Letters to the Editor
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Camille's back, and she wantts you to know it.
If I were a formerly insightful, but now just opinion-generating cultural critic whose relevance had been dwindling for well over six years as the shock value of her "insights" no longer seemed very astute to a literate audience, I might analyze a rambling three-(web)-page article in an online newspaper that is so laden with self-promotion as representing a sort of narcissistic desperation for attention.
Well, she's back, and she certainly doesn't think we can live without knowing where she's been, to wit, the following excerpts (see if you can figure out the capital letter that constitutes the major theme):
"My column returns today for the first time since 2001, when I resigned from Salon to focus on writing "Break, Blow, Burn." On my book tours of the past two years (for the Pantheon hardcover and the Vintage paperback), I was very touched by how many people in the signing lines enthused about my Salon columns "and appealed for their return."
"Initially, my Salon column, "Ask Camille," perpetuated the format of my satiric Agony Aunt feature in Spy magazine. (My Spy debut had been piquantly flagged on the infamous February 1993 cover of a cheerful Hillary Clinton clad in dominatrix gear and wielding a riding crop in the Oval Office.)"
"Initially, my Salon column, "Ask Camille," perpetuated the format of my satiric Agony Aunt feature in Spy magazine. (My Spy debut had been piquantly flagged on the infamous February 1993 cover of a cheerful Hillary Clinton clad in dominatrix gear and wielding a riding crop in the Oval Office.)"
"I addressed this matter last week in "Religion and the Arts in America," the 2007 Cornerstone Arts Lecture at Colorado College (it was filmed by C-SPAN)."
"I approached the subject from a different angle in "Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s" (Arion, winter 2003)."
"I am as adamantly opposed to the American invasion and occupation of Iraq as I was before it happened, when the mainstream press abandoned its watchdog role and servilely capitulated to administration propaganda."
"By 1996, I was writing a controversial cover story about Hillary for the New Republic called "Ice Queen, Drag Queen" (which may have been a factor in editor in chief Andrew Sullivan's quick departure)."
"When I was asked to review Hillary's memoir, "Living History," by the Times of London in 2003"
"In 1994, on my book tour for "Vamps & Tramps," I was sitting late one night in the empty lobby of WBZ-AM NewsRadio, located on a lonely road in Boston."
"ABC's "Nightline" called via my publisher for comment, but I felt far too upset to go on TV."
"The current February issue of Interview magazine, where I am a contributing editor"
"an ancient myth that he first heard about in my classes"
nuff sed.
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Can't believe you got her back!
Wow! Salon got Camille Paglia back. That's gonna be a HUGE acquisition fifteen years ago.
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Although I'd like to ask Camille
What the hell is a "libertarian Democrat" doing promoting a man like Edwards who at least back in 2004 believed the DRug War could be won if we escalated the rate at which we throw (illegal drug) addicts into steel cages and make them live with sex criminals and murderers.
That's not being a consistent libertarian Democrat to back a man who believes the War on Drugs can actually be won.
What kind of a police state would it take to do THAT?
Any candidate who actually believes that the horrific traumatic conditions in prison are conducive to healing addiction of any kind will never get any kind of support from me whatsoever.
If Edwards no longer plans to escalate the War on Drugs, he might try saying so.
I couldn't find his current drug policy anywhere on his website. When I called his office for a clarification, they claimed they would call me back but never did.
I don't know how a libertarian Democrat could support a coward like that!
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For the first time ever
I'm reconsidering my Salon subscription.
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So I DID get a Valentine!
Thanks so very much to Salon for the return of Paglia's important, unique, funny, brilliant voice. But the real surprise for me is the number of letter writers who seem to demand that no one rock their various tiny tiny boats.
Okay, Paglia is wrong a lot. And Dylan sometimes wrote dull songs. So what? And she toots her loud own horn a lot. So? Whitman wrote his own rave reviews! The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom (I guess I should add that that's Blake since some of you seem a bit culturally delimited).
Who the hell else had the balls to take on Harvard's PC outrages? Who the hell else has provided precisely THESE insights into Hillary C.? Who the hell else has said one intelligent thing about Anna Nicole? Who the hell else is reminding us that the past--the Catholic Church, Blake, Dante, Garbo--still matters? Who the hell else is keeping that startling Orc (Blake again) energy from the sixties going, not as nostalgic “classic rock” but as an eye and ear alive now to this here moment?
Who educated, or failed to educate, you people? Do you really just want your own world view spit repeatedly back at you, the same PC clichés over and over and over? Are you really this deaf to the intelligence and muscle in Paglia’s prose? Are you really this impervious? And intolerant?
I was about to subscribe 6 years ago--then Paglia left and I didn't. I instantly decided to sign up when I saw that she was back. But with all these awful letters I gotta wait and see if she lasts.
Allen Ginsberg is dead and Paglia's may now be the most important voice alive.
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I'll never pay for Camille Paglia
Make her go away. I don't read Salon for this crap.
Bad, bad, bad idea.
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Camillenium
"I had certainly assumed the Web was surfeited with more than enough material, but evidently many others beside myself find the partisan polarization of the blogosphere numbingly predictable and its prose too often slapdash, fragmentary or drearily prolix.
The Web, in my view, has its own crisp idiom -- a fusion of the verbal..."
Ohhhh GOD no.... Can someone put this woman back in her box? The memories come flooding back... the ego, the bitter harangues, the horseshit theories stated as fact (e.g. "men who are gay are gay because they were shunned on the playground"). No wonder University of the Arts kids are among the most grating students in Philadelphia (often even outstripping the ever-pompous UPenn brats)... is she teaching every class there now?