Culture Vultures: Dysfunction Junction
Steyn, Mark
just published, you can feel the difficulty Morrison has in finding out a way to inject himself into the story, but, anxious to empathize with his celebrity killers, he puts his mind to it and...
...More like no shame, no blame...
...As his favorite formulation puts it, "Mistakes were made," as if some bizarre spore from the planet Gopac wafted down into the White House greenhouse —and next thing you know hundreds of little mistakes are running around the place making phone calls and brewing coffee...
...One line in her interview with Mirabella rings truer than all 207 pages of her fey, writerly memoir—"I wanted my father, let's just say that...
...1) try...
...In years to come, I won't be able to remember even one instance of our lying together...
...I arrive at the state promised by the narcotic kiss in the airport," she writes woozily, after her first coupling with dad...
...I'll bet Harrison can remember several instances of their lying together—what it felt like, what she enjoyed about it, why she preferred dad to her boyfriend, and why, as an adult woman, she returned to him, night after night after night...
...We shouldn't be surprised, then, that so many Americans now behave like talk-show guests, jostling for the microphone to trumpet the dysfunction of the hour, not seeking absolution but attention...
...Milton Berle...
...Any self-respecting author must dread lunching with his agent or publisher: "You know, I was thinking maybe of doing a biography of Milton...
...No, no, you misunderstand," you say...
...Or considered it as a career move...
...He's one of fourteen bozos from Woburn, Massachusetts, who recently overdosed on stolen muscle relaxants...
...As the cliché goes, no pain, no gain...
...Harrison's memoir differs from that on her novels: the blonde hair has been pushed back, and she seems more exposed, more of a "survivor...
...John Milton...
...Legal Code, Bill Clinton, in front of a national radio audience, opted instinctively to flatter the jerk: "Maybe something can be done to label them more clearly...maybe have the Post Office deliver it to the door...
...But that's the funny thing about the new school of confession: baring your soul turns out to be, like most forms of showbiz, just another way of evading truth...
...And I got him...
...It's often been said that Clinton conducts himself as America's national talk-show host...
...Having parlayed a theft and an overdose into celebrity and an audience with the president, Brandon looked his Head of State in the eye and, without an ounce of shame, told him he ought to do something about the U.S...
...To quote Ira Gershwin and Yip Harburg, "She sat on his lap All over the map...
...Instead of reminding Brandon of the mail-tampering portions of the U.S...
...In a culture with no moral compass, confession is no longer a prelude to punishment...
...yet his confessions, like Kathryn's, are literally shameless...
...I'll have a composite, generic memory...
...Just as mistakes were made at the White House, and incest broke out at the Harrison house, so Brandon was a passive victim of circumstances beyond his control: if it hadn't been for the ruthless Post Office, his chums wouldn't have been able to steal those prescription drugs...
...After all, society itself is one big family, so, in that sense, all sex is incest...
...He wrote Paradise Lost...
...The political equivalent of Mrs...
...It's called the Oedipus Complex...
...No pain, no gain...
...Hmm," she says, toying with her coulis...
...And then he proudly reveals how his own daughter sexually arouses him...
...Whatever happened to Blake's poetry...
...The Kiss is very sparely written, almost trance-like — it's like sleepwalking through a vat of vichyssoise...
...About the Milton...
...But those of who are intrafamiliarly-challenged feel society is too hung up about sex within the family...
...I'll talk to them about it and see if there's anything else we can do...
...Oprah: "I'm sure all of us admire your courage, honesty and pride...
...just published, you can feel the difficulty Morrison has in finding out a way to inject himself into the story, but, anxious to empathize with his celebrity killers, he puts his mind to it and ingeniously figures out a way: Who among us, he asks, has not been sexually attracted to children...
...And I gather you've now opened a center—a bit like the Betty Ford clinic...
...Well, since you mention it, yes, I have had sex with my mother, but it was a long time ago and, frankly, I'm rather embarrassed about it...
...Today, Oedipus and his mom wouldn't waste time with all that shame...
...But she's chosen consciously to adopt the passive voice, as if the forces of incest were somehow swirling all around and she just got swept along by them...
...maybe not leave it in the mailbox...
...Kathryn's novels...
...Milton...
...says the agent...
...President Clinton is forever baring his soul to us...
...Free will isn't part of the equation...
...The jacket photo on Mrs...
...In a way, the most abused victim is the world of letters itself...
...Ed: "Yes, indeed...
...You won't find that brief, impromptu admission of primal desire anywhere in the book...
...I don't suppose you've had sex with your mother...
...Oh, yeah...
...Because he's middle-class, photogenic, and relatively articulate, he was sprung from the hospital by Peter Jennings and whisked to the White House for an ABC "Town Meeting" called "Straight Talk on Drugs...
...Harrison was 20 when she began her consensual affair with daddy, a logistically complex relationship conducted in towns and cities across the length and breadth of the coun44 Confession is no longer a prelude to punishment...
...qii4 The American Spectator • May 1997 47...
...Don't tell me he's got a dark side...
...Harrison's confessions can beheard almost daily at the White House...
...Today, Oedipus and his mom, the literary forebears of Kathryn and her dad, wouldn't need to waste time with all that shame—which is the antithesis of pride, and redundant in the new America...
...In fact, in our confessional age, you can make quite a lot of gains for very little pain...
...Thirteen-year-old Brandon Power has certainly figured out how it works...
...Postal Service, which was to blame for delivering prescription drugs to sick old men in the first place...
...The tale of Oedipus would be a Vanity Fair cover story ("Oedipus, Rex of All Media by Kevin Sessums") and he'd be doing "Oprah": 'Well, it took me a while to come to terms with my home-sexuality...
...Uncle Milty...
Vol. 30 • May 1997 • No. 5
