Letters to the Editor
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There are Fools,
There are Damned Fools,
and then
There is Camille Paglia.
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ha!
I was reading through Yossarian's past letters, and a critique he made in October 2006 about Miz Paglia resonated melodiously. I reprint it here, mostly for my own enjoyment:
"Paglia is a pseudo-intellectual dittohead of below-average intelligence and far-below-average integrity who has become famous not for her would-be intellectual acumen but rather for her relentless self-promotion. She belongs in that rare class of persons such as Hitchens, Dr. Joyce Brothers and Geraldo Rivera -- people who will do or say anything, no matter how cynical or crass or dishonest, to call attention to themselves. Screw you, Paglia -- you never fooled me, you right-wing toady."
Well put, sir! Right-wing toady indeed!
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Why Did She Respond to This Moronic Letter?
We already had a Clinton for eight years -- do we need another one for another eight years?
I suppose the voters will tell us if we do or don't.
Same thing with George and George. We didn't like the father enough to give him a second term, so how did we (America, not me personally) get stuck with the son?
Um...we elected him? Or, if you think we didn't, then you're question makes no sense.
My guess is she picked it so she could blather on in that shallow manner that pretends to analyze while simply tossing out the cliches. There's not an original thought here. Come on, Camille, if you went this far, why not belabor the Kennedy "curse" with a freshman Humanities gloss on The Golden Bough? Would you accept this sort of work from your students?
Yes, I said "blather." I, who have praised her return. Yes, I said "cliches" and "shallow." I, who was so excited about her reappearance here, and defensive of her earlier contributions. I figured she was warming up, maybe baiting her critics. I thought she was kicking back and having some fun. But she's kicked back so far, that she's landed on her ass.
Depressing. I still revere her early work, and some of her earlier social commentary. If she produces an art history essay (you know, something that involved scholarship, and demonstrated serious consideration of the subject), I might check it out. But as of now I will read her column no more.
It's a waste of my time. Apparently she wants to waste hers.
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What planet are most of your readers on, exactly? A reader survey may be expiditious
Camile Paglia's views are extremely close to European orthodoxy. Read from London, such statements as 'Bush's legacy will be blood' and 'liberal hatred of Bush has verged on the irrational' are sound judgements
It seems that many Salon readers undergo some sort of cathartic psycological post traumatic stress experience when they read her
Joan: Keep Camile! You are doing a service to the ossified 'liberal' left which, as we swept away dogma in England to produce the New Labour government under Tony Blair which has renewed a generation, so too Barack Obama will do the same in the US.
The best comment?
That Hilary Clintn may be good for nothing but a cabinet post in the Obama presidency!
Join my group LondonersforObama at BarrackObama.com
Ben Morgan aka Pilot of the Future
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You're missing out by not letting readers vote for the best takedown of Paglia
Damn it Salon, you publish an ignorant dipshit know-it-all bullshit artist like Paglia (now with global warming enzymes!). This just creates a competition of the best takedown letter, and then you don't let us vote on that letter.
Sheesh.
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So she doesn't like Global Warming because... it's well-accepted?
I am a graduate student in geology and geophysics at the University of Hawai'i. I have some education about the scientific global warming research that has been done, and in watching Al Gore's movie I found it to be an effective and accurate Climatology 101 lecture.
Paglia goes on and on about having an appreciation for geologic processes, but after re-reading her paragraphs the only criticism I think she's making is that she dislikes "dogma", so if all the scientists tell her one thing then she wants to believe the opposite. That's terrifically logical.
In February, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report stating that, with ~90% confidence, human carbon dioxide emissions are responsible for the observed global warming of the past century and beyond, and that human influence since AD 1750 has pushed CO2 levels higher than they've been in the last 650,000 years. This is not your typical 20,000-year ice age cycle, and it is the consensus view of the world's climate scientists. Al Gore was right to report such findings to Congress.
It is as if Camille Paglia likes to have opinions for the sake of having opinions, and making any kind of factual inquiry before forming an opinion is too much to ask. Her digression about a mercury-contaminated factory at the end seems like a total non sequitur, but maybe she's alleviating a guilty conscience. She seems like the kind of administrator who would be skeptical about the dangers of mercury fumes so she would do nothing to fix the problem. If the kids hadn't been poisoned by mercury, they would have been poisoned by something else. Too bad for the kids, and for New York City too.
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Enough Paglia
I will not belabor the valid criticisms of Camile Paglia already printed in other letters. But Salon should recognize that people who choose to pay 35 dollars a year (which, for some of us, is a significant sum)for a subscription to Salon do not do so that they might read overblown and probably disingenuous provocation. If one wishes to divine Camile Paglia's opinion on any topic, one needs only apply the following paradigm:
1) The opinion should be shallow and superficial.
2) The opinion should be maximally provocative.
3) The opinion should be pretentious and intellectually self-indulgent, designed with the sole intention making Paglia look amazingly clever and insightful. She is, however, neither.
4) Failing all else, the opinion should attract the maximum possible attention to Paglia within the given context.
Perhaps I'm just not smart enough to understand Paglia. Perhaps I'm just a victim of some patriarchal mindset. But, having attempted for many years now to find worth and substance in Paglia's writing, I have been able to discern nothing in her work but bourgeois pontification and shameless self-promotion.
Salon can, has been, and should be better than this.