Here she comes again, everyone's favorite tough-minded non-male-bashing feminist. As always Camille is a provocative read but true to form, for every piercing insight and salient observation there is a capricious half thought-out opinion that she hangs onto like a pitbull.

The Foley scandal is a good example. She starts out making the point that on the rictor scale of sex scandals it doesn't rate very high and that the democrats helped push the issue beyond it's expiration date. True, yeah. Duh. But she glosses over the phony notion of morality that has been the cornerstone of the Republican monopoly on power and hung like an albatross around the necks of Democrats as they cower in fear of acknowledging Monica's blue dress. There is considerable hypocracy at work here and it deserves to be brought out in stark relief. That is the issue, not the meandering discussion of what constitutes consent or leagality. She then goes off on how much worse Cliton's little oval office hokey-pokey was! Now, I may be alone here in my liberal secular morality, but the fact that this happened in or around that hallowed hall makes me laugh as much as it shocks me at Mr. Clinton's cavalier attitude. On the other hand, the young woman in question WAS 22 years old. Now, anyone who has kids, heck, anyone who WAS a kid knows that there is a world of difference in terms of intellectual/emotional development between a 22 year old and a 16 year old. We all know that there were people helping prod Ms. Lewinski in the direction of the cigar-wielding POTUS, and for Ms Paglia to go on to assert that What Bill Clinton did was worse than Mark Foley's (probably), decades-long email campaign is assinine. As usual she saves her indignation for the sacred cows of her own party. It's a good way to get noticed and will engender some discussion but like others have said, in this age of Ann Coulterism it's becoming a very tired tactic indeed.

Most troubling to me is her asserion that without religion we'd have anarchy, which is nonsense. The fact that religion is the inherent glue that has held wobbly civilizations together doesn't make it the defacto ingredient in preventing us from sliding into a morass of animalistic raving and tribalism. It seems to me, if you look around, it has provided just that very thing.Then of course there is the jump to decrying the result of liberal parents bringing up children religion-less as having no appreciation of "the religious commitment of Islamic fundamentalists". How's that?! Again the knee-jerk tendancy to blaming liberal parents for failing to bring up their children with the proper amount of good american moral fibre is a tired, tired arguement. It barely begins to scratch the surface of a whole host of ideas that betray a stupid simplicity of mind about complex relationships. Of course this is the bread and butter of what passes for conservative thought these days and the fuel that drives right-wing radio: the ability to make one not only comfortable with one's ignorance and prejudice, but to make the listener feel that holding tight to these notions is morally justified and noble, (all the while vilifying your opponent, natually). This is why she so misunderstands Fox news and it's net effect on the national discourse. To pretend that there is not not a predetermined attempt to slant the news at Fox is amazing to anyone with a brain. Get over it? I think not. Call a spade a spade fer chissake! As much as I am loathe to admit to my own party's embracing of martyrdom I think criticism of Fox news is justified and necessary.

I could go on and on but just discussing THIS exhausts me. There are a host of badly conceived ideas throughout this interview and it would take an article as long to point them out, but increasingly real discussion that doesn't utilize quick-one dimensional concepts are hard to come by. I feel the same way when I read or hear Christopher Hitchens and to this I say, "Beware the person whose public persona is so tied to his/her "opinion"'. It becomes increasingly hard to extricate real ideas from ego and attitude. Unfortunately people who are willing to stand at the podium and bray the loudest these days get the attention. Unfortunately people with considerable intellectual abilities often fall in to that camp these days perhaps in an attempt to get heard above the fray but sadly it just adds to the noise.

Andrew O'Hehir's article on the crumbling facade of sanctimony on election night at Fox was an absolute tonic. Shadenfreude my ass! That felt damned good. But it occurs to me that Fox is so beyond parody that he may have simply been reporting..

2 things: Dean has (regardless of what his critics say), invigorated the democratic base in ways James Carville is incapable of and secondly I seem to remember watching Harold Ford Jr.'s campaign implode by making some dumb mistakes. He is also pretty much a republican on a lot of social issues. He's bordeline which is different from being a centrist. That doesn't mean I wouldn't want him elected. Just not as the head of the DNC.

Everyone email CNN and complain. This is beneath them. Remind them how much better MSNBC is looking these days. Glenn Beck is a moron. This is journalism? That we accept "questions" like those he posed as actual rather than thinly-veiled talking points with built-in attitudes for the public is a testament to how far we have fallen.

My guess is that after a few suddenly well-documented skirmishes we will begin to see a draw-down or redeployment (whatever it's being called this week), and then we'll start hearing about how the horrible debacle is not an abject failure after all but a "limited success". Sean Hannity will jump all over THAT phrase.

The right-wing punditocracy's phony outrage about this non-issue is on par with Chimpy's crocodile tears.