|
April 29,
Gavin
Keeney
So
Long, Frank O. Gehry?
April 28, 2002
Michael Neumann
The Jewish Left and Palestine
April 27, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
Adelphia
Going Down:
Cover Ups, Censorship
and Naughty Accounting
Jordy Cummings
Stuck Inside the Journalism School
Pyramid
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Set
This Flag on Fire!
April 26, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Act
Now to Stop the Killing
of an Innocent Man
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Anti-Bribery
Law Takes a Hit
Tariq Ali
Letter to a Young Muslim
April 25, 2002
Francis
A. Boyle
Home
Brew? Biowarfare,
Terror Weapons and the US
Adam Federman
"And the Earth Wept"
Bush at Saranac Lake
Stanton
and Madsen
US
Media Interests:
Champions of Profit, Propaganda and Puffery
Aaron Hawley
Cop a Buzz Day in Vermont:
Education v. Incarceration
David
Vest
Code
Red: Politics and Wordplay at the Vatican
Bernard Weiner
Time Out! A Pause for Longer-Range
Thinking
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Standing
with the Peace Movement
April 24, 2002
David Vest
State of Politics in France:
Code Bleu
Jean Fallow
A20
in Seattle:
Cops Get Rough, Again
Kevin Alexander Gray
Help Save the Life of an Innocent Man:
Ask for Clemency for Ricky Johnson
Tanya
Reinhart
Jenin,
the Propaganda Battle
Todd May
Drowning Children, Palestinians and American
Responsibility
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Loneliest Road
Nir Rosen
The Broken Home:
Revisiting Israel
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
A
Big Blow to Big Tobacco
April 23, 2002
Brian Wood
Where Is the Aid for the Victims in
Jenin?
John Chuckman
I,
George:
Gomer as Claudius
Norman Madarasz
French Presidential Elections
Absenteeism and Le Pen
Dr. Susan
Block
Bernard
Parks, Goodbye:
A Farewell to My Chief
Joan Smith
Who Will Rid Us of
These Pedophile Priests?
April 22, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
EPA
Ombudsman Resigns
in Protest
Dave Marsh
DeskScan: What's Playing
at My House This Week
Ron Jacobs
A20
in DC: Taking the
Message to the Beast's Belly
Kathy Kelly
An Open Letter to
Israeli Soldiers
Irit Katriel
Word
Games and Body Bags
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
We Come for Peace
Daniel
Bar-Tal
Is
There a Way Out?
Occupation, Terror
and Understanding
David Wilson
A Week of Coups, But Now
The Freedom Train Hits Town
Shaik
Ubaid
Today
I Was a Palestinian
April 21, 2002
Michelle Campos
Suckered Again in Israel
Mike Leon
200,000
in DC Protest Say:
"We Are All Palestinians Today"
C.G. Estabrook
Sex and Power in Catholicism
Kathy
Kelly
Gimme
Some Truth Now
A Walk Through Jenin
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
April 29, 2002
The New
York Times Does Erin Brockovich
The Tits Make the Activist
by Michael Colby
I started to count the number of references to
Erin Brockovich1s breasts in Austin Bunn's biographical essay
on her work in the New York Times1 Sunday Magazine ("Erin
Brockovich, The Brand," April 28, 2002). Unfortunately,
I got distracted and lost count after about a dozen. Brockovich,
of course, is the paralegal who helped fight Pacific Power &
Gas (PG&E) in the late 1990s and was immortalized by the
movie that bears her name and starred the chirpy Julia Roberts.
But if you picked up the article to learn
about Brockovich's methodology and activist philosophy, you
were shit out of luck. This was about tits. And Brockovich was
all-too-willing to play along. How many activists, for example,
would take a journalist on a clothes-shopping spree while being
followed for a feature story? Brockovich, for one. In fact,
the shopping spree come about after a trip to a bar for a "cranberry
and vodka" (their first stop) and well before they got
around to visiting "victims."
The smitten Bunn, even donning a name
fit for the piece, couldn't keep his mind of Brockovich's breasts,
bellybutton, and waistline long enough to provide much else
about her life. Brockovich, after finding wealth and fame from
her successful case against PG&E, is apparently still out
there fighting the "bad guys," but Bunn could care
a less about such trivial matters.
Here's Bunn's third paragraph of his
essay, describing their trip to the clothing store:
"When she glides in, nearly an hour
late, she heads immediately to the dressing room. She throws
on a pair of blatantly age-inappropriate, low-slung denim pants
and models them in the mirror. For most, this would be a private
moment, but not for Brockovich. She pulls up her shirt and
suspiciously eyes her miraculous waistline. She wants to know
if the jeans reveal too much skin. 'I don't like my bellybutton
showing,' she says. 'I really don't.' She looks magnificent
in everything here, which makes choosing hard. 'When I have
vodkas-and-cranberries, I come home with all kinds of stuff,'
she says, twisting her hair into curlers that have been warmed
for her. 'I tell my husband, 'Don't let me shop when I've been
drinking.'"
But then Bunn lets it all hang out when
he springs this bit of verbiage on his readers: "We're
used to our crusaders rejecting style and sexuality for high
seriousness, as if they were mutually exclusive. But Brockovich
demands to be taken seriously with her Armani suits and her breast
implants (and in some cases, yes, her bellybutton showing)."
Brockovich, of course, loves it. She
even jumps at the chance to describe herself as "Ralph
Nader with cleavage."
Welcome to the world of celebrity activists,
where we're all just a tit job away from victory.
Michael Colby
is the editor of Wild
Matters and welcomes comments at mcolby@wildmatters.org
|