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By Sending The Contradictory Message That The Famous Are Just Plain Folks On Mount Olympus, America Has Forged A Relentless Tension Between Loftiness And Accessibility. Stir In The Fact That The Inborn Talent And Intelligence Needed To Achieve Fame Are Immune To Distributive Tinkering By Government Programs And You Have A Definition Of Fame Certain To Produce Envious Rage: Somebody Screwed Democracy.

-Florence King

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By Sending The Contradictory

Florence King

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By Sending The Contradictory Message That The Famous Are Just Plain Folks On Mount Olympus, America Has Forged A Relentless Tension Between Loftiness And Accessibility. Stir In The Fact That The Inborn Talent And Intelligence Needed To Achieve Fame Are Immune To Distributive Tinkering By Government Programs And You Have A Definition Of Fame Certain To Produce Envious Rage: Somebody Screwed Democracy.

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By Sending The Contradictory Message That The Famous Are Just Plain Folks On Mount Olympus, America Has Forged A Relentless Tension Between Loftiness And Accessibility. Stir In The Fact That The Inborn Talent And Intelligence Needed To Achieve Fame Are Immune To Distributive Tinkering By Government Programs And You Have A Definition Of Fame Certain To Produce Envious Rage: Somebody Screwed Democracy.

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In Other Countries, Congenital Introverts Simply Remain Introverts All Their Lives, Neither Advancing Nor Retreating, But America's Commitment To Extroversion As A National Art Form Can Abrade Some Naturally Aloof Personalities Until They Flower Into Deadly Nightshade.

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As The Only Class Distinction Available In A Democracy, The College Degree Has Created A Caste Society As Rigid As Ancient India's. Condemning Elitism And Simultaneously Quaking In Fear That Our Children Won't Become Members Of The Elite, We Send Them To College, Not To Learn, But To "be" College Graduates, Rationalizing Our Snobbery With The Cliché That High Technology Has Eliminated The Need For The Manual Labor That We Secretly Hold In Contempt.

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I Wasn't Used To Children And They Were Getting On My Nerves. Worse, It Appeared That I Was A Child, Too. I Hadn't Known That Before; I Thought I Was Just Short.

Familiarity Breeds Democracry.

Families Composed Of Rugged Individualists Have To Do Things Obliquely.

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Americans Worship Creativity The Way They Worship Physical Beauty - As A Way Of Enjoying Elitism Without Guilt: God Did It.

We Worship Education But Hate Learning. We Worship Success But Hate The Successful. We Worship Fame But Hate The Famous.

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Spinsterhood Is Nature's Own Feminism.

"very" Is The Most Useless Word In The English Language And Can Always Come Out. More Than Useless, It Is Treacherous Because It Invariably Weakens What It Is Intended To Strengthen. For Example, Would You Rather Hear The Mincing Shallowness Of "i Love You Very Much" Or The Heart-slamming Intensity Of "i Love You"?

The American Woman's Concept Of Marriage Is A Clearly Etched Picture Of Something Uninflated On The Floor. A Sleeping-bag Withoutair, A Beanbag Without Beans, A Padded Bra Without Pads. To Work On It, You Start Pumping--what The Magazines Call "breathing Life Into Your Marriage." Do Enough Of This And The Marriage Becomes A Kind Of Banquo's Ghost, A Quasi-living Entity.

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Thank God I'm Over The Hill. The Only Heat I Have Left Comes From Hot Flashes, My Promiscuity Is Confined To The Words "one Size Fits All," And I Buy My White Cotton Unmentionables At Boadicea's Retreat, Not Victoria's Secret. None Of The Things Men Do To Women Could Possibly Happen To Me Now Unless The U.s. Is Invaded By One Of Those New Russian Republics Whose Soldiers Aren't Fussy.

Any Hope That America Would Finally Grow Up Vanished With The Rise Of Fundamentalist Christianity. Fundamentalism, With Its Born-again Regression, Its Pink-and-gold Concept Of Heaven, Its Literal-mindedness, Its Rambunctious Good Cheer... Its Anti-intellectualism... Its Puerile Hymns... And Its Faith-healing... Are Made To Order For King Kid America.

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Now The Only Thing I Miss About Sex Is The Cigarette Afterward. Next To The First One In The Morning, It's The Best One Of All. It Tasted So Good That Even If I Had Been Frigid I Would Have Pretended Otherwise Just To Be Able To Smoke It.

Cigarette Smoke

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Native American

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Double Standard

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Of All The Old Maid's Blessing, The Greatest Is Carte Blanche. Spinsterhood Is Powerful; Once A Woman Is Called "that Crazy Old Maid" She Can Get Away With Anything.

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The Nice Thing About Southerners Is The Way We Enjoy Our Neuroses.

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In Mississippi The Important Thing Is Hooch, Not Bar Equipment.

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The Copyeditor I Drew Was A Brachycephalic, Web-footed Cretin Who Should Have Been In An Institution Learning How To Make Brooms.

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