Imagination unleashed in all its perverse glory

Evidently, there have been voluminous other attacks on Swope, who was denounced last fall by the faculty advisor of the Women's Center for his column questioning the political rationale of such centers on college campuses. That column, in her words, did not "represent a legitimate contribution to campus debate." Again, nothing could be clearer: the only "legitimate" debate is one whose conclusions have been preordained by feminist overseers.

America, wake up! This incident is just the tip of the iceberg. On too many campuses, our students are in intellectual chains. How striking that at Georgetown University, a Catholic institution, the thought police and bullies are all on the left.

Indira Jacob asks what happened to "Camille Does the Oscars," my annual camp fest for Salon since 1997. Well, after grumpily taking eight pages of notes as I yawned through last week's boring, boring, boring Academy Awards ceremony, I said, "The hell with it!" and went to bed. I thought Chloë Sevigny and Ashley Judd looked great, as did Jane Fonda and Vanessa Williams in their own mature, seam-busting way. But that's it.

How far Hollywood has fallen since the ecstatic evening in 1961 when a divinely radiant Elizabeth Taylor won her well-deserved Oscar for "Butterfield 8." I will nurture those burning memories forever and try to blot out the depressing present, when a gimmicky grease monkey like Kevin Spacey (who belongs to the Daniel J. Travanti Sonorous Nosebone School of Ham Acting) takes home the gold.

Jay Cushman wonders why I have also been deafeningly silent about HBO's lesbo polka, "If These Walls Could Talk 2," repeatedly rebroadcast since its March 5 premiere. It's because I've never gotten through the damned thing, with its lugubrious bathos, historical inaccuracies and sophomoric vulgarities.

I sampled all three parts but kept escaping to better things on other channels -- such as Hurd Hatfield as Oscar Wilde's beautiful ephebe hauntingly playing Chopin in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1945), broadcast on Philadelphia's PBS channel, WHYY. "What a relief to get back to the style, verve and class of gay men!" I trumpeted to my partner, Alison, that night, and she wholeheartedly agreed.

Now my all-star pop moments of the past three weeks. First, the smart, sexy and enchantingly luminous Jacqueline Bisset as bitchy Jackie O. in "The Greek Tycoon" (1978), broadcast on the Romance Classics channel. Second, the rampaging Tallulah Bankhead hilariously playing herself on Nickelodeon's "Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour," one of my most cherished episodes in TV history.

Third, the volcanic Eric Roberts brilliantly capturing a real-life homicidal slimeball in Bob Fosse's unnerving "Star 80" (1983), broadcast on Bravo. Finally, blond-maned Melody Thomas Scott (willful, voracious Nikki for 20 wonderful years on "The Young and the Restless") regally and enigmatically presiding over the nation's grocery check-out lines from the cover of the March 28-April 11 issue of CBS Soaps in Depth, a pagan bible for our time.

• View blog reactions