Columnist Scott Dickensheets: Sex, science and Ralph (harrumph!) from Pahrump

Scott Dickensheets

Tuesday, Feb. 24, 1998 | 10:57 a.m.

FROM DEEPEST Pahrump, reader Ralph Thompson writes to express his admiration for this column, phrased in the form of a philosophical imperative: Look in a mirror and ask yourself, "Can I really deserve a paycheck as a 'columnist' writing @&*! like this?"

Darn good question! There being no mirror handy, I immediately began gazing at my reflection in a spoon. And it hit me: All curved and distorted like this, I'm not half-bad-looking! As for Mr. Thompson's question, I'm still thinking. Meanwhile, in a why-do-bad-columns-happen-to-good-readers tribute to this column's new favorite Pahrumpian, here's a Tuesday grab bag:

THE SCIENCE IS DEAFENING: I am a victim of science! Not sheep-cloning, anthrax-growing, animal-testing, white-jacketed, knows-what's-best-for-us Big Science, you understand, but its exact opposite -- Little Science, as practiced by sixth-graders assigned to create a science project.

That noise you hear in the background is my 11-year-old scrambling to finish his; it's due today. The furious click of his typing, the cardboard scrape of the display boards being readied -- ah, the sounds of science. Not to mention the really bad smells of science: Unfortunately, my son chose as his theme "The Effects of Secondhand Smoke on Plants." It involves placing burning cigarettes next to a plant for two weeks, then measuring it against a similar plant kept smoke-free.

This presents several problems. First, despite the government's willingness to hand research dollars to any crackpot with a half-baked idea, apparently no one has tackled this particular topic. So my son has little background material to work with.

Second, and infinitely worse, my house, until now a smoke-free environment -- even my sainted mother has to light up outside -- smells like a truck-stop smoking lounge. (I'm looking for a deal on a vat of industrial-strength Pine-Sol.)

Of course, I don't have it as bad as some parents. My wife, for instance. Acting as our son's project coordinator (this is the person who actually lights the cigarettes and gives them the necessary start-up puff, a job I declined), she's wilting in the smoke faster than the subject plant.

At least it hasn't been a tremendous pain in the wallet, as it is for other families. "We're $50 into our daughter's project," a friend tells me.

But the worst part is that when my son takes his project -- for which he's done all the nonsmoking work -- to school, it will inevitably pale next to those projects done by the parents of other students. My kids had the misfortune not to be born to a computer genius or an electrical engineer or mathematician. This is just one of many instances in which being the son of a professional smartass is of absolutely no value.

BIKINI TOLL: While one hates to cross pens with one's colleagues -- in this case the SUN's estimable sports columnist Dean Juipe -- I can't let his Feb. 20 shot at the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition pass without comment.

And my comment is this: Huh?

Vulgar, he calls it. Sordid ... an affront to women and to dignity ... Whoa, take it easy, big guy. Did we read the same issue? I thought this one rather tame; I had higher -- or lower, depending on your perspective -- hopes for it. Anyway, it's only women in bikinis, harmless cheesecake in a society that ups the ante on vulgarity and sordidness with every new Steven Bochco series.

Juipe writes about drooling men who ogle at the SI swimsuit edition ... We must know different kinds of men, Dean and I, because you'd have to live in a media-proof cave to find the swimsuit edition drool-worthy. Even my 11-year-old was only momentarily captivated by it, but, then again, he's a dispassionate scientist. Kate Winslet's nude scene in "Titanic" is far more hubba hubba than anything in SI, and just as calculated to tease. Sports Illustrated is not, as the headline over Juipe's column asserted, selling S-E-X. No, Penthouse is selling S-E-X, actual pictures of people having it. Take your "affront to dignity" talk to Bob Guccione.

It's exploitation, pure and simple ... he writes. But of whom? Certainly not the models -- they earn more money than a bushel of newspaper columnists and clamor to join the shoot. If the supposedly exploited don't feel exploited, where's the exploitation? Women are no more "mindless pawns" of SI than the athletes it exploits for its weekly profit.

But doesn't the viewing of swimsuit photography, with its coy peek-a-boo, the occasional hinted-at breast, cause men to treat women as objects and inflate their expectations of feminine beauty? Ask the millions of SI subscribers who enjoy the swimsuit edition and yet somehow manage to remain happily married to nonsupermodels. I, for one haven't treated any woman as an object since the last time I used my wife as a door stop -- but that had nothing to do with SI.

In the society we've made for ourselves, you no longer need a justification for your actions, just a market. The swimsuit edition certainly has that. Let 'em read it in peace.

And there you have it, Ralph From Pahrump, another day, another undeserved dollar. You're not the only one to wonder why I get paid for writing the @&*! I do -- I ask that same question each working day of my life. And yet, every two weeks, the paycheck arrives. It's a screwy world indeed, Mr. Thompson.