FAG-HATING DR. LAURA BRINGS HER SHIT TO TV

Guess who's developing a TV show with Paramount Television? America's most stridently pro-inhibitionist radio personality, Dr. Laura Schlessinger. You remember Dr. Laura. Currently purveying her backward brand of morality on a three-hour daily radio show, heard by millions people on 290 stations, she's the one whom abortion clinic bombers and gay-bashers seem to cite most often when asked for their inspiration.

Dr. Laura's TV show is planned to debut this fall and already our emailbox is clogged with requests to sign petitions against it. We're recommending you come up to speed on Dr. Laura's poisonous ultra-conservatism, then email Paramount at television@pde.paramount.com and let them know what you think.

You can also contact Schlessinger's office directly by phone at 1-800-DRLAURA and by fax at xxx-xxx-xxxx. Or better yet, why not make a surprise appearance at Dr. Laura's "third annual" 50th birthday party on April 15 at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, in Dearborn, Michigan? You might bring a gift you've assembled yourself from parts available at any hardware store.

We're just kidding about that last bit. You should actually send your gift to Dr. Laura in the mail: c/o Premiere Radio Networks, xxxxx Ventura Blvd., Suite xxx, Sherman Oaks, CA 91403.

The Opinionator On... Big Banks Distributing Welfare Benefits

Did anyone besides greedy bankers and lazy politicians think that Citigroup-- parent company of Citibank-- would do a humane, responsible job of distributing welfare benefits by way of ATMs and grocery store debit machines?

The idea began a few years ago, when states-- hoping to reduce fraud and improve efficiency-- began hiring private financial corporations to distribute benefits for them. Sounds like Robocop, right? Thirty-nine states have already signed over their welfare systems to these ATM card-based programs, yet the welfare recipients in those states complain that the programs aren't even working as well as the previous ones, which involved old-fashioned checks and coupons.

The complaints are major ones. The big financial corporations are deducting ATM fees from welfare recipients-- special fees that regular customers don't have to pay-- and benefit withdrawals can be limited to as few as two per month. Balance inquiries are forbidden in many of the states, and welfare recipients are not protected against card loss and theft, the way regular ATM card-holders are, with a $50 liability limit. Imagine having those problems on top of being poor in the first place.

Citigroup manages the programs of 29 states and has been cited as the worst offender-- because, in addition to charging special fees, it had been denying welfare recipients in New York City access to 63,000 conveniently-located ATMs in the MAC and NYCE networks, while being paid, according to the New York Times, "$80 million by the state over the next four years to distribute benefits..."

"New York vividly illustrates how the states, by handing off the cumbersome and politically sensitive task of providing aid for the poor, have given broad new control over welfare policy to private corporations, primarily Citigroup." said the Times.

Within Citigroup's 29 states, twelve million people now get their $640 in welfare benefits via ATM programs. Citigroup's earnings on this business have not been disclosed, but the profit margin is probably as narrow as spokespeople for the company say it is. Another company that had been distributing benefits for other states called the business "unprofitable" and is getting out of it. Citigroup tried to buy that company but was halted by the Justice Department when critics pointed out, according to the Times, that it "would raise prices and cut services if it were allowed to buy its 'only substantial competitor.'" Citigroup is currently negotiating its own, new contracts with several states.

Citigroup spokespeople, defending the corporation from criticism by the press (and even by governors of participating states!) say that poor people do have adequate access to their cash. It's exactly that kind of heartless, patriarchal, greed-inflected thinking that could turn a good, modern idea-- "Let's use electronic banking to make welfare programs run more efficiently!"-- into an archaic, hateful one: oppress the poor, ignore their pain.

GIRLS RULE: FALL 2000

It has always felt to us that behind Girls Rule! is a great slogan rather than an important theory: Teen Power! But great slogans have won great wars-- which helps explain why Girl's Rule producer Darren Greenblatt has been winning increased attention to the young design talent behind creative teen apparel. For six years Greenblatt has been giving us shows that provoke big thoughts about production, distribution, market, price-point, and the relationship between established couture and the evolving street scene, as well as about more designer-y issues of silhouette, fabric, and the like.

This year's show incorporated collections by five labels: Hybrid, Planet Yumthing, OP, Chuck Roaste, and One. The best by far was Hybrid, designed by Aissa Martin-- showing imagination (in, say, the long, sexy "bustle" skirt in tyvek, with a horizontal band of elastic just below the butt, or the fiercely glamorous white blanket coat) and an interpretation of luxe that makes sense for a girl of 2000 (the iguana camouflage polar fleece zip vest with matching gloves). With this season's "global urban nomad" looks, Martin again pushes the boundary of creativity in popularly priced urban sportswear, thereby rocking our world at least as much the genius stitchers who have zillionaire clients. Great Look: Martin's version of the open-shouldered long-sleeve top, which she calls a "Barbarella top."

The rest of the collections looked a little too tiresomely granny or improbably Western ranch to our eyes. Best Moment: a model in the Chuck Roaste show stopped halfway down the runway, pulled off her jeans, turned them inside out, put them back on again and kept walking. It was done with kicky humor-- Roaste is offering "the world's first reversable jeans"-- and brought a round of spontaneous applause.

THE ORGANIZATION FOR RETURNING FASHION INTEREST: FALL 200O "NEVER SMARTY-PANTS, NEVER ARTSY-FARTSY..."

How does ORFI (The Organization for Returning Fashion Interest) manage to avoid overthinking the whole fashion thing? For such a brainy group-- made up of artists, architects, and designers who, according to their literature, "work collectively to create a visual a structural language that guides the design and development of apparel pieces and clothing"-- the collective never comes across as smarty-pants or artsy-fartsy. Instead, they somehow kinda play, rather than work, with clothing cliches, exploding them in a fun way, according to real-life usage rather than theory. (Though real life is the hardest thing to keep rediscovering, isn't it?)

For this year's show, ORFI rummaged everyone's closet for a kind of Miuccia Prada-meets-Pina Bausch look: mom's (for the fitted suit jacket), dad's (for the trousers), Aunt Mary's (for the white lady-pumps), big brother's (for the dopey parka), roommate's (for the little top that's in a color you never buy yourself), etc. The show spoke of our culture intimately but from a distance, kinda the way artist Matthew Barney's work does-- especially during the parts of the show that pushed past the theatrical to the mysteriously ceremonial. The presentation of a tray of glittering bijoux, by a beaming nymph dressed in sparkly tatters, could have come right out out of a murkily ironic dance theater piece by Bausch.

Would you dress like this? The point is that you probably already do-- and that a nice, new ORFI shirt will give you another way to think about it. Most memorable detail: the hair stapled into stiffish sheets and ridges: pretty and terrifying all at once. Least possible merchandising angle: boys in skirts. (Has never worked and, outside of Scotland and the South Seas, never will.)

TOM OF FINLAND: FALL 2000: "MEN SHOWING AND LOOKING..."

Love that Tom of Finland menswear-- "guy clothes, not just gay clothes," according to Gary Robinson, who co-designs the hyper-hyper masculine line with David Johnson. But why the wimpy models? On the runway this year, wearing another hot collection of leather, denim, and camouflage duds for the porn-star lifestyle, were a bunch of pretty boys, each of whom looked like he had about one-eighth the testosterone necessary to pull off something like a silver nylon jumpsuit (worn totally unzipped, pecs and abs a-flexing, with a little bikini brief). The eye make-up didn't help.

What's interesting is how all-American Tom on Finland looks: motorcycle jackets, trenchcoats, leather pants, muscle shirts, all worn with boots. First seen widely in '50s gay muscle mags, in erotic drawings of super-endowed leather men by a Finnish World War II vet named Touko Laaksonen, the look may started as a kind of worship for the Allied forces heroes who'd just saved the free world. But Tom's popularity among the Warhols and the Mapplethorpes of the world had as much to do with men showing and looking as with what is being shown and looked at-- and nowadays Tom of Finland-style posturing and display seems no more outre than what you see in any club on the planet, straight or gay.

Has popular culture arrived at a point that validates Laaksonen's drawings as visionary? Absolut Vodka thinks so. They presented the show and even sponsored the creation of "exclusive Absolut fashions" that were worked into the collection-- like the black "barvest" with front panels shaped like Absolut bottles (worn without shirt, of course).

SANDY DALAL: FALL/WINTER 2000 MEN'S: "THE RIGHT KIND OF RANDOM..."

Trust Sandy Dalal to reveal the true sexiness of The Dweeb. In the designer's fall/winter 2000 men's show, it was the clunky striped suits that gave it all away: close-fitting but still nicely undertailored sacks that say "I grew two inches since last semester but have been too busy lying around with my guitar to buy any new clothes." Yet these suits aren't ironic, exactly. They are for serious dress-up-- they just acknowledge that dress-up occasions, like an audience with the headmaster, can be a little squirmy. (Nobody in Prada or Helmut Lang squirms, right?)

Now, Dalal's overcoats, they're ironic. They look luxurious and flowy and sculpted, like something you'd borrow from dad. Put 'em over one of the suits and damn if that skinny, greasy-haired boy doesn't look like he deserves a big "A" for effort.

Also seen on the runway: sleeveless sweaters I also wanna call "neckless," though they were described in the program as crew-necked, which is way too structured a term for them. The silhouettes of Dalal's whole collection speak of the right kind of random: running off without definite rule or method.