Mine:

(Your view is that) If you dislike Camille Paglia writing for Salon, then this must be because you dislike any diversity of opinion and want the site to only reflect one viewpoint.

Yours:

This is a straw person. All I did was list...

A straw person? Here's what you wrote in your first comment:

Anyone who wants Salon to follow the advocacy model will of course be unhappy with Paglia (or indeed everyone aside from their One Favorite Writer)

Your point is that "the advocacy model" prohibits anything but your one's chosen viewpoint, and that any diversity aside from that, one will reject.

There's nothing "straw" about my comment at all, I was responding directly to that.

When I say that it's harmful, I mean harmful to the country, not just the progressive movement, except in the sense that progressives are part of the country also.

Unless you think that Rush Limbaugh is just a reasonable, useful, conservative voice, rather than a racist, xenophonic, bigoted and generally divisive figure as I do. He's part of a propaganda machine, and it adds to his propoganda mightly to be able to say "Look, this "big liberal" Paglia agrees with me on X" as he's done over the years. Do we imagine that Rush would say "Look! Glenn Beck agrees with me!" The propaganda value there is zero, of course he does.

This happens not because she's a thoughtful writer anywhere on the spectrum poltiically, it's because, in my opinion, she writes whatever sensationalist nonsense will seem most shocking to her audience ("I'm a real rabble-rouser!" you can almost hear her saying) and some of it will careen off in Limbaugh's favor.

This is not adding to the national discourse. Bad quality, sensationalist rambling rarely does.

And no, gossip columns are fine, but they're not essential or helping us creaste a journalism to replace the propaganda machine we currently have, something that Glenn Greenwald is railing against every week. My point with that was that if Salon is really saying that they absolutely must publush Paglia to make enough money to pay the other writers, I was simply advocating cutting back a little. People could vote on what to cut, if you thought gossip columns were more important than say Greenwald, you could cast your vote.

I disagree with nearly everything he says but it's an honest, convservative voice, which is a first for Salon as far as I know, and I welcome it.

Much better than having some ranting airhead who pretends to be a liberal spouting right wing talking points and praising Rush Limbaugh.

And yes, David, some of the right has derangement syndrome. That's the part I agree with.

Interestingly, a lot of the right doesn't, and Obama gets praise from many of them as well.

What an obnoxious, loutish comment.

I only meant that the writer is honestly conservative, as opposed to Paglia who everyone calls a "liberal" but is nothing of the sort.

He says "I'm a conservative". The byline says "a conservative writer". That's what "honest conservative" meant, not everything you're reading into the comment.

If Horowitz wrote for Salon in the past then I was mistaken that this is a first for Salon, but it was only a guess, I wasn't saying it was definite. And no, I don't usually Google the history of Salon to write a comment, but thanks for the suggestion.

I know of no one who has any familiarity with Camille Paglia who would refer to her as a liberal.

Rush Limbaugh calls her a liberal. He touts her as "see, even Camille Paglia agrees with me, and she's a 'big liberal'.

Drudge apparently does the same, flooding this site with right wingers who then defend her, writing comments about how "see, when one of you liberals tells the truth, you all can't stand it!" and so on.

But then you'd know all that if you used the Google and etc etc.

Honestly, can discuission take place here without imitating Rush Limbaugh levels of bile?

I know she's not a liberal, you know she's not, yes, but that's not everyone, and she's definitely held up that way, partly by being published here all the time, in a site that runs ads proclaiming that readers love the "progtessive viewpoint" of Salon and its "progressive writers" and so on.

I was commenting that it was refreshing for someone spouting right wing talking points to be at least calling himself "a conservative" and Salon doing so also.

That really was about it.

however when you make letter writing about YOU, you better have your facts straight.

About me? My comment was about this article, Salon, and Paglia.

Bizarre.

It's amusing to read the confident comments from some about France, when they've never lived there except for a tourist visit for five days.

I lived in France for the past decade, returning to the US last year. Back here, my work-supplied health care absolutely sucks, I want up to six months for appointments, and it's shockingly expensive.

In France I never waited more than a week.

What we heard for years now is that the US sacrificed all of these things, the cradle-to-grave health coverage, the pace of life, the quality of life, for that one thing, economic growth. We may be cuttthroat, but we produce! Any country that didn't keep up with the vast wealth we created was "falling behind" or "stagnant". We may have given up a lot of what these countries have, but it's worth it because we do so well economically!

Oops.

France has problems, but most in the US don't have the slighest idea what they really are, or see them only dimly and in all sorts of crazy mirror misinterpreted ways. However the general idea that we're "becoming France"?

We should be so lucky.