THE MANIFESTO AND ME -- MEG

A flat footed caper about Meg who forms a consciousness raising group for kids only to have old Abigail Witherspoon -- school superintendent, temperance league president and the crabbiest and highest paid grownup in the county -- attend as self-appointed adult adviser. But it is Abigail who suggests that the girls protest by publicly burning their Taffy Teen dolls (as most of them don't have bras to burn) and Abigail again who is arrested at the event for throwing water at the police chief. (It seems bonfires on the square are against regulations.) Confused as well she might be, Meg lands on her Mom in a final family confrontation where everything comes to a head but nothing coalesces. But never mind the ending; you know what you're in for on page one where Meg's mother is established right off as that current paragon, a doctor who ""clonks around the house in jeans and pigtails"", and her aunt as a strident antilib pussycat. In aiming for contemporaneity, sensibility and humor, Katz succeeds only in being faddish, shallow and tiresome.