Camille Paglia is a dingbat...

[Crankie Avalon]

...here's the proof: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/10/27/paglia/print.html

[Heidi]

1. Two instant turnoffs:

|Paglia presenting herself as the arbiter of what is and isn't good for fine arts.
|Her use of the term "moral degenerate." Seems a person as well-educated as Ms. Paglia should be able to discern the important distinction between morals and ethics, and how that distinction separates the left from the right.

[greeneyedboy]

2. she's wacko, but not stupid (unfortunately).

[acmejack]

3. Soon as I saw your headline, I knew.

I said to myself, here is a Salon subscriber. I read the first page that was enough.Did you suffer through the entire thing? Should I go back and do so? I normally peruse Salon deeper in the evening, but Camille sounds seriously off of the mark today.

I wasn't sure I could take hearing that I should care why it matters to all women that Condi succeeds.

[Heidi]

4. If she said "all," I'm gonna hurl.

I didn't read through the whole thing, either, nor do I intend to do so. :puke:

[Crankie Avalon]

7. Yes, I read all of it.

If you are really hesitant about reading it, I'd say don't do it. It's more of the same of the small part you read.

Here's a typical gem from later in the thing, "But now I feel that he {she's talking about Bush} really doesn't perceive subtleties and that his thinking is schematic and reductive."

She's only now in the later part of 2006 realizing that Bush "doesn't perceive subtleties" and that his "thinking" is "schematic and reductive." And she says it as if she thinks she's making some pioneering observation!

[Warpy]

5. The only time I appreciated Paglia

was during the 2000 election theft, when she excoriated Stupid in elegant language and confirmed something I'd felt about the man. I guess it was just nice to read in print what I'd been thinking to myself every time I saw him on TV.

Other than that, she's just another right wing false feminist who wants her rights but to hell with ours. She also doesn't really like women unless they're fellow lesbians, not much of a qualification for feminist street cred.

I can't yet put her into the same category as Coulter and Malkin, but she's getting there.

[Crankie Avalon]

8. I'd put her in the same category as Tammy Bruce...

...a self-proclaimed "liberal" whom rightwingers like and feel they "can do business with."

[skypilot]

11. Is she even a lesbian?

I've always perceived her a waffling on this question. Isn't she the one who once declared, "Penis fits vagina"?

[skypilot]

6. She used to call the bookstore...

...that I used to work at here in Philly wanting me to read the blurbs on the book covers of other women writers. She seemed to be obsessed with what critics were saying about her competition. And she chewed gum while talking on the phone. Very annoying.

[Crankie Avalon]

9. HAH! You'd think she would just go on Amazon...

...and read the blurbs for herself--unless this was in a time before Amazon when dinosaurs walked the earth? :)

[skypilot]

10. No, it was in the time of Amazon...

...but like I said, she's very annoying. x(

[lumberjack_jeff]

12. Cognitive dissonance

"Foley is obviously a moral degenerate, and the Republican House leadership has come across as pathetically bumbling and ineffectual. But the idea that this is some sort of major scandal in the history of American politics is ludicrous. This was a story that needed to be told for, you know, like two days."

Then, about 4 paragraphs later:

"The Foley scandal exploded without any proof of a documented sex act -- unlike the case of the late congressman Gerry Studds, who had sex with a page and who was literally applauded by fellow Democrats when they refused to vote for his censure."

But apparently, this story needed to be told for, you know, like 23 years.

Why, exactly do you consider yourself a Democrat, Camille?

[ljm2002]

13. She's a pice of work all right...

...I remember an interview with her that was published in the SF Chronicle a few years ago. In it, she dismissed any suggestion that she doesn't like women, stating (paraphrased): "How can anyone say I don't like women, when I've spent hundreds of hours with my face between their legs". Even granting that one of her signature methods is the use of shock value, this statement is despicable. Just imagine a man saying the exact same thing!

She also spouts right wing talking points while accusing the Democrats of doing so: "The way the Democratic leadership was in clear collusion with the major media to push this story in the month before the midterm election seems to me to have been a big fat gift to Ann Coulter and the other conservative commentators who say the mainstream media are simply the lapdogs of the Democrats. Every time I turned on the news it was "Foley, Foley, Foley!" -- and in suspiciously similar language and repetitive talking points."

The one point I did agree with her on was when she complained about "that grotesque moment in the last presidential debates when John Kerry came out with that clearly prefab line identifying Mary Cheney as a lesbian." Personally, I also thought that line went over like the proverbial lead balloon -- it really made me squirm. It wasn't that Kerry should not have brought up the issue -- it was that he did it so badly, it didn't gain him any points at all nor did it lose any points for his opponents. Better leave such tactics aside if you cannot execute them gracefully.

Anyone who can say that feminists should be invested in Condi's "success" is seriously deluded. Condi's rise in the power structure has been a terrible detriment to women's stature IMO. As National Security Advisor, Condi presided over the worst security failure in our nation's history -- and it has since been demonstrated that she, and the rest of the Administration, had dozens of warnings that, if taken seriously, could have prevented the 9/11 outrage or at least minimized the damage with an immediate and effective response. She has been a weak, under prepared, sycophantic woman in high office whose only real talent is lying to back up anything her husb... er, pResident Bush wants to do.

In any case: Paglia is a publicity whore is enamored with herself. That is the long and the short of it. She likes to be regarded as a contrarian, which would be okay if she had any solid principles of her own to begin with. She does not. Her whole methodology is to build up straw men and make cheap points against imagined opponents by tearing the straw men down. For Camille, it's all about her. Always has been, always will be.

[Grebrook]

14. Camille is a Pat Caddell Democrat - A closet libertarian bashing Dems while pretending

to be one, because they think it'll make their criticisms more relevant to independents watching.

[NYCGirl]

15. Love this from a Salon LTTE:

"Camille Paglia is an intellectual like Christopher Hitchens is a teetotaler."