Letters to the Editor
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Huh?
"Atheism alone is a rotting corpse. I substitute art and nature for God -- the grandeur of man and the vast mystery of the universe."
What is she talking about? This whole article is an unfocused and rambling attack on the excesses of liberalism, by... a liberal? Really? She's so crazy. Can I have my 5 minutes back?
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Addendum to Lighten Up Already
in the part of about sandra bernhard winning academy awards the first "one" should have been "won".
apologies!
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The Dark Side
If one wants to see the dark side of American politics one need look no farther than the Republican Party.
Greed pays their bills. Ignorance feeds their message.
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Dear Salon editors:
It's unconscionable that you would run Paglia's glib, empty denial of climate change while the Bali conference is ongoing, and the same day that Joseph Romm's cogent summary of the most recent IPCC appears in your pages. It's mind-blowing.
I've googled after Paglia's empty assertions have appeared here previously - all sorts of crank sites pick up the bizzare distortions as gospel, and use them to undermine serious info on the crisis, much less serious debate.
Debate it if you will, but if you allow mindless comments to blind others to the immediacy of this issue - you editors are personally escalating the runaway damage to this planet.
The BBC published today an new estimate that Arctic summer ice will likely disappear completely by 2013, instead of 2050 or 2070 as previously thought. Albedo, permafrost - feedback mechanisms are in place and need to be addressed this instant.
Camille's fixation on Al Gore at the expense of rational analysis on this essential issue casts her entire scattershot agenda as profoundly dishonest and useless - not that she needs much help there. Your tacit support of her disinformation is unforgivable.
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It's as if Europe, struggling to incorporate massive Muslim immigration, has retreated into a bubble
No, it's because they're too PC to confront the influx of Islamic Extremism and bring it to heel before it gets out of hand.
How many riots and train bombings will it take for Europeans to realize that they're letting the enemy fester and expand under their own noses?
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Hmmm...
i'm as left-leaning as one can get but i find ms. paglia's ranting to be quite amusing and thought provoking.
Really? What kind of thoughts does she provoke in you? 'Cause in me, she provokes thoughts of chattering zombie clown skulls, flying relentlessly at my head and spitting streams of hot pepsi into my eyes while the hungry ghosts of Ike Turner's backup singers stand behind me and chant "What's so bad about bone cancer? At least it ends in death."
I'm just saying...
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Global Warming
Next time you try to write an article about a million things try to be at least a little bit knowledgeable about all of them. Global warming may be ushering in an extinction of the scale that killed all the dinosaurs. I guess if you think about species as passing fad, then yeah, you could say that is that. This is not hysteria. This is an unprecedented disruption of an ecosystem that our existence as a species depends upon. Even if it isn't, don't you think the cost of acting, which is purely economical, is much less than the cost of mass global upheaval which, currently, thousands of scientists are predicting? Whether Hillary is REALLY a feminist won't really matter then.
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I know you are, but what am I?
I was reading THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS just today, and enjoyed their review of the new Henry Morton Stanley biography.
Oh well, Camille Paglia is in a fine position to say that us NYRB types are living in a "cultural void," considering that she spends her time listening to "sports radio, political talk radio and 24-hour news." (What, no MTV reality shows?)
It's remarkable that the "rotting corpse" of atheist culture can still produce literature as profoundly moving as Philip Pullman's HIS DARK MATERIALS trilogy.
CP says whatever comes into her head if it makes her sound aggressive. It's old.
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Droogoy wins the neo-atheist cliche award!
For being first with "the twelve dimensional flying spaghetti monster."
Congrats, droogoy! You can pick up your prize simply by coming back to mid-2006.
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Doesn't cut it once again
Joe Conason packs twice the thought and sense and research into one page that CP does in four. She went to a bar in New Orleans and listened to morons on talk radio -- that's the sum of her research this month.
Why not - constructive suggestion - limit her to one page and make her do a little work for her pay?
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Terribly interesting observation
The illustration of Paglia makes her look like Kansas O'Flaherty's gone-to-seed mom.
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"I substitute art and nature for God -- the grandeur of man and the vast mystery of the universe."
Camille, dear, you've stopped taking your lithium pills again, haven't you? Your lovely gold and purple prose is going maroon, hon. And you're lifting off with both your retro-rocket thrusters. Yes, it's pill time again, sweetness.
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Really?
I almost snorted Snapple out my nose when I read you announcing the death of secular humanism and the fact that atheism is a "rotting corpse."
Immediately followed, of course, by
"I substitute art and nature for God -- the grandeur of man and the vast mystery of the universe."
Guess what that makes you? A secular humanist. Also, an atheist. I know you love to pretend to assume various identities, but this is really just splitting hairs.
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Here's what I don't get
Surely Camille reads the comments, and does at least SOME research on her subjects. So why, after the firestorm of comments directing her to evidence besides Al Gore's documentary, does she still insist on using climate change as a cheap Al Gore joke? There's a lot of hard evidence out there, but she STILL insists on being glib and dismissive about the subject.
If she really wants to be taken seriously in her opinions about science, the least she can do is demonstrate that she's looked at more evidence besides An Inconvenient Truth and Rush Limbaugh. I've never seen her address any science issue with even a grain of substance.
The only reason I can think of is that she simply enjoys pissing people off. Which seems kind of shallow.
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Never worth reading
Drivel, pablum, content-less yammering. OK, atheism is bad. What's her substitute? One sentence: she admires the universe.
So, we are back to paganism. Sure, not a problem. It's just so fucking pat, and so totally absent of any thought whatsoever.
Why do people give this woman the status of cultural critic? My high-school children write better essays than this.
How to write an essay:
1) Come up with a thesis
2) Support the thesis with arguments
3) 3-4 paragraphs
4) conclude by reminding reader of arguments.
Does she grade essays of her students? What are her standards? You get an A if your essay is idiotic, pointless, and has no valid or sensible arguments?