, and handily shifts the focus. Hey, Redmond's happy (even if it says otherwise).
-- Dick Busch
New York
Is the Web "contracting"?
BY SCOTT ROSENBERG
(08/26/99)
Scott Rosenberg questions the implications of the recent Los Angles Times research. But for me, the whole picture became clear right around this sentence: "That report found that 'the most popular Web sites command by far the biggest share of Internet traffic.'"
So what is so revolutionary, so earth-shatteringly new, about something so recursively redundant? If the most popular Web sites didn't get the biggest share of Internet traffic, then what would we be defining popular to mean?
Rosenberg is right on the money: This research is no big deal.
-- Erskin L. Cherry
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