Letters to the Editor
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The Left's Greatest Mistake
The Left's greatest mistake -- and I say this as someone who has made this mistake many times -- is to assume that, if we only just explain things, the truths we hold self-evident will become so for everyone.
As I wrote last time, in a response entitled "How to Read Camille Paglia", it's not what she says that's useful, it's how she makes you refine your own arguments.
Because what it is possible to do with a Paglia article is to use her arguments to sharpen your game, and not against those on the Right. Frankly, we'll never convince them, and yet we spend all our energies training for an argument we can't win.
Where Paglia helps out is honing your rhetorical moves against the very people that you actually need to convince -- the people just oh so very slightly to the right of you -- you know who they are:
The people you know who believe in global warming but just bought a speedboat for their vacation home situated on former wetlands.
The people you know who believe that globalization needs checks and balances, but just maxed out their credit cards to buy a zillion-inch plasma made in China.
The people you know who say "yeah, I see your point!" when you talk about how congestion charges are making London livable, and then complain to you about gas being $3.50 a gallon.
The people you know in your book group who say "post-structuralism sucks!" and yet their argument against it is that, well, aren't all opinions valid? (Hello Camille! I got it! I giggled! Point to you.)
By bringing on their best game, Paglia helps you shape yours. Because those people are actually the only people you have a chance of convincing, and once convinced, we might actually have the numbers to do something useful around here.
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Nice sentiments, Camille!
I wonder if, when the air is finally let out of this gasbag who calls herself an intellectual, and she is put to her final rest in the dustbin of history, someone will also ghoulishly savor the moment the way she does with the recently deceased Baudrillard. But then I think at that point, no one will really care. Someday, somewhere, there will be a forgotten, weed-covered tombstone whose epitaph will read, "In my 700-page book, Sexual Personae..."
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Global Warming
You state there isn't a consensus about global warming and I suppose in a limited sense that is true. We don't fully know what the consequences will be or how much we contribute to global warming. Maybe we will make the situation worse or just accelerate the inevitable. No one is or can be certain.
However, there is a robust consensus that the earth is warming and that there will be consequences. As you point out in your response, climate change can unleash tremendous forces and has sculpted the world around us. Shouldn't we be taking global warming seriously? I guess I'm curious why you think skepticism is a reasonable position.
I'm rather skeptical, if not outright cynical, about a lot of people's motives in getting behind global warming as an issue. I fear global warming will be used as a justification for a lot of policies and programs that turn out to be mistakes. However, I see little reason to be skeptical about global warming itself.
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Satire
I read this before my morning coffee and was dopey enough to think it was serious until the passage below (in one of her replies) caught my attention and I realised it was a clever reference to her own satire, “…who distorted language with self-important opacity and who inflated small ideas into giant, groaning bladder-bags”.
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Hot Air
What are Camille Paglia's science credentials?
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You clearly haven't a clue
The Bush economy is running better than the Clinton economy and the Bush war acheived its objective of capturing Saddam and bringing him to justice with 20 times fewer American casulties than the Democrat Party's Vietnam war yet you claim President Bush is an incompetant failure.
You are clearly nothing more than a shill for the Democrat party.
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The brilliance of Camille Paglia
I for one am quite amused, although not overly surprised, about the hatred espoused toward Camille by the radical Leftists on Slate. Hers is thought with a logical basis, and she says what she believes via her own beliefs (which are generally spot on)and knowledge. Hers is not the mindless knee-jerk reaction so in favor of the Bush hatred crowd.
Read through the comments and look for her detractors to try and defuse her via their own intellect; generally it doesn't occur.
The "Religion" of Global warming is no different than any other, save the fact that in this case their God is certainly a pagan one. Illusions of grandeur from tiny people with tiny brains. How fitting their prophet is Al Gore.
Viva Camille!
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Giving a forum to a quotable ignoramus
I am an authority on one topic. I have a great many opinions about a great many other topics, about which I'd be more than happy to enlighten your readers, and perhaps some would enjoy reading them. And perhaps not. Either way, I would trust that the decision-making process on your editorial board about whether to run these opinions would have far more to do with my credibility than whether I could inflate my prose to blowhard levels.
Camille Paglia may be an authority on something--frankly, it's hard to tell. Real authorities on subjects I'm familiar with tend to quote other authorities far more often than they quote themselves--it's desperate tenure-track wannabes who inflate their own discoveries in hopes that somebody important will notice them. When real authorities make new discoveries, as Isaac Newton noted, they're seeing so far because they stand on the shoulders of giants. Ms. Paglia is far too busy shouting "Look at me! Look at me! I wrote a 700-page book! I know more than everybody!" to notice even the biggest giants.
Many times over the years I've thought that her complex prose masks an underlying ignorance of her subjects. This time, because I do have expertise in one major corner of this subject, I know it. In my narrow field of expertise, there is a genuine and wide consensus about global warming. In her usual self-aggrandizing way, Ms. Paglia exposes her ignorance and lack of authority for all to see. She's jumped the shark.
It's sad and frustrating that with Salon's limited budget they provide a forum for such an eminently quotable ignoramus.