The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s exhibit, “Camp: Notes on Fashion” (through Sept. 9) was inspired by Susan Sontag’s seminal 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp’,” which she defined broadly as style over substance characterized by theatricality, irony, playfulness, masquerade and unselfconsciousness. It’s a definition and a show that cuts a wide swath, but in the end it turns out to be less about camp and more about identity — its mutability and its ownership.
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Out of touch: Joe Biden and the male hierarchy
Gillibrand's glasshouse
So now New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand — who has made zero tolerance for sexual harassment the cornerstone of her heretofore successful career — is facing her own #MeToo moment. It comes with revelations in Politico that a young woman who worked for her resigned after she said the senator failed to take appropriation actions when a close aide allegedly made unwanted advances toward her. Gillibrand has defended her office’s response to the situation, saying that the aide, who has also served as the senator’s driver, was denied a promotion and given a final warning.
Read MoreBaby, it's cold outside for culture warriors
At the office holiday party the other night, the newly controversial song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” came up on the playlist. I explained to my publisher that the 1949 Oscar-winning song – which composer Frank Loesser had actually written five years earlier and performed with wife Lynn Garland as a kind of calling card at parties – has come under fresh scrutiny in the #MeToo era for its lyrics and the way they’re performed.
Read MoreQueen to pawn in a game of love and death
The new movie “Mary, Queen of Scots” — which I am reluctant to see for reasons that will become clear — belongs to what I like to call the Sylvia Plath school of storytelling. That is, if your telling the story of the suicidal poet, the husband will always be the villain. (That he had two wives who killed themselves in exactly the same way doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in him as a spouse. You know what they say. Once is a tragedy. Twice is an unsettling coincidence.)
Read MoreWhere do we go from here?
So Brett Kavanaugh becomes a United States Supreme Court Justice and that’s too bad, because he lacks the temperament for it, as he himself demonstrated, and because other revelations – an inability to confront a drunken youth, questionable credit card charges and a good deal of misremembering – would seem to indicate an injudiciousness that would be lethal for a judge….
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