Porn Re-Born

After Susan Yanetti got her film and law school degrees from Boston University, she segued into what she really wanted to do—start her own pornography production company. Last year Yanetti teamed up with porn-star John Doe to start John Doe Productions, which Yanetti hopes will claim a share of the industry’s $4.2 billion annual profits.

Formerly a publicist for Vivid Video, a porn production outfit, Yanetti told her alma mater’s daily paper, the Free Press, that she was driven to pursue the goal of finding a common ground between hard-core porn and mainstream film to prove to herself she could do it.

Yanetti says the field is wide open. Since media coverage focuses on child porn, that negative image needs to be countered by images of people and the business. "Here I can actually just open the door and be a communication link, and not have to spin anything," she says.

Compared with previous stints, working with victims of breast cancer and Lou Gehrig’s disease, Yanetti said she had to do something less gripping. Noting that 700 million porn flicks were rented in 1997, she jumped in and hasn’t been sorry for a minute. "I haven’t even been dropped from the party list," says Yanetti, whose popularity has shot up since her decision.

At first she says there was some adverse reaction to what she was doing from her father, a policeman and prison warden. However, two free videos apparently changed his tune.

Political Rules

Jenni Cole-Opitz, a 19-year-old sophomore at the U. of Wisconsin, Madison, learned a tough lesson recently when she was fired from her job as a page for making an inappropriate remark about her state politician employers.

In a front-page article for the Badger Herald about working as a "go-fer" for Wisconsin politicians, Cole-Opitz recounted an incident about Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen, who had asked her to go to the drugstore and get him a Coke when there was only Pepsi left in the Capitol. In response to this request, she told the paper, "I was just standing there in awe. He’s the speaker of the house, not Jesus Christ."

"It didn’t mean anything," said Cole-Opitz, who has retained a lawyer to contest her firing. "I told the story because I thought it was funny." However, the comment had further repercussions when Capitol authorities could not explain why copies of the offending Badger Herald were removed from the Capitol within a week of her printed rhetorical salvo.

Feminists vs. Men

Playboy contributor Asa Baber braved a less-than-friendly audience recently when he ventured to Illinois Wesleyan U. to discuss how the current crop of feminists were giving men a bad rap. Baber’s plea for men and women to work together and his praise for the DC-based Women’s Freedom Network were encouraging to some students like Scott Ralston, who praised the speaker’s honesty and courage.

"He wasn’t afraid to speak his mind in the face of a cold reception," noted Ralston, who said "it was good that he spoke of how men are getting beat up by feminists. I think the feminists’ arguments would be much stronger if they took Baber’s words to heart."

Other students like Allison Kehl felt that Baber didn’t take both sides of the gender issue into account in his talk, saying he "had a very limited viewpoint and didn’t really consider what women think."

Baber, who urged males to counteract feminists by reasserting their leadership roles in the family, said that the trauma of growing up in splintered families is revealed by current stats, showing that 72 percent of adolescent murderers grow up without fathers and nearly 80 percent of psychiatric patients are from fatherless homes. The bottom line? Men need role models.

Instead of attacking feminists, Baber suggested that men explain their position to feminists, i.e., that "men need love and attention, and also the support of the feminist revolution."

Baber also defended his work for Playboy, saying that it published his controversial opinions when others would not.

Baber suggested that instead of women’s studies courses constructed solely to denigrate men, schools should undertake "men’s studies" classes, i.e., "The Biology of the Male," "Men and the Law" (focusing on child custody, date rape, etc.) and fathering courses that would integrate men into civil society.

School Daze

Marilynn Bland, a member of the Prince George’s County, Maryland school board, has proposed a brave new plan for "grammatically-challenged" elementary school kids, stumbling over words and sentences. If  Bland’s proposal is accepted by the school board, teachers would be able to correct students after they used a wrong word, not only in class, but also in the cafeteria or hallways.

Bland’s controversial suggestion is viewed by some as an attack on African-American kids, since 73 percent of the county school population is black. However, Bland, who is also black, claims that the issue is not racial, since all students, including whites, have trouble mastering the language. Most school administrators believe that this policy is unnecessary.

"Children are taught proper grammar in schools," said Janette Bell, president of the Prince George’s County Educators’ Association. If passed, this would be the only such policy that exists in the Washington, DC area.

At least one teacher noted that the educational focus on whole language, which ignores spelling and punctuation, has taken a toll on children’s ability to learn grammar in the first place. "Their writing appears to be more a foreign language than English," the teacher told the Washington Post. "Some students don’t know proper nouns and common nouns. We are in a very sad state."

While opposition by school officials to Bland’s proposal doesn’t mean that they favor ebonics, Dennis Baron, who heads up the English department at the U. of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, said that Bland’s idea raises a question.

"Does the school board want [students] to start sounding less black?" asked Baron.

Day Without Mirrors

Lia Snyder, a pre-med student at the U. of Rochester, recently took part in an unusual study, when the school asked students and faculty to refrain from looking in a mirror for one day. In order to adopt the proper frame of mind for this observance, Snyder and others covered as many mirrors as possible on campus with special fliers, bearing inspirational messages such as: "True beauty...find it for yourself."

The purpose of this experiment was to raise awareness about the emphasis on external flaws, and to call attention to the pressures on people, especially women, that result in high-octane stress and eating disorders. The day was part of the "Feel Fabulous in February" campaign, designed to promote better health and self-esteem.

Star Trek 101

UCLA Asst. Prof Daniel Bernardi will embark on a dream-come-true for trekkies this fall when he kicks off a course that takes an academic look at the Star Trek phenomenon.

Prof. Bernardi said that during the past 30 years, Star Trek has become a mass media conglomerate. "It’s about race, gender and class differences. It’s the ideal text," he explained, adding that the characters are metaphors for racial, gender and sexual differences.

Bernardi said he will discuss how Star Trek organizations like the Federation compare to groups like NATO, how characters like Chancellor Gorkon resemble Gorbachev, and how the exploding planet, "Praxis," is a Marxist term. Commenting on the overall theme of Star Trek, Bernardi foresees that "diversity is the key to surviving....We must be egalitarian or risk continuing down the current historical track in becoming a technically superior version of the Roman Empire."

Prof. Bernardi is the author of "Star Trek in History: Racing Toward a White History," which will form the basis of his upcoming seminar.

End Notes

New Jersey school officials know trouble when they see it. An eight-year-old second grader in Saddlebrook was suspended for selling photos of Leonrado DiCaprio that he downloaded from the Internet for $1 each, according to the New York Post, adding that when the young entrepreneur was discovered, he had pocketed $21....When a New York City cabbie turned in $10,000 that he found, which belonged to an elderly female tourist, Mayor Rudy Guiliani celebrated the driver’s honesty with a group of elementary school kids visiting City Hall. "What would YOU do if you found that money?" asked the Mayor. "Keeeeeep iiiit," shouted the kids, prompting Rudy to admonish them, saying: "No, no, the reason we have Mr. Shah here today is to teach you a different answer....If you found the money and it wasn’t yours, you should return it. Only bad people keep things that don’t belong to them." Meanwhile, on the left coast, a certain California campus could take a lively turn next fall when the daughter of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr joins Chelsea Clinton at Stanford. Parents Weekend photo ops, anyone? —DKL