P.S. ALLURE THINKS WE DON'T GET IT!

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P.S. ALLURE THINKS WE DON'T GET IT!
by
Judith Fleet Wisdom, M.A.

On January 29, l998, I published, on CO-CURE, an essay giving my analysis of Elaine Showalter's article in the U.S. magazine called ALLURE (February 1998). (That essay is available at http://www.best.com/~cfids/wisdom/allure.htm.) And I sent a copy of it to ALLURE's editor-in-chief, with a cover letter. My purpose in sending it to them was to provide them with some understanding of why PWCs objected to Ms. Showalter's book rather than having it depicted as "hate mail." And in giving her another podium, they (ALLURE) were giving Showalter more legitimacy for a work that itself lacked scholarly or journalistic integrity. For, the book and her ALLURE article made no effort to represent the truth. And ALLURE apparently looked the other way, showing no effort to make an independent check of the facts. For, had they, they would have found that the mail wasn't from irrational people, as Elaine Showalter depicted it as being (just her title, "P.S. I Loathe You"), but was the expression of people she had badly misrepresented and smeared, who happen to spend a good bit of their lives in great pain and loss, as well as dismissal.
Though ALLURE'S editor-in-chief responded to me, and it had the requisite and maybe even sincere politeness and empathy, the heart of the matter I wrote her about, i.e., why she printed that article, was dealt with what I read as empty, rather meaningless words. That bothered me.
In order to let her know that I didn't think this an unserious matter, one that could be sloughed of with essentially a non-explanation, especially in this era of questioning the whole role of journalism, integrity, and civil society, I decided to respond.
Here it is. It contains the key words that she wrote me as being her "explanation" for giving the ALLURE podium to Ms. Showalter.

Judith Wisdom

JUDITH FLEET WISDOM
[letterhead removed]
February 13, l998

Linda Wells
Editor-in-Chief
ALLURE MAGAZINE
360 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Dear Ms. Wells:
Thank you for your answer to my letter and short essay sent to you February 1, concerning Elaine Showalter's article called "P.S. I Loathe You," which appeared in the February 1998 issue of ALLURE. I've attached a copy of your reply to me (dated Feb. 4), should you not have it at hand.
Though I accept your acknowledgment of my position regarding your having published Ms. Showalter's article, and even the compassion you evinced for my struggle with CFS/CFIDS, I don't understand at all--though, believe me, I have truly tried hard to--your explanation for printing Showalter's piece.
What you said, and I quote you is that "we published her piece . . .because it detailed one woman's experience dealing with intense public reaction to her work" and that, further, in so doing it "was not meant to be interpreted as our endorsement of her views."
So I asked myself, what entertainment or information or journalistic value did it have to detail "one woman's experience dealing with intense public reaction to her work" UNLESS her work had some redeeming intellectual or social or even entertainment value? That is the question I would suppose any journalist or editor would ask of a piece they were considering for publication to attract readers, and to reflect well on their publication.
Let me approach this with a hypothetical. For, to follow the logic of the above statement is simply more than a bit perplexing; and I think I can cut to the chase more easily in this way.
Suppose, Ms. Wells, I (or anyone) were to have gotten published a book that was poorly researched, if researched at all, that portrayed innocent and suffering women and men as having a bogus illness. This, despite an impressively growing and amassing peer- reviewed medical literature to the contrary. That I never bothered to interview my subjects or interview a representative core of physicians of merit who have researched, treated, and thought about this illness.
And then, after that book managed to get published, I receive mail from those women (and men, though the illness I write about is has predominance in women) showing enmity, rational argument, some anger. (And, tangentially, any walk into a book store will reveal what I'm sure you know--that so much that reaches the light of publication "day" is often so questionable that it boggles the mind, and I am sure makes Max Perkins roll over in his grave many times per day). And I (this hypothetical author) am writing about medicine though I have no medical qualifications. Wouldn't it would behoove me to more than ever do my medical homework? With medicine and interviews of the sick people as my narrative text if I were an English professor schooled to analyze texts and narratives.
Why would you want to let me tell my story to your readers? How would that enlighten them? Unless you also told the other side. Sent your reporters or hired a freelance journalist of merit to find out whether this so-called hate mail had any credence.
(By the way, I, for better or worse, and was criticized by a few fellow PWCs for taking this position, never bothered writing Ms. Showalter, as I thought her book a flash in the pan and such an obvious bit of intellectual jockeying that I wanted to spend my limited energies elsewhere.)
To have published my (this hypothetical author, again) woes upon receiving this so-called hate mail without determining the possibility that the enmity was utterly legitimate, seems to me to be an abandonment of journalistic fidelity and standards, which in today's environment, starting with the papparrazzi in relation to the death of Princess Diana of Wales and now Monica and President Clinton (and don't forget Gary Hart and now Seymour Hirsch's book on Jack Kennedy) is even more curious and worrisome.
What I am trying to say is that having published her holds no redeeming journalistic merit and is not a question of your not endorsing her. Though, you must realize that once you provide her with space in your pages, after she has already been published in book form, you do add further publishing and journalistic imprimatur to her, of the nature, "poor beleaguered excellent (Princeton) Elaine Showalter."
Don't and shouldn't editors ask of their articles that they offer something that is both entertaining and enlightening, even if controversial? Don't they feel an obligation to check out the truth of the contentions, or whether they are grounded in something sound?
I don't see what "P.S. I Loathe You" accomplished other than give more credence to the contention that people with CFS/CFIDS are either hysterics and/or vicious hate mailers, where their hate mail is quite unfounded. Written to a Princeton professor!
How could your readers expect to come away with anything else? Why would they come away with what you said to me you wanted to accomplish--of what happens to a professor who writes a book and gets hate mail, unless the book is true and brave and cutting edge? There was no hint that the mail she got wasn't insane and meanspirited and unfounded at all! None.
Sympathy had to be with Elaine. Which makes it hard for me to fully accept your expression of compassion. It also makes me worry, just as so many in this country are worrying, about the role of journalism in its manner of creating an image of society that is supposed to be civil even when muckraking. Even when exposing dark underbellies.
Showalter uncovered no dark underbellies. And she did not deserve to tell her tale of woe in your pages or anywhere. In that you did a great disservice not just to me and my colleagues in this illness but to your readers, who I would think look to your magazine as not engaging in tabloid-like irresponsibility just to be flashy, but caring about the quality of reportage, caring about your portraying matters of worth even if entertaining.
I would hope you'd consider printing a story, well-researched on this illness, on the women and men whose careers and self-allure have been snatched from them. Who keep trying and suffering new treatments to get well. Their losses. Their passions. Their humor. Their humanity. Their ordinariness. Their desire even to wear beautiful lipstick and gorgeous underwear and sleek silky dresses. (Or for the men, whatever they find appealing.) Allure. And can't, because disability income in this society robs you of your ability to pay your rent, feed yourself, pay your doctors, get your medicines.
I can't now even rent a video or go to the movies. Forget lovely perfume. And, Ms. Wells, I like perfume. I like lipstick. I love beautiful things.
My illness hasn't robbed me of the brain cells that govern taste.
Culturally avant garde, sophisticated, educated, rock 'n roll, sensual old me.
I will soon be utterly obsolete. Have nothing charming to say. Not know what others are referring to when the next "Pulp Fiction" or "English Patient" comes out and I haven't seen it. I haven't seen, in fact, "Jackie Brown," "The Sweet Hereafter," "The Boxer," "L.A. Confidential." And I won't. And I can't stand that. And tell Elaine, if you see her. that the thought of THAT does make me feel verging on the hysterical. And then ask her if maybe wouldn't it similarly affect her. Though, who knows, maybe she doesn't like movies! She could then write a book on the hysteria caused by being ill and never being able to travel to New York, go to art museums, wear nice clothes, give gifts to your friends, have fancy meals, go to avant-garde performance art. That, not CFS/CFIDS, is on the verge, I suspect, of making me quite, quite hysterical.
Why not have an article on people with CFS/CFIDS and on the literature that increasingly shows the physiological irregularities of this disease--research that is beginning to overlap, done by serious researchers who themselves don't act with such crass irresponsibility as Ms. Showalter. Who read their literature, do the plodding work, don't come up with sexy theories to bolster their careers, fail, succeed, struggle. Interview a few of them. Some of us can easily lead you to their names.
So your letter didn't really explain what it purported to explain-- your justification for publishing that loathsome article, and I felt, as someone who has great regard for the journalistic endeavor, I should tell you that, quite apart from my concern with the portrait you contributed to of an illness that is not getting enough funding or of chronic illness and what it does to its subjects.
Sincerely,
Judith Fleet Wisdom
__________________________________________________
(1) The author is a PWC for a very long time, and quite disabled. Though she has continually picked herself up after setbacks, without benefit of CBT, and exercised with a mixture of care, medical advice, and vigor.
Before falling ill she taught psycho-social medicine in a Family Practice Residency Program at major medical school hospital in Philadelphia, PA, USA, and was finishing collecting the data for her doctoral dissertation on Vietnam veterans with PTSD.
She has long been active on the Internet with especial interest in medical and political issues having to do with CFS/CFIDS. A number of her essays can be found at the website named above. Soon she hopes to have her own website (as soon as she learns how!), where she hopes to publish running commentary on PWC matters, and duplicates of essays she hopes to continue to periodically publish on CO-CURE.
In 1995 she published in the CFIDS CHRONICLE one of the few articles extant on concrete problems of everyday living for PWCs, which might be resolved in special living situations, with some changes but not unlike those found in the cohousing communities developed for healthy folks. This can be found at http://www.cohousing.org/library/cfs.html.

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