Letters to the Editor
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This member of the VRWC loves her.
Camille, a liberal, feminist lesbian (and well loved by this, her antipodal, admirer) will bring me back to Salon. I left when she did.
I would disagree (Surprise!! Surprise!!) with Camille on a number of subjects and the details of others. But. But, she is utterly honest, extraordinarily intelligent, thoughtful and well-read – in short, an American treasure. If more Democrats argued as she does, we might have a decent debate about the future of this country.
Those who hate her are not worthy of anyone's time. Oh! That accounts for about 95 percent of the posts I read here. I am not going to be in good company when I visit this site. Que lastima!
viejoverde
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FYI: Mitt Romney is a Mormon
Holy cow, so Camille Paglia, an atheist libertarian democrat right wing nut job thinks Mitt Romney, a Mormon, can/will become president. Yeah, she's nuts...or we're in BIG trouble. Lets hope she's nuts.
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JesseK - Gay and Love Camille
As a gay man, I do not think Paglia is homophobic. You have cherry picked quotes, JesseK, and taken them out of context. Obviously, you have never really read Paglia and I suggest that you begin with Sexual Personae.
Paglia's take on gay culture comes down to this: by being so obsessed with fitting into mainstream American culture, gay culture has sold its soul. What has made gay culture so important historically is that it stood on the fringes of mainstream culture, critiqued it and re-energized it. She proves this through a thoughtful analysis of Western culture past and present, from the Greeks to the Renaissance (and in other works, to Oscar Wilde and Tennesse Williams). And guess what, she's right again. And this just isn't my opinion, I know a number of gay filmmakers, writers and artists who agree. Once we had Williams, now we have David Sedaris. It's not that Sedaris isn't funny, but is that really the best we can produce? Gay culture has become, well, limp.
What you've read into her quotes, such as the Matthew Shepard quote, is that she's homophobic and advocates second-class status to gays and lesbians. No. What she's saying is that real equality comes when gays and lesbians are accepted on our terms, for who we are, not for trying to out-suburban the suburbanites. As for Matthew Shepard, what that quote really meant was that gays and lesbians had asumed that we had "arrived" — that somehow in the 90s homophobia was evaporating beacuse we had gay characters on TV and in IKEA ads. What happened to Matthew Shepard, and what's been happening under the reign of Bush II has proved the point she was actually making — we still have a long way to go. The Matthew Shepards of this world, especially out of the major cities, still need to be mindful and aware that being gay can be dangerous. She wasn't blaming him, but commenting on a mindset at the time that was starting to take inclusion for granted.
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To JesseK
Like Andrew Sullivan, Camille is a novelty because she is gay.
Neither of these clowns would have achieved what little fame they have had they been born straight. Andrew Sullivan is "that gay Republican" and Camille's claim to fame is being a bitchy, feminist bashing lesbian. (Please note that this is *not* a commentary on special treatment or anything like that)
Being gay is both their biggest commodity and a free pass. Camille can bash gays because she is gay. Just as it also allows her endless diatribes on hair and clothing style, voice intonation, how good Bush looks in a cowboy hat and other inanities.
This is a woman that, as others have pointed out, said Bush would be a competent President because of his James Dean qualities. This is a woman that praised Rice on her sense of style and love of football. This is a woman who routinely descibes men as effete, effeminate, and seems to judge men mostly on how masculine they appear. A woman who loves Hannity because of his manly steak commercial voice. (You cannot make this shit up) These trite observations would immediately be written off if she were straight - she would be labeled a lightweight with a schoolgirl mentality. But because she is a lesbian praising candidates based on how rugged they look is considered novel and fair game.
As a self-described libertarian democrat, she gets a free pass at bashing any liberal, libertarian or democrat while advocating very non-libtertarian policies. As a member of academia she gets a free pass bashing "ivory tower elites" while hawking her own book on "The Birds." As a self-described atheist she gets a free pass bashing atheists while claiming that the most important moment of the Iraq war was a sign from above in the form of a shuttle explosion!
If a member of the religious right were to claim that athiests were making the world a more dangerous place because of their lack of religious understanding we would laugh. That doesn't even make sense - an athiest can know plenty about religion, and a religious person may not know anything outside their own religion. But because Camille is a self-described atheist her inane assertions are not challenged.
I'm all for criticism from the inside. Being hard on yourself and your associates is a virtue. Holding yourself and those around you to high standards is wonderful.
Bashing those around you with specious logic then using "hey, I'm one of you guys" as a defense is just lame.
She's taken "I'm not racist - look I have a black friend" and turned it into a cottage industry.
Why do people put up with her gay bashing? Why do they put up with any of her bullshit false reasoning? Why do anti-war people put up with someone who swallowed the WMD story hook, line and sinker then later had the nerve to ask "was I the only one who though Saddam might be bluffing about WMD?" Why do atheists put up with her assertions that atheists are making the world dangerous by not preparing our children with an understanding of world religions?
The answer is: most people *don't* put up with it!
Read the letters. People are on to her bullshit. I suspect many of the Salon contributors are on to her as well. The nicest thing you can say about here is "that's Camille being Camille" which is essentially what most of the pro-Camille letters have had to say - damning with faint praise anyone?
Someone with a Camille hard-on at Salon doesn't get it but the vast majority of people do. That's why Camille spends so much time plugging herself and her endeavors - she's already slid into irrelevancy in the minds of most people.