We Should No Better

Sun., July 26, 1998

By Susan English susane@spokesman.com

A recent Time/CNN poll regarding attitudes about the President Clinton-Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones brouhaha showed 52 percent of American women and 57 percent of men believe “we have gone too far in making common interactions between employees into cases of sexual harassment.”

First, let’s overlook the fact neither Clinton or Lewinsky falls easily into the category “employees.” Second, if what some allege actually did happen between this man and woman, it would hardly be characterized as a “common interaction.”

Nevertheless, in the article about “why sex scandals don’t mean harassment,” writer Gloria Steinem calls for a return to common sense guidelines regarding these affairs: Yes means yes, no means no.

Enough said. (From June Ms.)

It’s about safe sex, guys: Percentage of men who immediately left houses of prostitution after being told they must use a condom: 16. (From July/August Men’s Health)

Belly on up to the table: Average increase in the size of a standard restaurant dinner plate over the past several years: 2 inches. (From June 29 Time)

On the education front: Author John Irving, who made his millions on best-selling books such as “The World According to Garp,” and lately “A Widow for One Year,” is engaged in a war of words on another front.

When the state of Vermont, in which he lives, enacted a new bill requiring equity of funding in school districts across the state, Irving threatened to take his money and move out of Vermont since the tax on his $1.4 million home will go up more than $5,000.

“My response is as brutally upper-class as I can make it,” he told Time magazine. “I’m not putting my child in an underfunded school system.”

He talked to Time rather than the local press “because I don’t want to make my child a target of trailer-park envy. I deeply resent being resented by people who think I’m ignorant, insensitive and lazy because I’ve made a lot of money.”

The trailer-park folks in Vermont responded quickly in a more measured tone: “We all know about those trailer-park people,” said Warren Morse, a spokesman for the Mobile Home Park Project. “When they are not conjuring up tornadoes, they go around saying mean things about the rich and famous. And they have the nerve to want their children to have the same quality of education as the rich kids have. What next? Caviar on their hot dogs?” (From July 6 New Yorker)

Facts of life 2: The number of women who have Barbie’s 32-16-29 figure: 1 in 100,000 (From July/August Men’s Health)

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