(Page 2 of 2)  It's an old story: Nasty Janet, Naughty Justin
February 17, 2004|By Heidi Stevens, Tribune staff reporter.
Weinstein points to historical roots. "Since long before the Old
Testament, women were the seductresses. It was Eve that tempted
Adam," she says. "The other interesting intertextuality
reference is to black women and white men. There was such a
thing called lynching when black men went after white women, but
white men were never censured for going after black women, of
course."  Clearly, Timberlake tearing the top off of the co-
conspiring Jackson isn't the same as Thomas Jefferson fathering
children with his slave Sally Hemings or Strom Thurmond
fathering a child with his family's 16-year-old black
housekeeper. But it's naive to pretend our knowledge of that
history doesn't linger today.  "It's not a completely correct
parallel because Janet and Justin have similar kinds of cultural
capital, which is so rare in history," Brier says. "In that
respect it does make it different."  Different