Author Erica Jong Alienates Some with Tone, Length of Commencement Speech (College of Staten Isand)

The Staten Island Advance ^ | 6/3/05 | Michelle Maskaly

[gopwinsin04]

Best selling author Erica Jong was booed and told to 'Shut Up!' and 'Go Home!" during her 40 minute commencement address at the College of Staten Island.

A little less than halfway through her graduation speech, some graduated began tossing around an inflatable beach volleyball.

Some even got up from their chairs, just yards from the podium, to go chat with friends and family who were seated behind them.

Ms. Jong, best known for her 1973 novel 'Fear of Flying' continued unfazed. She continued to speak as if everyone was listening attentively.

'Politicans speak the opposite of what they mean. They say clear skies when they mean pollution, They say colleratal damage when they mean killing civillians.'

She gave a political spEech when she was supposed to be doing a pep talk, said one CSI graduate, whoever heard of a commencement speaker talking about body bags? We wanted to throw stuff at her.'

'It was despicable, said a CSI mother, 'It was personal spewing.'

[gopwinsin04]

Most upstate folks don't have time for that kind of nonsense. Sounds like she was a little bit out of her East side element!

[RushCrush]

Go here to sign her website guest book:

http://www.ericajong.com/contact.htm

[JAWs]

For those of you who don't know, her one 'great' novel, the sexually explicit Fear of Flying came out in 1973. It was part of the zeitgeist. In other words, she'd another damned throwback blinking in her saurian manner at the upstart mammals assailing her.

[gopwinsin04]

She looks like Dr. Joyce Brothers now...

[RushCrush]

Someone posted this on her web page guest book:

Date: 03 Jun 2005 Time: 19:11:56 Comments Dearest Erica, So much talk about truth and lies, I couldn't help but tell you the "real truth"---- YOU SUCK! Thank you for ruining my sister's graduation day with your B.S! -CSI alumni '00

[Hildy]

She was also responsible for the term "zipless f--k." Very classy lady.

[JAWs]

Am I the only one amused by the institution's initials? CSI. I will stop before I joke about Jong surrounded by a chalk outline.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Sounds like the graduates are leaving school smarter and wising up to the tactics of the liberal leftist demoncRATS.

They got the paper in hand and don't have to suck up to the commie profs anymore.

[Racehorse]

A porn writer who some confused individuals mistook for a writer.

Count me as a frequently confused individual.

But, the writing in that first novel was absolutely first rate.  The rest were . . . boring . . . unreadable.  And her published poetry (back then she claimed to be a poetess not a novelist) was never really that good.

Give the devil her due for one interesting, nicely crafted, if indecent, book.

[Tribune7]

Kudos to the parents and students at the College of Staten Island. From an interview with Erica Jong last year:

"I don't know what's happened to feminism," answered Jong, who was wearing a pink linen jacket and red pants and carrying a pink Marc Jacobs bag. "I see all these young women wanting white weddings and wanting to nab the guy, get the ring--whereas I remember we wanted to get away from all that. Now all of that is back with a vengeance."

(snip)

More important, she added, the kind of fundamental changes that would have turned the rhetoric of the '70s-era feminist movement into, for instance, actual economic parity, didn't happen. "To play devil's advocate for a moment, I remember in my generation when all these women left their husbands," she said. "Gloria Steinem was saying, 'No more alimony, we are not slaves, blah blah blah.' Women went out on their own and their standard of living plummeted. They could not get jobs that were commensurate with their skills or experience. It was still a man's world. And a lot of women who didn't have particular skills, who weren't famous actors or famous writers or famous computer inventors--they went straight into poverty.

(snip)

Though she's written seven other novels, six books of poetry, a memoir, a biography, a critical assessment of Henry Miller, and various other works, it was 1973's "Fear of Flying," selling 7 million copies in the United States alone, that turned Jong into a pop culture icon--an embodiment of the zeitgeist, chastised on national television by a talk-show host who demanded Jong admit she and other feminists just wanted to be able to urinate standing up. She was a champion of female freedom who got letters from women who said her book had inspired them to leave their marriages--and letters from men who wanted her to send them her panties.

[gopwinsin04]

This ought to be fun to read that guest book in the coming days!

[jsh3180]

Kind of reminds me of my son's graduation from Vassar College in May 2003.

Susan Sontag was the keynote speaker, wow, she launched into an anti-Bush tirade that had the parents of the graduates booing.

Now she's dead.

[Cicero]

A forty-minute commencement address. They're lucky their president didn't invite Fidel Castro, or it would have been four hours.

[Major_Risktaker]

Erica Jong

Tell us something we don't know.

[gopwinsin04]

Poor Erica is worried about the destruction of feminism. May the likes of her movement never been seen again!

[Rummyfan]

Date: 03 Jun 2005 Time: 19:11:56 Comments Dearest Erica, So much talk about truth and lies, I couldn't help but tell you the "real truth"---- YOU SUCK! Thank you for ruining my sister's graduation day with your B.S! -CSI alumni '00

ROTFLMAO!

[Enterprise]

"Politicians speak the opposite of what they mean."

I sure that was a life changing revelation for the listeners.

[gopwinsin04]

'Monogamy is impossible among interesting people...'

This is what passed for great literature in the early 1970's?

[Dad yer funny]

Staten Island was commonly refered to as Satan Island on the old WLIB before Franken et al took over,they hated its voting record for Rudy

[gate2wire]

Who?