660
PAR.TISAN R.EVlEW
cally correct version:
Life's an apoloJ?Y. And thell YOII go work Ollt.
So, should we sit
shiva,
or is there any hope? One can take the
grimly fatalistic view of the older woman, an up-close observer of half a
century of swings in the cultural pendulum who, when I mentioned the
subject of this symposium, remarked to me, "Why would you want
to
write about that? It's over. It's finished." Or one can place one's faith in
the very fickleness of the American psychic landscape - that vast acreage
filled with enough ontological anxiety to insure that within a crowded
span of less than a decade there first appear phenomena and then, in–
evitably, counter-phenomena. For example, the Abused Inner Child syn–
drome (in which everyone from Roseanne Barr on down discovers that
they were sexually abused or emotionally damaged as children) has been
followed by the counter-syndrome of False Memory Syndrome (in
which supposed adult survivors of sexual abuse discover that they have
been misled by overzealous therapists into "remembering" incidents
which they have repressed - not out of pain but because the incidents
never happened in the first place.)
Media consultant David Garth, who began as a liberal and helped
engineer John Lindsay's two mayoral victories, signed on with Rudy
Giuliani, as he told
New York
magazine, in spite of an initial perception
that Giuliani was "way right of center." "When I got to know him,"
Garth said, "I saw he was a decent guy, moderate and very smart, mllch
quicker on his feet than people give him credit for. His major sin seems
to be that he isn't politically correct -
and I've J?ottell a little sick oj politi–
cal correctness."
Many little sicknesses just might make an epidemic, if you see what I
mean. Just as there was once a pre-PC era, so there will be a post-PC
period, with new orthodoxies of its own, no doubt. I'm sure the stu–
dent radicals of the sixties never envisioned the day when Jerry Rubin
would start a dating service, or that Abbie Hoffinan would spend his last
years hocking fake Rolodexes.
As for that lonely white woman out there looking for company:
Perhaps she should start an Anti-Self-esteem Movement. Anyone care to
join?
