I think it was incredibly undignified and inappropriate to include Camille Paglia's take on Ms. Friedan in this compilation. Retrospective essays on a person's legacy in the days following her death should be positive. This is why even if I were invited, I would decline to write one about Rush Limbaugh or George W. Bush or Jesse Helms. Of course, the fact that Ms. Paglia has not managed to say one nonoffensive thing in the many years I have known of her doesn't help any in this department. I have never understood why Salon was interested in publishing her antifeminist tripe. But I guess I'm just one of those "crazy puritans."

Dammit Camille I respect and agree with you on a lot of points but what are you thinking, talking about how awesome conservative "feminists" are in a section that is supposed to be devoted to "Betty Friedan's Legacy"? (And squeezing in the obligatory "I have always been so way ahead of every other woman on the face of the planet" remark, nonetheless!) Maybe you could stop working so hard at making yourself into a caricature in every venue offered to you, and humble yourself enough to admit, for a space of 250 words or so, that another women besides you actually had a profound positive impact on the shape of this country.....without ending that admission with a lot of shameless self promotion and dropping names of other feminists like they make up your personal harem.

Betty Friedan changed my life. I read Feminine Mystique in my mid 20's when I was newly married and immediately saw her wisdom in the misery of my Mother and her friends. When I was divorced in my early 30's, I chose to live the rest of my life as a feminist. I remarried, set up my new marriage as an equal opportunity adventure, went back to college, raised my kids in non-sexist ways, etc. I have a great marriage 34 years later, and just retired from a rewarding career in both academic and nursing practice. My Mother, at age 90, is still angry she wasn't able to break out of the housewife role and is jealous of the lives my sister and I have been able to lead.

Betty Friedan started it all for me and my generation. Until then, the majority of us were educated "in case" something happened to our husbands.

Camille Paglia is her usual offensive, self-righteous, self-promoting, naval-gazing self in her piece about Betty Friedan. The only good thing is that it was mercifully shorter than her usual meanderings.

"I am perhaps the person in America most saddened by Betty Friedan's death," writes Linda Hirshman in Salon's obituary of Friedan.

I was fascinated by the solipsism in Hirshman's article "Homeward Bound" where she deems raising children as something beneath the educated bourgeoisie.

Her claim to be the one grieving most at the loss of Friedan might be even more self-centered. A quick google search tells me that Friedan is "survived by two sons and a daughter, nine grandchildren, a brother and a sister." I might be one of those neandertals who places family above ideology but I'm guessing Friedan's family is more saddened by the loss than Hirshman.

On the other hand, adding RIP to the dedication will give her painfully trite sounding novel a bit of gravity. So she has somethign to be happy about.

Thank you for having included Erica Jong's thoughtful words about Betty Friedan. I hope Paglia takes notes on how to eulogize someone kindly while still acknowledging that they were fallible human beings. I agree with others who write here that her own contribution is inappropriate and unprofessional. Although she makes good points about the growing pains and shortcomings of Friedan's NOW, this is not the time or place to play the pseudo-intellectual provocateur.

Paglia was her usual un-sugar-coated self. Apparently it irked some readers because, you know, we all turn into saints when we die, and no one's supposed to say otherwise.

While I agree that Paglia could turn the self-promotion down a bit, I've never bought this: "Retrospective essays on a person's legacy in the days following her death should be positive."

Really? Why? We're not speaking at Friedan's wake. (In fact, one of the things I love about Paglia is her unsentimentality. Some people apparently feel otherwise.)

It's a remembrance of social legacy on a public forum for the discussion of culture and politics, not a piano-accompanied personal honoring.

Why does she always need to convince us that she is "registered" as such? Is it because we would never believe it from the positions she takes?

"Conservative women" as fabulous feminists? Get real! We aren't that stupid Camille. These "conservative women" are the same ones who would rather see us in back alleys with wire coathangers. These "conservative women" would hand all decisions regarding our personhood to a bunch of sex perverse old white men in Washington. For "pro-sex" punishment.

And yes, her relentless self-promotion and obligatory Madonna mention is so predictable it makes me nauseous. Almost as nauseous as her fawning adoration of that cartoon, Sean Hannity. Gack!

and I'll say it again: Camille Paglia really needs to stop sucking her own dick.

Only rightwingers like freepers, IWF, Rush Limbaugh and David Horowitz seem to respect Paglia. I suggest Salon leave her to them and publish the opinion of progressives. But then, as Horowitz says in FrontPage, "In Philadelphia, you have the most famous feminist in the United States, Camille Paglia" so it must be true because we all know that only the right wing and Paglia get to defind what a feminist is!

I got to say Paglia gets it right. She can rule my roost any day.

Like it or not, but Camille Paglia, out of all the women speaking in the article, is the best example of feminist freedom and success.

Hillary Clinton is a buffoon who can't seem to decide whether to kiss or kick conservative ass, Erica Jong still has to cite her first novel "Fear Of Flying," because, quite frankly, she hasn't written anything to rock the cultural boat since. And the rest are academic or political nobodies. They should SMOOCH CAMILLE'S PATOOT for contributing her two cents!

Nothing anyone says is going to deny that Paglia is a genuine radical with the balls to go on national TV and talk about the things that the cleanly-scrubbed, academic, twerpy leftists are too scared to mention (prostitution, S&M, legalization of drugs, porn), and yet she has the savvy to do it in a way that affords her national coverage. Maybe there were a few people speaking out on these topics before her, but no one with the intelligence to figure a way to get on TV and do it nationally.

All the bile spewed by the anti-Paglia naysayers here only proves her primary point: that leftists talk a good game about being "tolerant," but push come to shove, they have no patience for true diversity.

And if The Left doesn't even have that, what good is it?