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FEATURE Joshua Glenn Journal: May 1999 In 1999 I wrote two short, topical essays a month for the Web site FEED . I thought, then, that I'd re-examine these pieces a year later to see what had been on my mind and to see if I still agreed with what I'd written. Here they are. Take a look at my 1999 Journal for this month, below, and join me in the Wicked Pavilion to discuss it. Editor's note: Josh Glenn was so devastated by the death of actress Dana Plato that he sunk into a deep depression and was unable to write a second piece for FEED in May. 14 May, 1999 When freckle-faced Diff'rent Strokes The Exorcist II to low-budget '90s schlock like Bikini Beach Race and a spread in Playboy, Dana Plato seemed to offer the Ideal Form against which all other Child Stars Gone Bad would thereafter be measured. But for those of us whose unhappy childhoods were brightened by half-hour-long weekly visits with Plato as Kimberly Drummond, it's preferable to believe that, like her philosophical namesake, she was in fact always seeking the Good. Let's face it: working on Diff'rent Strokes (1978-1986) must have been a morally challenging experience. Ostensibly a light-hearted show about two insuppressible ghetto kids (Arnold and Willis) who move in with a wealthy white mogul (Mr. Drummond) and his daughter, the program was actually a Reagan-era exercise in what cultural theorist Barbara Herrnstein Smith calls "fatuous egalitarianism." In fact, Smith's classic text | |
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