Letters to the Editor
cacambo
Published Letters: 11
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Camille you zany prose stylist you!
[Read the article: Real inconvenient truths]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Camille Paglia has alway been and adventurous rhetorician, but I love this new gambit. She's obviously written all the "fan mail" herself and then proceeded to answer it! I mean, come one, there is no way that all her interlocutors could just happen to write the same ponderous, meandering, prose as she does. Think about it.
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What a relief!
[Read the article: Real inconvenient truths]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As the one who first made the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that CP wrote her own fan letters I was relieved to find that Salon has not stooped that low. I think Tamburlaine's response to my initial post provides a perfectly adequate explanation. Original post below.
Camille you zany prose stylist you!
Camille Paglia has alway been and adventurous rhetorician, but I love this new gambit. She's obviously written all the "fan mail" herself and then proceeded to answer it! I mean, come one, there is no way that all her interlocutors could just happen to write the same ponderous, meandering, prose as she does. Think about it.
-cacambo
Good one, Cacambo
Most of them seem to have been written by bootlicking fanboys and fangirls, so it's possible they've been slavishly imitating her style for so long you can't tell them from the real thing.
- Tamburlaine
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Long Live Camille
[Read the article: A cause they've long ago forgotten]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dear Salon,
Please don't stop publishing Camille Paglia! What other author can generate 147 letters that are all more insightful and better written that the original article.
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Definition of "GOODLING"
[Read the article: Goodling's mea culpa]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I move that we introduce a new word into the political lexicon: a “GOODLING.”
A GOODLING is a malleable subordinate who is brainwashed to firmly believe in the absolute righteousness of a cause that is in reality evil.
The term resonates on a number of levels. It morphs “good” with “underling,” for example. Or even more evocatively, with “changeling,” which Wikipedia defines as follows: “In European folklore and folk belief, a changeling is the offspring of a fairy, troll, elf or other legendary creature that has been secretly left in the place of a human child. The motivation for this conduct stems from the desire to have a human servant….”
A “GOODLING” is to good as “truthiness” is to truth.
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Exactly
[Read the article: Improvement in Iraq: Trust Joe Klein and his secret sources]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What else should we expect given Time's history. Henry Luce used Time as a mouthpiece for his dirty tricks back in the 50s. He and Edward Bernays whipped up anti-communist hysteria to pave the way for the overthrough of the Arbenz govt. in Guatemala in '54, ushering in 40 years of military dictatorship and death squads. Check out "Bitter Fruit" for details.
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Please don't insult the Inquisition!
[Read the article: Imperial presidency declared null and void]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As a historian of the Spanish Inquisition, I have to take issue with Blumenthal's conclusion:
"Thus, for this conservative jurist, torture, dramatized through popular entertainment, remained the same obsession with "absolutes" as it had been during the Inquisition, which after all developed the enhanced coercive techniques used today."
In fact, the Inquisition was far more scrupulous in observing the rule of law than the Bush administration is. The Inquisition was required to provide access to counsel to those it imprisoned, and torture, when applied, was carried out under the strictest of guidelines, which is more than we can say for the Bush administration. Also, any testimony obtained under torture had to be ratified at a later time by the defendant, unlike the situation in the U.S.A. today in which we have no way of knowing what kind of torture was used to obtain which "confessions."
The Inquisition was a brutal and unjust institution, but it respected the legal structure in which it operated, which is more that I can say for Bush.
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Suspect indeed...
[Read the article: If we leave Iraq, do we lose for good?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A respondent upthread wrote:
"Something seems a bit suspect...
I'm inclined to believe an earlier letter writer who posited that these letters are nothing more than scripted fakes."
I am that earlier letter writer who suggested last time around that Camille writes her own letters to herself.
Honestly, the suggestion was purely tongue in cheek, but for crying out loud, where does she find these people and why do they all write in the same pompously purple Paglia prose?
I mean, the global warming skeptic guy on Gore:
"Let me now introduce you to the skewers that will likely slay the CO2 piglet running amok:"
Please!!!
But let us all take a lesson from the master herself:
"I am most appreciative of your sharply observed survey of Midland sensibility and manner. As a native of pugnaciously independent upstate New York (a cosmos away from Manhattan), I am always fascinated by the intricate subtleties of American regionalism."
Ouch. For such a self-avowed grrl of the people, she writes like tea-sipping society matron with her pinky in the air.
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Not that complicated...
[Read the article: Dear Readers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The issue here is simple, as others have pointed out. An author who takes on a topic with out engaging or at least acknowledging previous work on that topic (e.g. Greenwald and Somerby) can expected to be taken to task for such an oversight.
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Hallelujah!!!
[Read the article: Hillary without tears]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I finally did it! I read the first few sentences and then said to myself, "I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to read this drivel." Just wanted to let you all know, it can be done, and it feels good!!!