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Kenya
Watch Your Headlines ...
The
flippant headline "Kenya Catch Them" in the Aug. 11 "Today's Papers" is way out of bounds. Show some judgment.
-- Elizabeth
McMahon Baltimore
... And
Shut Your Trap
Kenneth Starr is obviously
not the only one obsessed with presidential sex. In its latest edition,
Slate
speculates in the Aug. 2 "Flytrap
Today" and beyond on whether President Clinton will issue a mea
culpa for his still-alleged transgression, debates the value of any
physical evidence that may confirm he had consensual sex with former White
House intern Monica Lewinsky, and reports how "weird, inexplicably weird" it is
to see Lewinsky in the flesh before her grand jury testimony. Like others in
the national press, you seek to elevate what you call this "Flytrap" flap to
the level of scandals such as Watergate or Iran-Contra. At the same time, you
lower the level of political discourse in
Slate
to that of the
National Enquirer , building on harmful hearsay while generally ignoring
questions about the partisan motives and support behind Starr's seemingly
interminable investigations.
Gimme a break. Flytrap is
nothing but a flyspeck when compared with presidential scandals of the past.
Yet thanks to the efforts of conservative Clinton-haters and a scandal-hungry
press, it has become a "major story" that threatens to undermine the valuable
work Clinton has done in boosting our nation's economy, cleaning up our
environment, advancing the needs of the poor and middle-class, supporting a
woman's right to choose, making improvements in our education system a top
priority, and asserting both American might and values abroad. All that is real
news. The Lewinsky imbroglio is nothing but an opportunity for the media to
dabble in salaciousness. That
Slate
is following suit makes me
question my subscription.
Rather
than cancel yet, I'll first try ignoring
Slate
for a few weeks.
By then, maybe the editors will have had time for a few cold showers, and
rather than dwelling on sex you'll be ready again to write about national and
international political issues of greater significance.
--J. Kingston
Pierce Seattle
Monicaed
Out
Your
relentless preoccupation with Clinton and Monica in Flytrap Today and elsewhere
has finally pissed me off. As a Canadian, this clearly is not a matter of my
political affiliation but, as a Canadian, it is also clear that the concerns of
Slate
have very little appeal outside the United States.
-- Donald
Thom Ottawa
Give It
Up, David
David Plotz's Flytrap
dispatches are just great. However, his suggestion in "Give It Away,
Ken" (Aug. 4) that Starr should save Clinton from Clinton because it would
be too awful if Bill should lie again is absurd.
Come on,
David, you know better than that. Nevertheless, everyone, even
Slate
writers, is allowed a brain seizure now and again.
-- Mark
Bossingham Tokyo
Publishme
About the
Aug. 8 "Readme":
You can justify withholding the British intelligence officer's article in a
dozen different ways, but the fact remains that because of the financial
liability to your parent company you decided not to publish a story that your
training and experience as journalists indicated was important and ought to be
told.
-- Jim
Lipsey Nashville, Tenn.
Commentary Comments
Though I have some
disagreements with Judith Shulevitz in the Aug. 5 "Culturebox," and though I believe she has been less than fair in
several of her comments about my work, I am nevertheless indebted to her for
taking up some of the questions I raised about Holocaust scholarship in the
June issue of Commentary .
To begin with, though I
consider some of the things being written about the Holocaust by feminist
scholars to be offensive, even shocking, I have never suggested answering them
with censorship or anything of the sort. I am only in favor of subjecting them
to criticism, which is what I have done in the pages of Commentary , and
which I was heartened to see Shulevitz has herself now done in
Slate
.
Nor do I believe that the
extermination of Europe's Jews is a "religious topic" that is or should be
beyond discussion. I made it quite clear in Commentary that I favor
serious research and teaching about the Holocaust in a university setting, and
I have never suggested otherwise. I do, however, oppose the propagation of
nonsense--a word that applies with precision to many things being written these
days. The Ofer-Weitzman book, Women in the Holocaust , rightly held up
for disapproval by Shulevitz, is by no means the worst of its kind. Readers who
want to see how memory of the Holocaust is being twisted in the service of a
contemporary political cause should turn to the August issue of
Commentary and examine some of the passages I quote from the writings of
Joan Ringelheim, director of education at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
She is hardly a marginal academic in a fringe institution; in fact, she
occupies one of the most important positions in the field.
Finally, I was more than a
little troubled and perplexed by the charge that I engage in distortion. In the
only instance Shulevitz provides, I stand accused of taking a word from an
obscure feminist source and repeating it "throughout" my piece for rhetorical
effect. She also suggests, without elaborating, that I have committed other
even more serious distortions.
Yet the one example Shulevitz
puts forward is about as thin as the paper
Slate
is not printed
on. Far from incessantly repeating the word "malestream," I use it only twice.
And I hardly drew it from a hard to find source. I was citing a basic text, a
special issue of the journal Contemporary Jewry devoted to "gender" and
the Holocaust referenced in virtually every book on this subject. I hope I am
not being "shrill" in pointing out that this journal is readily available in
the New York Public Library, which Shulevitz claims to have combed.
"Culturebox," we are told, "intends to make a habit of ruling on disputes" of
the sort I provoked in Commentary . Shulevitz would help it acquire some
welcome credibility in its rulings if she were also to make a habit of being
fair.
-- Gabriel
Schoenfeld Senior editor, Commentary New York City
Judith
Shulevitz replies:
Gabriel Schoenfeld has a
point, and Culturebox--who sometimes writes too much, too fast--must concede
it. The word "censorship" was ill-chosen. Schoenfeld doesn't have the authority
to censor anybody and was only exercising his right as a critic to damn entire
fields of endeavor. What Culturebox ought to have said is that, as a
responsible critic at a publication as serious as Commentary , Schoenfeld
should think about the language he uses when he does damn entire fields of
endeavor. Is everything that comes out of the latter-day study of women and the
Holocaust (Culturebox says latter-day because he exempts chroniclers of the
ghetto from his criticisms) "execrable," "one of the worst excesses" of
Holocaust studies, and "nakedly ideological"? It is true that he only uses
"malestream" twice, but he quotes it in order to imply that feminists
everywhere are using it at every turn. ("Mainstream scholarship on the Nazi
genocide, we are being told on every side, is not so much mainstream as
'malestream.' ") There isn't a field of study Culturebox couldn't make
ridiculous simply by quoting its more unappealing jargon. Does Schoenfeld
really mean to compare women writing about women who died in the camps with "a
narrow cult living somewhere on a commune and insisting on a macabre sisterhood
with the dead Jewish women of Europe"?
Strange
as it may seem to a journalist writing outside the academy, attacks as
mean-spirited as his have real consequences inside the academy--particularly on
the funding, tenuring, and acceptance of scholars under attack. Just ask any
literature professor how quickly English, French, and German departments
flushed out their theory mavens once deconstruction became a dirty word. Or try
to find a job for a Ph.D. specializing in cultural studies now that Alan Sokal
has made a laughingstock of the field. Not that these particular movements
didn't deserve ridicule, mind you. But it behooves both Schoenfeld and
Culturebox, with the prestige and reach of magazines such as Commentary
and Slate behind them, to pause for a deep breath before we relegate
entire categories of scholarship to the dustbin of intellectual
history.
Snakepit
Thanks so
much, David Edelstein, for planning my weekend for me. Make that canceling my
weekend because, prior to reading your review of Snake Eyes in "Trigonometry,"
I had planned to see the actual movie version, and now I needn't bother. Your
review not only told me I would hate the ending but gave such detailed
descriptions of half the shots in the film that I was left with the feeling I
had already seen the entire thing. All I need now is a CD of the music and a
bag of popcorn. Your writing has the power to evoke strong visual images in the
mind's eye and for that very reason I feel you should show restraint when
reviewing a film early in its release. I found myself thanking the celluloid
gods I had missed your review of The Crying Game .
-- Judith
Spencer Fort Worth, Texas
David
Edelstein replies:
The
sequence I detailed was from the middle of the picture, occupied about 10
minutes of screen time, and was evoked because it illustrated De Palma's film
syntax better than the usual dumb adjectives. I didn't give away any plot
surprises; read the review in the New York Times if you want to know
them. (I didn't even say who the villain was, although it's so obvious--and is
even in the coming attractions!--as many critics have.) And if I think that the
ending is a major dud and DON'T say so in print, then as a critic I've been
derelict in my duties--especially if said (undescribed) ending left an
otherwise friendly audience pissed off. See Snake Eyes next weekend and
let me know if I really spoiled it for you.
Why Guilt
May Set You Free
In "Everyday
Economics," Steven E. Landsburg misses the point when he compares the
damage done by letting 10 guilty people go free with the damage done by
convicting one innocent person. He is right to try to quantify the costs, but
he should include all the costs.
The trouble with a legal
system that allows a significant probability of convicting innocent people is
that it allows unscrupulous prosecutors to become petty tyrants. Will you stand
up to an official who can put you at significant risk of conviction with a
trumped-up case? Private enemies could also tyrannize each other: What will you
do if your neighbor threatens to frame you for some crime, and you know the
courts might convict you on borderline evidence? Landsburg should count not
only the cost to innocent people of going to jail but also the cost in liberty
when they must cave in to threats of slander or malicious prosecution.
We see this now in our tort
system, where innocent parties routinely cave in to threats of lawsuits.
Of course
Blackstone knew that it would be better to convict one innocent person than let
10 criminals go free if the effects were limited to those 11 cases. He was
concerned with the effect on everyone else.
-- Walter
Stromquist Berwyn, Pa.
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