Susan "Boom Boom" Sontag, Dead at 71

Across the world, people are turning away from the boring carnage on their TV sets to mourn the loss of Susan "Boom Boom" Sontag, the saucy, raven-haired sexpot known for her libido-fueled essays and lusty cultural critiques. With her unapologetic sexual appetite, flirty obsidian eyes, and curves like the Pacific Coast Highway, she was Sex in the City before there was a Sex in the City.

It was 1922 when a young Boom Boom strutted into the world of letters like a stripper at a topless bar; sweaty, middle-aged professors stuffing moist ten spots into her scholastic g-string. An independent woman of independent means, she shook her intellectual moneymaker across the UC Berkeley campus, hopping from bed to bed in a raffish romp to the top of the academic food chain.

At the tender age of 31, she accepted a "teaching position" at the esteemed University of Columbia, where she instantly became the secret fantasy of every rutting young buck on campus. She briefly dated student Jon Bauman, better knows as that "Bowzer" guy from Sha Na Na. But it was a brash, bare-chested sociology professor named Philip Rieff who caught her eye, as well as her panties as they flew across the dorm in a midnight orgy of booze and sex. They were married ten days later, but she left him in 1952 to have a wild lesbian pajama party with cartoonist Annie Leibowitz.

While other feminists were ashamed of and even tried to conceal their own sensuality, Sontag oozed sex from every pore. Proud of her knock-out good looks and sheer sexual magnetism, she defied the stereotypical image of the pasty-faced, hunchbacked intellectual scowling over dusty old books and blaming evil America for all the world's troubles.

"She was proud of her killer bod and not afraid to use it," said director Woody Allen, who featured the insatiable young hoochie-mama in several of his films.

When she was turned down for the role of sassy secretary Jennifer Marlowe on WRKP in Cincinnati in favor of a plainer, less voluptuous actress, Sontag drowned her sorrows in booze. She longed to prove she wasn't just another airheaded dimwit, and in 1964 she gave up her sequined pasties to take pen in hand and express herself in writing. With knowledge gleaned from years of banging elbow-patch University professors, she wrote several provocative essays on a breathtaking range of subjects, some of which were published in Hustler Magazine, and eventually even the upscale Penthouse Letters. Her campy Notes on Camp, a rollicking frolic at an all-girl's summer camp, won her the coveted German Adult Bookseller's Peace Prize, and spawned two best-selling sequels: Radical Will's Pornstars from Mars, and Girls Gone Wild with Susan Sontag - soon to be a Lifetime Original Movie. It was at a Hooter's booksigning for Girls that Sontag met her dear friend, Salmon Rushdie.

"She was a great literary artist, a fearless and original thinker, ever valiant for truth", he said from his New York apartment (Map-it) yesterday. "And boy, did that broad have a RACK on her! VA VA VOOOM!"

Often unfairly villified in lowbrow conservative circles as just another bloviating liberal gasbag, Boom Boom had a deeper, sensitive side that went greatly unappreciated.

"She was perhaps the most influential feminist intellectual of the 20th Century," the puckish Noam Chomsky said. "Gifted with both a brilliant mind and an ass to die for. She will be sorely missed."

A few short weeks before her mysterious death, Sontag summed up her appeal in a final interview. "A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of 'spirit' over matter," Boom Boom said with a cute giggle and a smack of raspberry-scented bubblegum.

Not since Gloria Steinem sashayed around the Playboy Mansion in bunny ears has a single woman had such an influence on American culture. Charo, Miss Piggy, and Bella Abzug rolled into one, Susan "Boom Boom" Sontag will not be forgotten.

Comments

[Friend of USA]

To me , she looks like Dan Rather's twin.

But then again sexiness is in the eye of the bong-holder...

[Friend of USA]

First I felt bad making fun of someone who died a few hours ago but Susan Sontag disrespected 3000 innocent before their remains had even been found.

So I'm ok now

May she reincarnate as the veiled subservient illiterate wife of one those
" courageous " Muslim terrorists she considered victims of America ...

[Friend of USA]

Oh yeah...

and I blame Bush !

[Bug's Butt]

I just have to keep writing it: BRILLIANT satire. I love this blog!

[Moonchild]

I hope I'm not speaking out of school, but I still remember the time Suze showed up for our May Day celebration in a red bikni with the hammer and sickle stitched onto the 'sweet spot' of the french-cut bottom. Many of my comrades became quite 'forward-thinking' as the night wore on, and the memory still causes me to become strangely aroused by images of Breshnev. I plan to puff my bong to the rhythm of the Internationale in salute to this proud thinker/vixen tonight.

[aelfheld]

"It was 1922 when a young Boom Boom strutted into the world of letters [...]"

A truly amazing feat.

Especially in light of the fact that she wasn't born until 1933.

[Liberal Larry]

Or at least that's what Bush wants us to think.

[Sardonicus]

Funny as hell, and I had never heard of the woman. Er, womyn.

[Cricket]

I was left breathless by your comments.

[Ry]

Would it be possible for you to "Map It" to Tim Robbins's house? I wanna know where to send flowers.

Also, does can anyone tell me which one she played: "Thelma" or "Louise." (I've seen the movie, like, 20 times, and I'm STILL confused. It's like trying to remember which one was "Kate" and which one was "Allie" or which one was "Cagny" and which one was "Lacey.")

[spd rdr]

Um...does Boom-Boom get any virgins in paradise?

[beaverette]

Very BUSH-y virgins...

[JannyMae]

Sheesh! I leave you people alone for a few days, and what happens? The bong has gone out, and no one has a lighter! LARRRY!!!!

[Stalin Lives In Boston]

fuck.

i think im going to drink myself into the hospital. i bl,ae bush for my inability tyo dronk much more than i neds too.

[Skidmore]

Personally, I can't think of a single soul more deserving of a protracted illness and death. Congratulations Susan, your best performance yet...

[ThaSickness]

Honest question here... what the hell do ya mean by "Boom Boom"? I don;t get it.

[Friend of USA]

Just a guess ;

Boum Boum might be the sound two huge silicone breasts make when they come out an armored bra ?

[Van Helsing]

Don't forget, even though some people referred to her as Suzie Creamcheese, Sontag was taken very seriously on the Left as an intellectual. Vote for her most profound insight at www.moonbattery.com.

[Steve Lambert]

Great satire. Great blog. Keep up the insanity for 2005!

[Cricket]

There is the matter of her gray hair, which was ignited by her fiery ideas, or inspired by a skunk she ran over.
In either case, her ideas were like skunk spray: Smelly, prevalent and hard to get rid of.

[Mourning Dove]

Cricket, thank you, once again, for putting your human thoughts into a context which a simple mourning dove can understand. Ah yes, skunk spray...now I can relate to that....

[Home Again]

Who's Susan Sontag? I blame Bush for not recognizing the name or not even caring that she (he?) is dead.

[Are you kidding me?]

This is just disgusting and incredibly insipid.

Calling Susan Sontag "BOOM BOOM" is like calling Walter Benjamin "Big Dickie" or Roland Barthes "Sir Cocks A Lot." Anyone who had ever read any of these authors' work would realize that such nicknames are complete nonsequitors. The person who wrote this has clearly never read a single work of hers (or, from the number of biographical factual errors, never even bothered to read a wikipedia version of her biography before writing this).

Why any woman who writes intelligent work has to be satirized as having big tits or assumed to be a "leftist feminist womyn" is beyond me...

C'mom, boys, try opening one of her books! You might realize that women can be intelligent and *gasp* attractive and be successful because of the former and not the latter. "Against Interpretation" would become a seminal work even if its author had been a troll!