The Chicago Tribune (4/18) in Derrick Z. Jackson’s column tells the ‘legacy’ of bomber Eric Rudolph. Rudolph, who bombed the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, abortion clinics and a gay nightclub, had this to say about homosexuality: ‘Whether it is gay marriage, homosexual adoption, hate crimes laws including gays, or the attempt to introduce a homosexual normalizing curriculum into schools, all of these efforts should be ruthlessly opposed.’ The NY Times (4/14) on the same topic tells us that Rudolph has a gay brother and that Rudolph wrote that homosexuality practiced in private was OK but any out-of-the-closet activities should be forbidden and punished. So Rudolph agrees with the present administration in ideology and only differs (one hopes) in tactics.
The NY Times (4/20) reports a new health study from the National Cancer Institute found that if one was somewhat overweight (Body Mass index 25-29.9) one had a lesser risk of death then the extremely thin, extremely obese and even, Good God, Gerty, normally weighted individuals. A little extra around the middle is good for you. (There is absolutely no self-interest in this paragraph).
This column mentioned a book review from The NY Times (2/20) which made fun of an earlier book on lesbian writer Elizabeth Bowen because it skipped all lesbian references. The writer of that book, Victoria Glendenning, in a letter to the Times (3/27), writes that she was pressured by Bowen’s literary agent, Spencer Curtis Brown, who called her a ‘horrible, horrible woman’ for clearly stating Brown’s sexuality and that if she did not ‘clean up my act’ all permissions necessary would be withdrawn. Glendenning said he had the power, it was the ’70s, her first literary biography and she acquiesced.
The Chicago Trib (4/18) reports a special Walt Whitman issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review and says Whitman would fit right into our ‘personality-driven celebrity culture’. He was both a great poet and a shameless self-promoter. He invented his own persona as a rough working man, took a photo where he posed as St. Francis of Assisi with a butterfly (fake) on a finger, and wrote anonymous rave reviews of his own works that he placed in several newspapers.