Hack Attack : Meager Meals

by Sid Falco
10/99

The kids over there at Willamette Week, about to celebrate the 25th anniversary of a paper that is older than most of them, might want to pause and, because they are no doubt in a reflective mood as they await this momentous occasion, ponder the small, rather than the large, picture.

The big picture is obvious: the paper is fat with more ads than ever, but also textually and visually blander than ever (could the two be related?). But what is important are the small elements, the marginalia that fall into the category of what the ostensive editor of the paper, in his expansive and philosophical moments, likes to call the "God is in the details" angle.

Take Suey Chow's advice column, Dinner Palace of Love, which floats around in the classified personals section at the back of the paper. It's a minor element within the overall plan of the paper, but one that looms large because the implications of the column —what it says, the quality and orientation of the advice it gives —speak to the dire and conservative values the editorial board now holds dear.

Some readers may recall that for awhile Willamette Week ran Dan Savage's sex advice column. These same readers may also recall that WWacquired it when Savage pulled it unceremoniously from the late, lamented, and still missed PDXS ,the city's only true alternative paper, and probably the last one Portland is going to see for a long time. In any case, after somehow wrestling Savage Love from PDXS,the editors dropped it quietly and ignominiously some six or eight weeks later. I think it had something to do with the series of Qs and As Savage ran on men with a fetish for ejaculating in women's faces and the women who loved or loathed it. The paper's co-owner Russ Martineau, who reduced the phone sex ads that kept the paper afloat through some lean years, has worked since the early '90s to eradicate all vestiges of sex from the paper's now squeaky clean pages, and the sudden eruption of come in his now Mormonite organ must have been deeply shocking and disconcerting.

There are some features that newspapers seem to feel they absolutely need. In the case of WW it's some kind of reader-interactive question and answer column. After quietly killing Savage Love, which then went over to the monthly Anodyne,which itself promptly died, WWeventually unveiled Dinner Palace of Love in early May of 1999.

Parts of what we are to take to be Miss Chow's face appear in a little box atop her column, next to the column's weird title, which seems to be based on the gustatory associations of her name. Below the face are one to two questions per week—usually one, as Miss Chow's answers are typically four times as long as the question—that Miss Chow answers in a causal, sometimes agreeable manner, but not necessarily in an earth-shattering prose style or with any controversial ideas. No sperm-covered faces, no unexpected opinions.

The questions are the same ones we have all seen before in hundreds of previous columns of this type—how to start dating again, how to deal with sloppy boyfriends, how to cope with natural personality differences between loved ones—and the blandness of both the questions and the answers makes you wonder why people submit their problems to this kind of column in the first place, much less read it. In an age when trailer trash narcissists can easily appear on Jerry Springer's show to unveil their most intimate secrets, why bother with a tiny little column in a small unread paper in a town no one has ever heard of? Aren't these people just showing off? Or are they sending a message to disappointing lovers? The later seems more likely, as a classified ad of similar content would elude most people. If readers really wanted information, they would either hit the Internet, or write to the Playboy Advisor. And given the kind of advice that Chow dishes out, you realize that most advice columns, or at least this one—and most definitely not Savage Love— don't tell you anything you couldn't have figured out on your own sooner or later anyway. The real point of the column is revenge and narcissism. In her June 30th column Chow admits as much when as part of her advice to a mulatto who is having problems with an Asian girl he thinks is a racist, she advises "Mention offhand that you wrote a letter to WW and got it published—maybe she'll be impressed by that."

Chow's columns are written in that perky casual Internet-email style of which the paper has been enamored in recent years. However a distinct personality does emerge. Chow seems to think that "Love means unconditional support." More than anything she wants to be encouraging—to encourage you to buy, basically. One wonders why her column does not appear in the paper's new consumer catalog section called Life.

The May 19th issue contained her now famous dildo column which like almost all WWarticles these days really says, Buy! Buy! Chow also has a penchant for telling her readers to go out and spend money on evening classes (WW just happens to have an annual adult education supplement to help them out). On August 11th to a kid who wants to meet older girls Chow advised, "You can take evening classes …," and to an older man reëntering the dating scene she suggested on August 4th that he "take a night class." Consumerism is the answer to all life's—or Life's— problems.

Then there is a rather passive conservatism of the column, the Good Woman politics at the foundation of Chow's advice. It is not illegal morally if not literally to dislike gays, so she conspires with a girl whose new boyfriend is casually "homophobic" to lure him into gay contacts. They know what's best for the lad. Only someone with something to hide about himself would "hate" gays, as this boyfriend supposedly does. The half black male who has a crush on the supposedly racist Asian girl is told that "I suspect that she is too far gone." By the way, there is no proof that the chick is a racist and just doesn't like the guy. To be fair, she…oh, why bother to be fair?

The only non-Good Woman stance Chow takes is on July 14th to advise a man embarrassed to buy Penthouse that porno is supposed to be dirty and shocking, otherwise it wouldn't be fun. But then, Chow will say anything to get someone to buy something. For the most part, men are not to be trusted. When a girl's father dies, Chow advises her on August 4th to "find a trusted friend, an aunt or a sister to share your feelings with." Men are not fit for such intimacies. Chow even wrote one column praising a man for resisting sex. Odd for a sex advice column—but perfect for the sexless Wallowmat Week.

But then, Chow is something of a depressive, a naysayer, which does distinguish her from the usual Dear Abby-style advisor. "Failure and disappointment are inescapable in this life." In an answer to a September 15th question about Herpes she reminds us unnecessarily that "public-health tragedies abound."

I suppose Dinner Palace of Love is fine for what it is, but isn't the column in the wrong paper? Doesn't the city's remaining high profile independent newspaper owe its readers a more challenging read than this hodge podge of conformity, consumerism, and conservatism? A newspaper that concerned itself with its readers' minds rather than their wallets, would keep Dan Savage and chop Suey.

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