Letters to the Editor
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Yawn..
Yet another sprawling useless column by Camille, completely devoid of value. I find it amusing that Camille finds global climate change a "baseless panic." Actually Camille I realize science is hard and you clearly have no idea of what scientific method is.Simply claiming global climate change isn't real isn't enough. You need to explain the data better than the current model.
BTW which part of the CCSM3 model do you find baseless?
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Italian soccer and ending it rough (sassy!)
Calcio news is Italian news of late. Unlike English thugs of years gone by, the so-called ultras and their tortured relationship with the clubs (commerce) and the state (government) are indicative of some of the challenges facing contemporary Italy.
Hell, Paglia could even have made hay of recent events for some her preferred themes: the poverty of modern life, social channels for male violence, the social crisis of the absence of the strong leader (for the fascist supporters of Lazio), and so on and so forth.
It wouldn't have been any sillier than her proposal that male hormones in urine were the cause of riots in terraced stadia.
As for the usual huffing about how man is not more powerful than nature, epitomized by the eruption of an Italian volcano: never mind a slow choking in a warmed world, try detonating the existing stocks of nuclear weapons and see what's left. Humans can wreak all manner of havoc upon nature.
Or, to put it into the cod-literary and pop culture idioms that Paglia prefers, from Shelley and then Turner:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away
and:
Y’ know, every now and then
I think you might like to hear something from us
Nice and easy
But there’s just one thing
You see we never ever do nothing
Nice and easy
We always do it nice and rough
So we’re gonna take the beginning of this song
And do it easy
Then we’re gonna do the finish rough
We can end it all easy, or we can end it all rough - humanity has the potential to do both; it's just a question of how much of the rest of life we take with us. Wibbling on about geological events is to miss the point.
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Dogma days
Without spirituality in some form, people will anesthetize themselves with drink or drugs -- including the tranquilizers that seem near universal among the status-addled professional class of the Northeastern elite.
Why? this makes no sense.
This implies that those with a spiritual center are not on drugs or materialistic - I am sure any reader can think of examples where this is not the case.
There is no void in the secular, and values can be transmitted to our young folks without the drama of God. I think the selfishness we see today is more a result of not teaching any ethics rather than an absence of spirituality.
Most of us however are sheep, who will take no responsibility for our emotional health - we want drive through answers to the complexities of this existence. Unfortunately for all of us there are religions ready to oblige.
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Dolorous haze
"Secularism evidently cannot stimulate creativity as profoundly as religion does -- whether in the artist's soaring affirmation or angry resistance."
That must be it! -- the sad, deflated state of the world explained in a sentence.
Camille increasingly sounds like the person at the party you just can't get away from, 2 or 3 gin-and-tonics past drunk, announcing as if for the first time little overpracticed chestnuts of cultural wisdom.
"Secularism...religion...profoundly...soaring...angry..."
Do her a favor, let her go.
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Tripe
Another month, another shipment of stale and shallow observations from Paglia. There's nothing here she hasn't said a thousand times before and won't say a thousand times again. None of it was worth saying once, much less repeatedly.
I love the line about listening to real American voices all day long. That single line encapsulates why Paglia is so hopelessly out of touch -- she spends her life listening to right-wing charlatans like Limbaugh and Coulter and thinks that she's hearing the voice of "real Americans."
Mitt Romney belongs to a religion that has historically subjugated women and has only officially recognized African Americans as human beings since the 1960s, but none of that matters since he was so crisp delivering his speech last week. Paglia would listen to a speech by Idi Amin and come away thinking only, "He sure is a snappy dresser!"
She detests sanctimony in any form -- unless it's coming from a right-wing talking head, in which case she regards it as sheer brilliance and sucks it up like a Hoover.
Oh, yeah -- I'm sure LOTS of Salon readers have been clamoring for Paglia's thoughts on some stupid internet rumor about Hillary Clinton's sex life. I'll bet both of them also wanted to know what Paglia thinks about this crazy new "rock-n-roll" music the kids have been listening to.
Paglia's obtuseness is as reliable as the rising of the sun. How much longer is Joan Walsh going to allow her to continue to embarrass Salon?
Eric Meyer
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What does she mean ... ?
Ms. Paglia wrote: "I enjoyed the reappearance of Gennifer Flowers on the national scene last week, when she made news by saying she'd consider voting for Hillary as a woman."
Does that mean Gennifer Flowers considered voting for Hillary as a man?
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Hmm.
It still isn't clear to me why Paglia continues to characterize Al Gore as an alarmist and "chief propagandist" on the issue of global warming. There is never a clear argument in any of her columns as to why she finds him so distasteful, nor does she ever offer any specifics as to why she disagrees so vehemently.
May I suggest Paglia have a look at the Salon story (that was also published today) on the IPCC report? http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/12/12/ipcc_report/
I'm more inclined to believe the professional opinions of 2,000 scientists who have actually studied the global warming phenomenon than that of a social critic (and self-professed "egomaniac"). Call me crazy.