Letters to the Editor
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What the Devil Was That?
Good heavens, what the devil was that all about?
I don't like Paglia very much these days--I used to love her back in the day, but think she jumped the shark quite a while back--but perhaps you should give her a weekly column instead of this monthly business; maybe then she'll be able to focus on a topic. Or two topics. Or three. But heavens above: Hillary Clinton, Ann Coulter, John Edwards, Barack Obama, Mary Shelley, Diane Feinstein, Newt Gingrich, Cheney and Bush . . . it was enough to make you dizzy even before the bizarre sidetrip to the banks of the Delaware to pick up free Cocoa beans. And I'm not even going to get into the two plugs she worked in for her own books.
I would point out the irony of her accusing another writer's work of being "shoddily constructed," but since that writer was Coulter, and since Paglia was correct, I will restrain myself. Still, it's tempting.
Camille, honey: focus. Switch to decaf. Choose a topic. Something.
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What's with the head shot.
What's up with the front page charicature of Paglia on Salon? I can't remember ever seeing the writer of a column having his or her pic up front and center as if they are the important point of the piece. Usually it's the subject of the column or something that illustrates the content of the piece. Is this what Salon had to agree to in order to get Paglia back? If so, I don't think it's worth it to this reader. Will we be seeing her characature every month now? I hope Salon has a little more imagination that that.
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Crapulent
"Democrats, pampered and spoiled by so many decades of the mainstream media trumpeting the liberal agenda"
Oh please. Journalists once saw it as their professional duty to be skeptical of power. Skepticism has now been redefined as liberal bias, and the MSM has become lickspittle rightwing propagandists (perhaps journalistic pull-no-punches skepticism will return when a Democrat gets elected president?)
And since when do liberals have Time and Newsweek? Time did the fawning cover feature story about Ann Coulter, and Newsweek just hired uber-neocon William Kristol as a columnist.
And to think I was going to post a happy, shiny letter over in Glenn Greenwald's comments section about the importance of supporting progressive media by buying a Salon subscription, and then I fell through Walter Shapiro into this.
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A disgrace to Paglia, and Salon
It seems like Paglia's breathless admiration of Ann Coulter has led her to one of Coulter's favorite tactics: just making stuff up. Where does she get the number that 98% of humanities professors identify as liberals? Even David Horowitz's Student for Academic Freedom claims that number to be 81%. It's still an overwhelming number, but 4 out of 5 is pretty different than 49 out of 50. As for the laundry list of supposedly "liberal" publications, even a cursory review of FAIR.org would call much of that into question. Or consider the New York Times, which self-identifies as liberal. Should that really be surprising coming from a town where 75% of voters went for Kerry in 2004? But it doesn't stop there. Paglia is casually dismissive of the Plame affair, poo-poohs liberals who "hate Bush", offers a paean to the feminist virtues of capitalism, and is effusive about a book arguing that a woman couldn't possibly have written a good book when her husband is also a good writer. There are plenty of places in the "liberal media" where Paglia's anti-liberal sentiments can be heard. Why should Salon be one of them?
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Why Do People Have a Problem With that Line?
"Democrats have ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, the New York Times, Newsweek, Time and 98 percent of American humanities professors to do their bidding."
Uh, this is mostly true. Someone on here asked "what Democrats is she talking about?". Uh, probably the Democrats who VOTED FOR THE IRAQ WAR and continue(d) to support it until it became politically inexpedient.
It's time for so-called "leftists" to face the truth: The Democratic Party does not care what you want as long as you continue to choose them as the "lesser of two evils". The Democratic Party leadership is fat, rich and happy to collude with the War Profiteers of the Republican Party. Who are the anti-war renegades of the Democratic Party? John Murtha? There are some, but they are marginalized by the party itself.
John Kerry is a billionaire who voted for the Iraq War.
Hillary is a political animal whose entire life has been devoted to achieving power in the US government. And she voted for the Iraq war.
Don't blame the media for not being "left enough" to be considered Democrat-friendly. Blame the Democratic party for not being left-friendly.
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Cheney as Chillingsworth / Bush Dimmesdale???
So who plays Hester? It can only be...Coulter!!!! Even from Paglia this is bizarre. Too much late night Drudge, no doubt.
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Why the headshot?
"Usually it's the subject of the column or something that illustrates the content of the piece."
Why are you confused again exactly? Cammy writes about herself. That *is* the content of the piece. Cammy ordered chicken for dinner, Cammy watched some Fox News, Cammy listened to the radio, Cammy predicted Britney would shave her head, Cammy got some beans... "Camille on Camille" is the entire point.
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No way? You wrote a book?
Dear Camille Paglia,
I was just wondering if you could work in the title of your book into your next column, except this time under flimsier circumstances. Oh, wait, that's not possible.
I agree with many of the things you say and the conclusions you come to, but you're self-aggrandizing, irritating and smug. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who thinks this.
Just thought someone should let you know.
Love,
Jeremy
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I dig Camille.
The odd early reader feedback does not even make any sense. It's dead easy to deconstruct any given writer with the same flip scorn. Mark Twain? Yeah, just get some orphans and some phonetic southern drawl and hit Print. Right?
If you can't accept valid crit which runs counterintuitive to left wing conventional wisdom, such as "running away from Fox will be seen as weak" then you have achieved a terrible cognitive stunt.
Indeed, why can't Salon be fed exclusively by hack prog-blog partisan adolescents? What indignity, to be offered these elderly think-pieces!
When I see that wry illustrated portrait, I know it's going to be a solid read, and I always want a few more paragraphs at the end. Continue gracing Salon with your rare razor-sharp sass, Camille Paglia.