VIEWSrnWhen Lorena Bobbitt ComesrnBob-Bob-Bobbing AlongrnThe Sorry State of Popular Culturernby George GarrettrnDear Howard Stern,rnI don’t care if your New Year’s Eve program did set thernall-time world record for a pay-for-view TV event. And I don’trncare, either, if your book is a best-seller and people are lining uprnaround the block to get a signed copy of it. I just want to tellrnyou, in all candor, that you are an ugly person. Ugly, Ugly,rnUGLY. You are as ugly as a raw turnip. Ugly as a day-old dogrnturd. Next to you that fat slob Rush Limbaugh looks likernClark Gable. You are ugly inside and outside both. Quit hidingrnbehind ethnicity. That’s no excuse. Your hippie hairdorndoesn’t do a thing for you, either. Why don’t you get smartrnand go find a good place to hide instead of flaunting your uglinessrnin the florid face of the American public?rnAs a member in good standing of the South Carolina UglyrnPatrol (an all-volunteer, nonprofit, statewide organization dedicatedrnto the proposition that “Beauty is Truth”) I am compelledrnin good conscience to write to you….rnStop, please. Wait just a minute!rnPlease forgive me, dear reader. It was not I who wrote thernabove rude and counterproductive words addressed to one ofrnAmerica’s cultural icons and leading celebrities. I, myself,rnwould never do such a thing. True, I might conceivably thinkrnGeorge Garrett is Henry Hoyns Professor of English at thernUniversity of Virginia.rnsomething like that, but I would never allow myself to givernvoice and utterance to such negative thoughts. In my opinionrnit was Towne, John Towne, no more (and no less) than a commonrncharacter in a novel I once wrote called Poison Pen (1986),rna fictional figure, then, who has just lately reemerged, all bandagedrnand stinking, like Lazarus, from the quiet death of thatrnnovel to begin again his outrageous and unacceptable shenanigans,rnhis half-assed japes and pasquils, his minstrel-show shuckingrnand jiving, always and forever seeking to give offense not onlyrnto the vulnerable and prominent people he has elected torninsult, but also, dear readers (if any), to you and to me and tornevery right-thinking human being from here to Sri Lanka.rnYou may be thinking that I, as a bona fide author of sortsrn(though never either celebrity or best-seller), ought at the veryrnleast to be able to exercise some kind of control over a purelyrnimaginary character whose sole existence (as far as I can tell) isrnin words on the printed page, whose environment is his text.rnMaybe so. It just hasn’t worked out that way, that’s all. Herncomes and he goes as he pleases. He pops up when least expected.rnLike some of my tacky, no-account kinfolk. Since hernappears to have vanished (for the time being), let us now getrndown to serious business, to the topic of popular culture, whilernwe can still safely do so.rnWhat a time to be thinking about this subject; what a timernto be trying to write about it. My imaginary readers will bernreading this piece a couple or three months from now, on thern20/CHRONICLESrnrnrn