Many thanks to Kym Masera Taborn for the transcript below

Copyright 1998 The Columbus Dispatch   
The Columbus Dispatch

January 24, 1998, Saturday

EDITORIAL & COMMENT , 
Pg. 10A  
200 words  

WARRIOR PRINCESS;
 TV'S XENA CAN SERVE AS A ROLE MODEL  


   Xena: Warrior Princess is not among the top-rated shows on television,
but don't tell its fans that.  

   Those who worship the mythological warrior who wears a skirt recently
descended on Burbank, Calif., for a convention honoring their heroine.  

     Is this odd? At a time when television is blamed for showing stuff
that is morally offensive, the character Xena could be a role model for men
and women.  

   Xena is someone who ''can kick a guy's butt,'' according to one of the
2,000 fans at the convention. She's also good-looking, vulnerable, a
champion of the weak or brainy. She's something like the superheroes of
comic books: Think about Wonder Woman and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle,
transported to some mythical earlier time, perhaps in the Middle Ages.  

   Lucy Lawless, who plays Xena, answered scores of questions from her fans
at the convention and showed her human side.  

   The star said she, like others, goes home and scrubs out the tub, when
needed, and, ''I do the dishes because my daughter won't.''  

   That's to be admired: someone who, after after a hard day of skewering
bad guys outside the castle goes home and scours the tub. Maybe Hercules
could learn a lesson from Xena.