Of course, colleges and universities are not the only institutions
in our culture that seem to be in a race to render themselves ever
more trivial and superficial. There are also various dispensers of
news and comment—The New York Times, to take one prominent
example. Like many others, we have often had occasion to
reflect on what has happened to the Times in recent years:
the blurring of the traditional distinction between news reporting
and blatant editorializing, the shocking poverty of its cultural
coverage, the subjection of nearly every aspect of the paper to an
obsession with “lifestyle” and so-called human interest stories. We
believed—foolishly, as it turned
out—that we had inured ourselves
to the worst that the Times could deliver. But as the old adage
has it, if you can say “This is the worst,” then worse is yet to
come. And so it was to be with the Times. Many readers will have
their own catalogue of fatuous stories that have appeared on the
front page of our Paper of Record. It constitutes an embarrassment
of … well, an embarrassment, anyway. But even we were not
prepared for the front-page story, complete with color photograph,
called “Two Experts Do Battle Over Potty Training.” The President of
the United States was being impeached; Russia was sinking further
into chaos; most of Europe was in the process of transforming itself
into a German colony; but the Times devotes a large portion of its
front-page (and half an inside page) to rival theories about toilet
training. There was some poetic justice, perhaps, in the fact that
this story appeared below the fold, but above the fold a long story
about rumors that the basketball player Michael Jordan was set to
retire competed heartily with genuinely newsworthy items. (When Mr.
Jordan finally did announce his retirement, he got the sort of
front-page treatment formerly reserved for major bank crashes or
mid-level political assassinations.) Which is worse, the
politicization of the Times or its trivialization? The story about
potty training showed that all bets are off.
From the archives of academic publishing:
“Queer in Russia: A Story of Sex, Self and the Other
In Queer in Russia Laurie Essig examines the formation of gay
identity and community in the former Soviet Union. As a sociological
field worker she began her research during the late 1980s, before
any kind of a public queer identity existed in that country. After a
decade of conducting interviews, as well as observing and analyzing
plays, books, pop music, and graffiti, Essig presents the first
sustained study of how and why there was no Soviet gay community or
even gay identity before perestroika and the degree to which this
situation has—or has not—changed.”
A lead item in the “General Interest” section of the Spring
1999 list from Duke University Press.