Letters to the Editor
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Crazy?
Has Camille Paglia gone crazy? Does she just randomly write about whatever? Is she stoned? What's going on? Democratic debates, black soap-opera stars, the uslessness of high school, hair extensions, Rosie O'Donnell? Do these things have anything in common at all, or does she just crack open her laptop and write about whatever she's been thinking about for the last five minutes?
So difficult to pick my favorite dumb/pretentious thing that she wrote in this essay, but I guess I'll go with this:
"Upper-middle-class families should be ready to support their children's unorthodox choice for a career in carpentry, masonry or landscaping. We need to strip the elite aura from the claustrophobic "prestige" jobs in sterile corporate offices, where high salaries drug the worker clones from recognition of their own imprisonment and castration."
Ah yes, shine on, Camille, you crazy diamond. Watch out, upper-middle class people, because your children will all soon be carpenters... because that's what upper-middle class children do; they pass up high school and college for low-paying vocatoinal jobs. Not that there's anything wrong with being a carpenter, but, what the fuck is she talking about? ...Thank god we have people like Camille -- a professor at an arts college who writes books about poetry that other people have written -- to expose the meaningless of upper-middle class life, and expose the values of good honest work. Yes, Camille. And I'll be waiting for you to resign for Salon.com and quit your job at the College of the Arts. Come on, baby! Do you realize that your high salary is merely drugging you, and blocking your recognition of your own imprisonment and castration?
--OM