"The lack of scruple about constitutional guarantees that has been openly flaunted by Vice President Dick Cheney might well have nipped nascent conspiracies in the bud." The fillings in my teeth tell me this is true! Wait until the wiretaps and spying reveal the heinous plan to replace the chocolate jimmies on our children's ice cream with SUPER INTELLIGENT MUSLIM ANTS!

Islamic radicalism "does indeed threaten the very existence of Western civilization, whose peace and prosperity depend on a complex infrastructure and communications system vulnerable to catastrophic disruption by small bands of ruthless saboteurs." Maybe the same guys who wanted to saw down the Brookly Bridge! I can hear their hacksaws even now: "... squee-squeak, squee-squeak "Allah Akhbar!" squee-squeak, squee-squeak..."

Thank you so much for your broad mind.

Ms. Paglia is a little out of date about British soccer stadiums. After the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, in which 96 Liverpool supporters were killed in a crush against the fences which surrounded the pitch, most British stadiums became all-seaters, eliminating the heaving masses of bodies on terraced stands.

My father attended many matches in Glasgow when fans stood packed together. The old joke goes that a guy says to his friend, "Oh, I need to pee."

"Pee in his pocket next to you."

"Oh, I can't."

"Why not? I just peed in yours."

"with its eerie earthquake rumble and seductive, melismatic, sitar-flavored riffs..."

Didn't Cary just use the word "melisma" in his column? Is this the Word of the Month at Salon? Is it lurking on a post-it stuck above the dartboard in the editorial offices?

Or does Camille read Cary's column? Hmmm! If Camille wrote an email to Cary asking for advice, what would it say?

Inquiring minds want to know.

and already spotted instances of blatant contradiction, stupid credulity and an utter non-sequitur posing as contemplation.

Can you find all three, kids? This game is more fun than believing six impossible things before breakfast!

I understand that Joan Walsh and Camille Paglia go way back, but surely that's no reason to inflict her ludicrously self-centered bloviating on the rest of us? We come to Salon (and pay for the privilege of viewing it uninterrupted, some of us) to read quality journalism, not unexamined tripe the likes of which can be found at any middling discussion boards. I suspect the real problem is that Paglia's status as Salon Old Guard Legend means that her texts don't get edited for content. Every publication has contributors who enjoy that privilege. It's the who of it that's sad.

all these years, then we'd be more at risk. Notwithstanding that the current administration has turned most of the world against us, when it was in solidarity to an unprecedented degree in September 2001. Which, of course, has made the risk of terrorism less, you see, because terrorists don't spring from recruits among those who hate us. No, they come from flowers. And Dick Cheney has nipped them in the bud.

The preceding fairy tale was brought to you by yet another right wing apologist, this one all the worse for masquerading as--- actually, I've never known what she was masquerading as, my only question has been the same as everyone else here: What in god's name is this doing in Salon?

Psychological survival seems to demand mental erasure. The liberal mainstream media censor the raw footage of the burning and collapsing WTC towers out of contorted deference to the victims' families

MSNBC replayed their as-it-happened 9/11 coverage in its entirety today, including footage of the towers in flames, and subsequently falling.

So which is it?

1) the live footage of the burning towers wasn't "raw footage"

or

2) MSNBC isn't "mainstream"

or

3) MSNBC isn't "liberal" (OK, I guess maybe that's it)

Camille wrote:

The Byrds' masterpiece, "8 Miles High," released in 1966, crudely stereotyped them as hippie-dippie druggies smuggling pot into the Los Angeles airport. But as a non-drug taker, I indignantly protest: "8 Miles High," with its eerie earthquake rumble and seductive, melismatic, sitar-flavored riffs, is about the clash between nature and culture, seen from a height through the visionary power of art.

But now it's 41 years later and what have we discovered about those crudely stereotyped hippie-dippie druggies who smuggled pot into LAX?

La Jolla, CA: THC inhibits the formation of amyloid plaque, the primary marker for Alzheimer's disease (AD), far more effectively than approved medications, according to preclinical data to be published in the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics.

Investigators at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California reported that THC inhibits the enzyme responsible for the aggregation of amyloid plaque in a manner "considerably superior" to approved Alzheimer's drugs such as donepezil and tacrine.

See, this is what we learn about the clash between nature and culture through the visionary power of science.

The problem is, Americans are forced by the federal government to make do with donepezil and tacrine, because our government is incapable of admitting it's wrong about anything, especially anything that concerns pot.

The hippie dippies made good music, and they may have even prevented a few (thousand) cases of Alzheimer's along the way. There really needs to be a population study to determine if this is true. Alzheimer's is serious business. It's time to stop f*cking around.

DO YOU READ THESE?

I think she might. But maybe not. Or skims them. Nah she is curious. Yep, she reads these. But probably not all if she strikes a nerve and 100's reply...

Then again everything is automated.

Peter Boyle said it best,"It's ALL bullshit."

Hey Joan, I think I've got the answer to the anonymous posting question! Keep allowing them, but let Camille Paglia post only as "anonymous". Then her stuff will just appear like any other troll posting sensationalist contrarianism just to get a reaction and stir up noise, and no one will really care.

Oh, wait. I get it.

The term "Cherry picking" is obvious in the two days of testimony. A few political cartoons are right on the money these past few days.

Other than the first paragraph of this one, she was pretty much right on.

The bathroom drama of Larry Craig was fascinating because he was so weak during that interrogation. He should have known the minute he was caught that one way or the other the news would be out. Yet here's the thing--Camille is right, most straight guys above a certain age (45? 50?) don't know what "cruising" is and the ones I talked to were shocked! shocked! about the existence of bathroom sex. I mean Craig is in his 60s, yet he knows what cruising is and was not confused at all about "those kinds of things" that he was accused of.

Also right on Camille about women having sex in bathrooms. Oh sure, it looks hot on The L Word (I have to believe Camille would be on fire for Marina) but in reality, we're not even touching the bathroom floor to pick up our own toilet paper, let alone getting it on.

Sentences like this are funny and they make her crazy talk about all the attacks the Bushies prevented worth it (since we know she's full of it): "Flamboyant pop star George Michael, who eats up stranger sex like a pastry cart of eclairs, got nailed for soliciting a cop in a public john right across from his posh Los Angeles hotel"