E-Pop! Issue # 13: The Blurry Pop Culture Landscape

The pop culture landscape is a blurry mess right now. It's part segmented
Dali, part cubist and part "Scream." Almost on cue, Tipper Gore felt the
pulse of the nation, and announced her new pet cause: depression. It
couldn't come at a better time for America. In the pop culture balance of
chaos vs. control, chaos reigns supreme.

We are in a war, it's just that no one really declares war anymore. It's
not that simple. Just like in corporate America, where the idot's answer to
every conflict is to schedule another meeting, NATO schedules another
session. Meanwhile, bombs are flying, people dying, conflicts
continuing...sounds like war to me, wouldn't you agree?

We, as a nation, are being stalked by Monica Lewinsky. It's one thing when
she turns up announced on a program like the Today Show. Check the listings.
If it says Monica, practice "Don't Turn It On" TV. But no, now she's
showing up unannounced on Saturday Night Live, like that girlfriend who gets
drunk and shows up on your doorstep three months after you broke up.

Don't you find yourself looking at Amy Fisher getting released from prison
and longing for the sweet, bygone days of Amy, Joey and Mary Jo? Monica
could take lessons from the school of Amy Fisher, who now comes across looking
like a class act.

All the pop news seems like it's on a combination of "CD shuffle" and
"replay". No matter where you go - elevators, airports, car, home - you hear what
seems like the same sound bytes. Teen violence. Former child star OD's. Talk
show mayhem. But the names are different this month. Littleton. Dana
Plato. Jenny Jones.

Even morning TV is scary. The first thing out of bed and I get to see
Bryant Gumbel back on morning TV. Uuggh. Thanks, CBS Morning News. What's
my alternative? Charlie Gibson? Diane Sawyer? I mean, if Joan Lunden ever
gets tired of her "Find Out About Claritin" commercials, then it'll be 1984
all over again. Katie Couric is worth every penny of her $7million dollar a year
contract if, for no other reason than the billions of $$ savings on prozac that perky
little Katie spares us from needing before 9 am.

Now we have chipper Tipper, telling us from her shiny new soapbox how
un-chipper she was 10 years ago, sometime after her son's accident and
before Al discovered the Internet. Nothing concrete in her speech, just "read the
symptons of depression, I had some." As a potential future first lady, she needed
a cause. And from the looks of the pop culture landscape she couldn't have
picked a better one. But come on, Tipper, tell us: Zoloft or Prozac? 25
ml or 50?? And did you do the "anti depressant fade out" or quit cold
turkey?

And everywhere you turned this week, Camryn Manheim was either on a
magazine cover (TV Guide), talk show appearance (Rosie, Today) or tabloid,
including the now infamous dinner with Monica where the two "Rubens" women
caused a brouhaha at Joe's Pub in Manhattan and ended up at Moomba for
dinner. The latter included, according to an eyewtiness at Moomba, E-Pop!'s
favorite pop moment of the week: Monica and Manheim downing a double platter
of burgers, ice cream and onion rings with cheese, washed down with Diet
Cokes, as an aghast Tori Spelling looked on in wonder.

Camryn is the new poster girl for fat girls' rights. Everyone has a cause
these days, and hers is a good one, but we are being deluged. It's like
when your mother tells you something ten times and you finally yell back, "I GET
it." Pop culture is meant to entertain, not abuse. An entertaining pop culture
demands that, at some point, the pop culture icons step back, give us time to
digest what they're saying, and then let the satirists take over. But in this
landscape, there is no stepping back..The line is crossed and then crossed again.
There is no time to take it all in, and definitely nowhere to take the satire. This kind
of pop culture is no culture at all. It's a Pandora's Box of bad taste gone too far.

To that end, E-Pop! this week brings at least a measure of control. If the
current focus on "Wake Up, I'm Fat!" Camryn Manheim is really emblematic of
the pop franchising of diseases and afflcitions and conditions, then E-Pop! can
chronicle them by God. We can list them. We can be overly compulsive and make
lists and maps and graphs, all in an effort to comprehend, digest, edit and get a
grasp on the images, news and causes we are bombarded with daily.

Who owns what, that's what E-Pop wanted to know. So we did a little
research, and the following is a list of diseases and afflictions, the
celebrities who have co-opted them and the icons they emulate.

* To protect the anonymity of celebrities currently in 12 step programs, in
those instances, E-Pop only lists first names and last initials.

Affliction.......................Current Owner..............Icon (If applicable)

Depression.....................Tipper Gore....................Eeyore
Sad Former Child Star.....Dana Plato.....................Buffy from family Affair
Fat Girl Rights................Camryn Manheim............Mama Cass
Fat Men Who Don't Care.John Goodman................Orson Welles
Funny Fat Man Addict.....Chris Farley....................John Belushi
Sexual Harrassment........Kathleen Willey...............Anita Hill
Skinny Girls Rights.........Calista Flockhart.............Twiggy
Basic Drug Addiction.......Changes weekly..............Keith Richards
Bald Is Beautiful..............Billy Zane.......................Telly Savalas
Widowhood.....................Katie Couric...................Jackie Kennedy
Single Motherhood...........Jodie Foster...................Murphy Brown
Tired Conservatism...........Dan Quayle...................Jerry Falwell
Chronic Fatigue................Open............................Cher
Hepatitis..........................Naomi Judd...................Open but odds are Naomi
Suicide............................David Strickland.............Judy Garland
Weight Fluctuation...........Oprah W........................Oprah W.
"Cheated On" Spouse.......Kathie Me Gifford............Hillary Rodham Clinton
Bulimia............................Paula Abdul...................Princess Diana
Anorexia..........................Tracey Gold...................Karen Carpenter
Trash...............................Bette Midler...................Open
Nymphomania..................Kate Moss.....................Vivien Leigh
Alcoholism.......................Oliver Reed....................Otis from Mayberry RFD
Cocaine/Crack..................Darryl Strawberry...........Marion Barry
Failed Relatives................Michael Reagan's son.....Billy Carter
Sexual Cumpulsion...........Michael Douglas............Vivien Leigh
Lying...............................Bill C.............................Pinocchio
Prescription Painkillers......Matthew Perry...............Liz T.
Hunk Gone Wrong............Jan Michael Vincent.......Lex Barker
Recovery..........................Robert Downey Jr..........Betty Ford
Quadriplegia.....................Christopher Reeve.........George Wallace
Dyslexia..........................Cher.............................RehC
Cranial Facial Disorder......Cher.............................Jocelyn Wildenstein (Exhibit A)
Parkinson's Disease.........Michael J. Fox...............Kate Hepburn (needs to be told)
Plastic Surgery................Jennifer Grey.................Ivana, as in "I vant the whole..."
Breast Implants................Pamela Lee..................Jenny Jones
Epilepsy..........................Jackie Joyner Kersee.....Open
Manic Depression............Carrie Fisher..................Patty Duke
Breast Cancer..................Linda Ellerbee...............Happy Rockefeller
Ovarian Cancer.................Liz Tilberis....................Gilda Radner
AIDS...............................Sharon Stone...............Elizabeth Taylor