Letters to the Editor
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Six. Hundred. Letters.
UUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!
People, PLEASE!! I know I enjoy a good on-line slog but this is beyond absurd. You are all posting into an echo chamber, while Joan Walsh counts her money with one hand on the ten-key and one between her legs.
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Hee Hee
re: At the risk of damning with faint praise, I'll say this for the pro-CP camp: every single last one of them is at least as good a writer as she is.
Hee!
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CP is simply not a progressive liberal (yay no post editing!)
CP is not a progressive liberal (despite her protestations), but that isn't a fault. I would welcome a thoughtful conservative at Salon. A thoughtful moderate. I like thoughtful writing. I may not agree with a thoughtful conservative voice but I would listen to it, consider it, and maybe even change my mind on occasion.
I'll listen to a well-researched, well-supported opinion from anyone. A Holocaust denier. A member of the KKK. And I'd rather not listen to a sloppy, poorly presented opinion even if I agree with it.
Demanding that Salon contributors all support a progressive liberal agenda strikes me as wrong. The truth does not rest with a specific agenda. Journalism is about the truth first and foremost, wherever it may lie.
That said, demanding that Salon contributors all be intellectually honest and coherent is quite reasonable.
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Hey Jim
Jim Said: "Camille's main reason to live was Sexual Personae (God, what a wonderful book for an English major to discover in the 1990s!), but she apparently can still drive over five hundred of you stupid fucking idiots into a pathetic whining frenzy, so she's as relevant as ever."
I agree that ‘Sexual Personae’ was a great book to find in the 90’s. I ate that shit up! But I’m one of those folks that kept reading and at least trying to learn after they left school. One of the things I learned in my ‘continuing education’ is that a lot of what Camille wrote about turned out to be complete hooey. However, with that said I also have to admit that, some of it was fairly important and interesting. Nevertheless, those of us who have followed her career and writing closely over the past few years have discovered that she shot her wad long ago. Paglia is running on fumes and bad ones at that. Her prose has declined and her thinking is erratic, trite and muddled. And worst yet, she has become like a nested loop, regurgitation the same tired themes over and over again in a way that borders on pathological (I’m being kind).
But you're wrong in thinking that if someone pisses enough people off they must be doing something provocative or 'relevant'. This is a fallacy. It’s like saying that if I walk around kicking everyone in the crotch that it’s somehow art when it’s really just pointless and painful provocation; just like Camille’s pop ramblings over the past eight years!
And for those for those of you getting into a huff and trying to tell everyone to shut up and move on—stop reading the damn posts! Nobody is forcing you to read these letters so go walk your dog or read something else and let people express themselves!
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The Pillory Isn't for Paglia
Paglia is someone I'd never followed, so I read her article only because of the bodice-ripping tone of the intro.
After reading a bunch of these, and posting one earlier (no idea where)...I have had a small lightbulb moment.
I think I'm more disgusted with the anonymous editor who wrote the breathless intro, touting a "level gaze".
(To me, Paglia's gaze resembles the skittering true-contact-averse look of the anxious and eternally self-absorbed...but the point's been made.)
I'd like to level my level gaze on editors who pitch and spin articles in such a cheeky way. The archness, the coy...igggh. Something. Kind of makes my skin crawl.
Sorry not to be more articulate but the voice in that twisty little intro is like a watery version of the "Good Housekeeping", "Ladies Home Journal" editorial tone--insistently overenthusiastic about underachievement--that became so repugnant to me after a few decades awake.
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Fascinating!
Camille, you are back and you are your old raging self. Kudos. Just one complaint: drearily long-winded. Thanks for filling us in about how absolutely in love you are, with the concept of your 'self' you have constructed. It's wonderful! And twice the blah-blah-blah of previous versions! Oh, I still love you! Your megalomania is just sparkling with gems of true wit and insight. I just can't get out of my mind how you gushed in the old days about how hot it would be if the Oil Barons in the Bush Dynasty had a chance to run America. Then you fell silent for a very long time. Welcome back!
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Dr. Paglia
Readers. Readers. Take your medicine.
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I'm with Spurt and Emily:
Camille makes me think. Her comment about Edwards's foofy hair got me to look back at his photos, and there was the hair! I didn't look at the other thing - the health care thing - that Emily mentioned, because Camille didn't say anything about it. Just the hair.
I don't have health care because I can't afford it. I'm sure Edwards has got a position on that, but the hair thing is brilliant. Thanks Camille.
And she also got me to look again at Cheney's virility, and Bush's package. They explain a lot about the last 6 years, and as usual with Camille, I appreciate the hunk-alert. Sassy!
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SPURT would like to comment further...
My praise wasn't faint enough I guess - I'm over Paglia -- she's lame, she's an ass, and she's snapping her chops together and making a huge racket about nothing, nothing at all.
It's sad, and I'm glad I've never spent any money on Salon, I just happened to wander to this site via a link from another blog. I used to love CP -- I read Sexual Personae when it first came out and found it fascinating and validating of my understanding of Western Civ. After reading a few of her other works, and columns, I picked up on the endless reiteration of her concepts, the self-promotion, the loathing of liberal and progresive values, the social Darwinist attitudes, the hissing insults, and the constant raving about 'my 60s genearation'. Her sudden notoriety turned into a freak show and she's devoted to nothing but self promotion now.
.....and she DID fall strangely silent after she praised and romanticized the 'oil baron' dynasty of the Bush Crime Family, and they turned around and stole the elections and set about dismantling the constitution and ripping the fabric of America apart. She became very very quiet for a while. Camille just didn't seem to have much to say.
I only said 'I still love you' out of a kind of comic, morose irony, as a farewell to someone I once admired. Paglia is a caricature of her 'old self.' She's addicted to her distorted concept of who she is, addicted to the attentions of others -- a narcissist refusing to take on the wisdom of her approaching old age. There, does that sort of clarify where I was coming from?