Letters to the Editor
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Is it sheer ego?
Why don't the editors at Salon care about what we think of Paglia's return? It's not unlike the Bush administration & the Iraq war: at least 2/3rds of your audience are not in favor of her, yet you keep pushing her down our throats.
I second the letter which asks why there has been no public response to our Letters to the Editor about her.
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A cause they've long forgotten
Ms. Paglia: yes, please do leave off the purple prose and awkward metaphors (buttercream frosting? Wha--?) Let's get back to the streamlined, pointed, lucid prose you, and a few others, are capable of. At your best, only Florence King is better--which is saying a lot. P.S. the Donald is cringe-making every time he opens his bee-stung mouth and every time he shows his puffy, pompous, self-satisfied mug. He and Rosie deserve each other, but nobody deserves to be attacked on looks. There is so much to Rosie to despise, but Trump (Trump!) calling her fat and ugly could bring anybody to her defense.
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Phillip Michael
Meet: cognitive dissonance.
It must hurt when your principles follow your politics......
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I'm sorry to add to the web traffic
But I must.
She sees a funeral for a soldier coming home from Iraq --
"The melody from a classic 1960s song, Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair," floated piercingly into my mind."
And like a lamprey, she fastens on to the most insipid song they ever did.
Then she follows up with a bunch of thoroughly conventional "insights" into the debates, in which she believes the Republicans have won, of course, for the same reason she believes that Donald Trump "won" -- they're sexist males! Ooh, how contrarian!
Then she dumps on Rosie, I guess because she still regards herself as the bull goose loonie of prominent lesbians. And then she says that she and her partner are whiling away the hours watching recorded soap operas.
How tiresome. How on earth did this babbling old lady get a column in Salon?
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more correct than your realize
The letters are more informative and inciteful ...
I'm guessing you meant to say "insightful," but you're probably more correct than you realize.
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Pure Drivel....
For the love of God, editors of Salon, stop publishing this lazy, self-indulgent tripe. Ms. Paglia has long ago descended into self-parody and this latest epistle is no exception. Her self-congratulatory and tortured prose reads like nails on a chalkboard and has become so predictable that it almost writes itself.
Start out by stating the obvious as if it is an original or daring thought: the war in Iraq has been a disaster from the get go, "Once again, colossally inept political decisions, based on abstract principles of noble-sounding but naive idealism, have turned dutiful American soldiers into cannon fodder." I'll at least give her credit for being against the war from the beginning, unlike so many other "liberal" pundits, but it wouldn't be a Paglia essay without using it as an opportunity to illustrate how much better she is than those "liberals"
"I find baffling and off-putting the obsession of so many of my fellow Democrats with political strategist Karl Rove (a peripheral blob and dirty trickster), insofar as it takes focus off the real center of gravity in this administration -- Dick Cheney, who has cynically used the vice presidency to govern by proxy."
Yeah I totally agree, because no one on the left has been complaining about Dick Cheney like you have Camille. Then we move on from serious issues to total bullshit, where Camille gives some vacuous cultural trash her stamp of approval, in this case soaps, perhaps Madonna again next week.
All you need to know can be summed up by her vapid analysis of the Republican and Democratic debates, she spends the first part talking about the bloody and senseless catastrophe created by 6 years of unfettered Republican rule, and then goes on to assure us that the Republicans, "were light-years ahead of their Democratic counterparts in terms of vigorous assertion and command of the rhetoric of national security and proactive geopolitic" Its only rhetoric that matters to her anyway, I would expect nothing else from an academic whose area of expertise is "symbolism." She cheers Kuncinich but ultimately embraces the style of belligerent assholes. The same dynamic can be seen in her thrilled reaction to Donald Trump calling Rosie fat and stupid, or her repeated praise for Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. (The priceless moment from last month came when she complained that Rush doesn't take liberals seriously, and thus his credibility is damaged.)
Finally, has anyone else noticed that the only people who write in to praise her writing are the same "I was a democrat until 9/11" morons who continue to claim that the war was a noble cause, and we were right to intervene based on the grounds that Saddam might have WMDs in thirty years time. The ONLY people who feel her, are the ones who complain that if only the media had reported the "good news", Iraq would have been a smashing success, and that no one could have predicted the Shia Sunni civil war, because we all know it's CNN's fault that we're losing. You're know by the company you keep. The surge is working!! Camille Paglia is an important intellectual!
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Superficial
Considering the fact that Salon has such great substantive progressive bloggers like Glenn Greenwald, why does it feel the need to include this Maureen Dowd clone in the mix? Look at what she says about the Democratic and Republican debates-- "The Republicans looked like they knew more about proactive geopolitics", "Obama took on the relaxed look of a dignified world leader". NOTHING about policies. I expect this superficiality and lack of substance from the Mainstream Media, but not when I turn to Salon. Paglia is an embarassment and should be kicked off Salon ASAP.
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How to read Paglia.
Look for a name you want to read about. Scan three words later. If the next phrase is based in reality, continue reading. If not, continue on to the next name.
Repeat until page 4.
Write letter.
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give me a break
For years Paglia has berated liberals for not understanding the role of religion in America, and now she acts surprised that evangelical protestants view mormonism as a cult. Talk about lazy and sheltered.
Conservative Protestants (and this includes pentacostals, evangelicals, dominionists, pre-trib, post-trib) have always and will always view Mormonism as a cult. In fact, they view every other religion as a cult (i.e.satanic), including any forms of Christianity that veers even slightly from the Word of God (thus, Catholicism is not true Christianity because they worship Mary and the Pope). This is not news. Just walk into any Christian bookstore and go to the Cults section (and in that section will be a few anti-Romney books in the coming months, I'm sure).
Yes, it is tunnel-vision, but this is the vision that dominates their every political move.