Letters to the Editor
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Paglia-rism.
"And finally, CP does piss off everyone, myself included, with various thoughts she possesses. That is because rather than being an intellectually vacant regurgitater of approved ideas, she has formed her own set of ideas which she regurgitates for the masses."
No offense, but baloney. I've walked through Paglia's rhetoric in about five letters now showing how she exactly mimics the religious right's rhetoric on gay issues, point for point, and sometimes nearly word for word.
Paglia often regurgitates right-wing talking points, slaps a thin coat of faux-contrarian paint on it and then dances around praising herself for being daring. As quite a few readers have pointed out, one of the most consistent traits of all Paglia articles is usually a statement like "I'm a Democrat," and then the rest of the column will be standard Right-Wing talking-points against Democrats, or "I just went to dinner with my lesbian partner Allison, but here's my many, many, many problems with the unnatural behavior of gay men."
In her current article, this is, of course, along the lines of stating (and she's discussed Hillary Clinton in precisely this same way over and over and over and over before): "[in 1992] I thought Hillary was great -- decisive and tough-talking." Anyone who's ever read Paglia now knows with the same assuredness you have that a green light will momentarily turn red to buckle your seat-belts for precisely the standard Rush Limbaugh talking point take on Hillary, and they won't be disppointed here: "Then came the debacle of her bungled stewardship of healthcare reform in 1993. Hillary's secretive, arrogant, elitist side came out, and it wasn't a pretty sight. By 1996, I was writing a controversial cover story about Hillary for the New Republic called "Ice Queen, Drag Queen..." blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Yep, Hillary's "arrogant," "elitist," an "Ice Queen." Thanks, Rush. Uh, I mean Camille. What a wonderfully original take! I'm so engaged with Camille's actual arguments rather than with criticizing Salon's dip into banality that I....zzzzzzzzzzzzz. Oops, sorry, dozed off there for a minute.
If there were room for it on her birth certificate, "an intellectually vacant regurgitater of approved ideas" might well be Camille Paglia's middle name. Like the dude at the party who utters a racist remark and then when nobody laughs claims to have been being "delightfully ironic," Paglia just dresses up her almost invariably Standard-98%-Right-Wing hoo-ha with a pinch of fake contrarian horse-hockey so she can maintain some wiggle room, and, well, she does have her believers, let's just leave it at that.
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Dearest C.S.
You consider that pile of self-congratulating drivel masquerading as a Salon-worthy article to be "wit"?
Wow. I guess you have very different standards for "wit" than most Salon readers.
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I took your advice, C.S., and went back to look for the "wit"
"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."
Oh my god! I get it now! That is hilarious!
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Filter
Please, tell me she's not back as a regular. If she is, can you let us filter the home page by author so I can screen her out? The last thing we need is another Right Winger pretending to be a Liberal so they can tear down progressive ideas in a progressive web site. The only thing about Paglia I've ever seen that shows she's a liberal is that she constantly says "I'm a liberal" before savaging whatever liberal individual or idea she's talking about. Of course if she actually were a liberal, she wouldn't need to say it, she'd actually offer ideas.
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Be Sure to Watch: Camille Paglia's Super-Exciting Break, Blow, Burn-- and Bedazzle!
Rosmar, if you read that Paglia quote about her booksigning in the funny pompous unaware-of-the-depth-of-your-ridiculous-egotism voice that John Lithgow sometimes uses, it's even funnier. The only thing she neglects to mention is the bookprice and ordering information, like:
"When I was signing my books (the Pantheon Hardcover, $18.95 at amazon.com and other bookstores everywhere, or in the Vintage paperback edition, $9.95 at Barnes and Noble and other fine retail outlets, or order directly from my new late night cable television info-merical, "Camille Paglia's Super-Exciting Break, Blow, Burn-- and Bedazzle!" where I'll throw in a free "Bedazzler" rhinestone-embrodering machine for the first 25 customers), many readers came up to me and begged-- nay, pleaded-- that I bring back my beloved Salon column (thank you, my multitudes of dear, dear readers), which some referred to as the greatest modern writing and philosophy since Nabokov, some readers in line even rending their garments, and shedding real tears. A few of my many, many fans even experienced spontaneous stigmata, begging me to sign their books in their own blood, given to me as an offering to my magnitude. On an other note, I'd now like to talk about the arrogance of Hillary Clinton..."
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Molly lives!
Thanks to whoever put up the full column by Molly (don't know how it was done, but I have a guess). I hadn't read it before my last posting, and as in the Dickerson letters, I think there's some collective channelling going on. It's like Michelle Goldberg on "American Fascists:" "He (She) says things I wouldn't dare say!" And, in this case, better, of course. Never mind. Still an honor.
There are a couple problems with the column, though (rare for Molly). Bram Dijkstra doesn't think pornography causes rape, he thinks art causes rape. And Paglia did get some real heat from her Rolling Stones comment, which wasn't just a conversation, as she remembers, but a review in Ramparts, where she quoted the song "Stupid Girl" and said "I don't like stupid girls either." First and last time of complete agreement: I've never liked stupid girls myself, but the feministas who were the intellectual precursors of Broadsheet tore her a new one on a national level, and she did have trouble publishing for years.
This was during the used-to-be-priceless-now-it's-a-piece-of-shit death-throe period of Ramparts, when it was edited by David Horowitz, and explains the oft-quoted phrase "He used to be an asshole of the left, now he's an asshole of the right."
Which is what Paglia became, because with the death of New Left journalism symbolized by Ramparts, all the money in political and cultural criticism went to the bland as barf MSM or the right. So now she hangs out with Rush and Matt, and we're supposed to respect her intellectual independence.
Which explains Salon in the last couple years as well, although not why it went one way when the nation, finally, is going another. It's time Joe, Michelle, the War Room crew, Glenn and whoever thinks alike take their cyberselves to a different site, one more hospitable to, well, a broader range of thought, maybe with George Soros as a stabler Martin Peretz. They'd take along the pissed-off subscribers, which is apparently most of us. I'd love to see what they come up with in the way of cultural criticism. It might sound a lot like these last 500 letters.
Molly lives within us all, at least some of those who've contributed to this.