By Bradford J. Senning
Arizona Daily Wildcat
March 6, 1998

I pledge allegiance to the penis ...

I rented the movie "All the Right Moves" long after Tom Cruise got famous. It was among his first movies - one of those sentimental, high-school football films that were a cliché of the Reagan era. The only memorable feature was Tom Cruise's penis.

I remember that penis not because it belonged to Tom Cruise. Neither was it sizable enough to make my list of enormities. It was nonspecific. It could have been a stand-in penis. It was on the screen for a split-second as he leaned into bed with co-star Leah Thompson. But I remembered it as if it were an historical event like the collapse of the Berlin Wall or the erection of the Parthenon. It was the first penis I'd seen in a mainstream American film.

Yet that penis left something to be desired. It was impersonal. It didn't convey as much as I'd expect of such a romanticized body part. I would have to wait a few more years until the potential of the penis was fully realized in the character of Dirk Diggler.

"Boogie Nights" and its main character, Dirk Diggler, give the penis the attention it deserves. Even before the final scene of the movie, when the penis is divested of clothing for a lengthy camera shot, we understand that the penis is the star of "Boogie Nights." The penis is the story. It is individualized and personable. It will become the hero of our times.

It may seem absurd that a penis can hold our attention for 2 1/2 hours.

This is the Clinton era. Our President's penis has been the subject of news broadcasts. Journalists who might have prudently modified certain news items in the past reported with a straight face that the lawyers of Paula Jones, who is suing the President for sexual harassment, were requesting photographs of Clinton's penis.

Jones was unable to obtain those pictures. The American public never got a chance to see Bill Clinton's penis. But for the first time in the history of this country, the public became fully aware that its President had a penis.

Try imagining Reagan with a penis. Or George Bush. I don't think it's a partisan issue that you can't imagine these two Republican presidents with penises. In other words, there are former Democrat presidents whose penises I can't imagine. So this is unique to the Clinton era. From the earliest days, when Clinton had to answer a question on MTV about whether he wore boxers or briefs, the public has been terrifically intimate with his groin area.

Clinton has inadvertently liberated the penis. And Dirk Diggler is a manifestation of the freedom we currently bestow upon all things phallic. Should we be happy with the shape of things today? Should we wish the penis back to its zippered cave? Or should we be lavish with its new freedom?

It's natural that our affinity for the penis has come into the spotlight. Not even Clinton can be held wholly responsible for the state of penises today.

Freud's Interpretation of Dreams provides a list of things that may (or may not) stand for the penis in dreams - things like knives, nail files and umbrellas. Since its publication in 1900 we have been reinterpreting ordinary oblong objects as "phallic," embracing the idea that things are shaped like penises.

Why not? We've figured out that the perfect interlocking mechanisms are somewhat related the conjunction of male and female genitalia. The hose end that has threads on the outside is called the "male end." It gets screwed into the "female end." We literally expect the hose to work like sex.

All this recognition of sexual forms has cleared a path for Dirk Diggler, whose penis is merely the energetic birth of something that has been gestating for 98 years. It is the phallic symbol made manifest. That penis should be made a hero because our heroes have for too long been fighters in war and talkers of impotent platitudes. The penis is a lover and a doer. It is procreative instead of destructive. As the hero of our age it will stand for liberty and the earnest pursuit of happiness.

As the Berlin Wall fell, so will our inhibitions recline. Hopefully the phallic symbols of our era will look less like missiles and guns, and look more like. . . penises. And although Clinton seems to be more sensible with guns then he is with his penis, remember that men have been practicing with the wrong instruments for far too long.

Bradford J. Senning is a senior majoring in American literature and creative writing. His column, "The Emperor of Ice Cream," appears every Thursday. He would like to remind his readers that the only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.