4 responses to “Tabula rasa.”

1. 

   alex said on November 14, 2003 at 2:32 pm

   And here I’ve been ignoring the Jessica feeding frenzy altogether, having flat-out made the assumption it would be just another BushCo dog & pony show.

   I find Cohen’s observations interesting, even heartening, particularly as regards the generational divide. The evidence I’ve seen right here in my own home among my stepson and his friends is that today’s teens and twenty-somethings really don’t have the same hang-ups about the equality of the races or sexes, or about homosexuality.

   I’m certain it’s the old school of hung-up entertainment execs who give us all this “Will & Grace” and “Queer Eye” stuff. Ha! That shit’s gonna go down in history as the “Amos & Andy” or “Step-n-Fetchit” of gay television. MTV’s “The Real World” has done more for gay liberation than any of that dreck, which in my humble opinion still marginalizes gay people as frivolous, even makes them appear unsympathetic, for the benefit of those who don’t want to have to take gay people seriously.

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2. 

   Melissa said on November 14, 2003 at 3:44 pm

   Richard Cohen’s column is probably one of the most positive things to have come out of this entire mess, right along with Jessica’s refusal to take credit or glory for an enormous PR effort that nearly rolled right over her.

   I am not sure that the choice of Rick Bragg as her amanuensis was the best choice, given his particular issues, but I do think the truth about this episode has come out at last, and Jessica deserves more credit than many people have given her up until now.

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3. 

   danno said on November 15, 2003 at 8:37 am

   Alex, you go girllll!!!

   Oops! Did that remark mean I’m not taking a gay man seriously?? I get sooooo confused in these days of PCness!!

   It’s about time the granduer of Jessica Lynch gets talked about in the simple terms it deserves. And thank goodness it was from her! Too much has been made about this incident, which many men and women in uniform have been subject to. She is not a hero, but instead the people who saved her are. Where is their TV show??

   Not that I would watch it mind you.

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4. 

   KCK said on November 16, 2003 at 5:59 pm

   Pardon my French but frankly, I think the Cohen article is a total piece of crap. Tabula rasa indeed. “It’s likely that Lynch has few if any racial or ethnic hang-ups” says Cohen. Based on what? Jessica had an army buddy from a different culture, well alert the fucking media, that’s certainly never happened before. To me, his assertion of Lynch’s “race blindness” is more indicative of his bias about matters racial than anything he actually knows about Lynch.

   I think the Washington Post had the earliest extensive inacurate coverage of Jessica’s heroics, I don’t think you can blame Fox. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, they say.

   I have the great respect for Jessica that is due one who has shed their blood in the uniform of their country. But upon first hearing of her rescue, I hoped the media attention that would hence plague her would not be her ruin. If she thought some of her Iraqi captors were a bunch a slimy scumbags, just wait until she encounters the hench-persons of the television ratings-whores, I worried.

   Godspeed, Jessica.

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