Dittoville

Bring in the fainting couches, stock up on the smelling salts! Are you ready? It’s official! Influential, talented men often tender unwanted sexual overtures to women other than their wives or steady girlfriends. The shocking word is just out: Paul Gauguin slept with many of those beautiful Polynesian girls he immortalized on canvas! Placido Domingo has made passes at young women in the chorus! Stop male abuse of women!

But of course it’s never really about “that.” Whether purely for politics (the Supreme Court inquisitions of Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh) or destroying the careers, currently or retroactively, of great artists (Gauguin and Domingo), it’s all about the erasure of history, nullifying great achievement and replacing it with a controlled, managed, purified, totalitarian Year Zero. Ah, Utopia, Marxist-style. Human Perfection. They’re sure to get it right this time.