Quasi-Pornography in the Times
            

            The pop culture of my daughters' youth is turning out so differently from my
own-their Miss Americas may be divorcees, their WNEW-FM will be a rock-free
all-talk radio station (farewell, Vin Scelsa!), and they will grow up able to
watch milling half-naked models live backstage, thanks to Vogue.com.

            I discovered Vogue.com last night, which is evidently brand new. Looking at
those fresh, sharp, digital pictures beamed from the fashion shows in Bryant
Park onto my 21-inch computer screen at midnight, I felt like a James Bond
villain-particularly when I found that you can click a button on the screen to
make Vogue.com show only the swimsuit models within a given designer's
collection. Is this what they mean in bad novels and bad movies about
"technology falling into the wrong hands"?

            Quasi-pornography in the Times this morning, too, with the day's
final accounting of the former Mrs. Ron Perelman's child-support request: $22.3
million over the next 14 years, including $30,000 a month for the kid's
servants. Patricia Duff, by the way, also shows up today in the Page One lead
of the Wall Street Journal -a story about how entertainment and American
politics have become a seamless hybrid. (Since this has been one of my personal
hobbyhorses for some years, I was happy to see the Journal certify the
phenomenon; I can stop talking about it now.) Anyhow, Duff explained and
implicitly bemoaned the trend: "There's no reverence for the process," she said
of the citizenry's disregard for politics. "It's all irreverence." By the way,
did I mention that this is a woman who is asking for $9,953 a month from now
until 2013 for her toddler's travel expenses?

            Why is the prospect of a New York Senate campaign between Hillary Clinton
and Rudy Giuliani so rich and pleasurable? Not because I would enjoy voting for
either one, certainly. Entertainment value, I figure. Or am I wrong?

            Yours,
Kurt