Letters to the Editor
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ShawnWM
I do too. Sincerely. It's over. GOP sweep. Did you see Nancy Pelosi today, the look in her eyes when she said there'd be no joint ticket? She knows what's coming in November and that her days as SoH are numbered.
Maybe if Ms Pelosi hadn't unilaterally declared impeachment to be off the table, more of the base could get fired up by the establishment Democrats.
As someone who considered himself a Democrat for most of my life, I'm utterly disgusted by the stance of the Democratic party as a whole.
I no longer consider myself a Democrat, if I wanted to vote for Republicans I would vote for real Republicans, not Democrats trying to act like Republicans.
And, by the way, Obama turns my stomach too.. For somewhat different reasons.
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Rosenkavalier needs to CHILLAX
I like Paglia. She takes chances and entertains.
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Sick to your stomach? Try a few tabs of Tums.
As the world turns so the stomach burns. I'm sorry Obama gives you an ulcer but its better than Hillary giving you hemmeroids...huh?
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Paglia: Rush Groupie
"As a longtime listener, I was surprised and disappointed by Rush Limbaugh's call for Republicans to vote for Hillary in the Texas and Ohio primaries to keep the Democratic campaign in costly turmoil."
That's what dissapoints you about Rush Limbaugh Camille? What about all the other bullshit that comes out of his ignorant cake hole? Oh, wait, I forgot nothing gets you twiterpating more than conservative radio.
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"The arrogant and self-absorbed Clintons"
You mean the average American then. Obama and supporters included.
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Summers' comments not "casual"
Mr. Summers' comments on the innate aptitude for science, rather than being "casual", was based on research (some at MIT) that seemed to show a trend in the general population that was gender related. Not definitive, but perhaps worth investigating. Such a bad thing for an academic institution?
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Sometimes a cigar case is just a cigar case, Camille.
In this piece you echo, finally, a more compelling argument about Hillary, and her emotionalism. Whether this makes her less fit is not well argued, though. Is she more emotional than, say, Dean (famously), or Bush Sr (he of the awkward enthusiasms, weepiness, "ass", "bitch"), or Hubert Humphrey (effervescence itself), or Teddy Roosevelt? Etc.
(And which is it: Hillary is an erratic emotional wreck, or an frozen efficiency expert? Editor, please)
I see things in a new, somewhat Pagliasque light, given Hillary's false steps of late. It is hard not to see her recent moves in an historic and even psychological context, given how many millions have been spent on putting her private life into our heads (results reminder: not.one.actual.whitewater.crime.by.the.clintons).
But if true for her, than for you too, Cammy. The fierce nastiness of your thin, white-haired lady placing a sign with difficulty? Your consistent characterization of feminists as old, lost, stupid, silly, and always gratuitous, always personal: are we to ignore the significance of these complaints from a minor, middle-aged intellectual also-ran, who drools over celebrities in print, herself soon to be this white-haired and struggling woman by the road? Are you not blinkered by personal issues? Are you not the embodiment of yet another woman stereotype, if we choose to see it: the near-miss academic, 3 sheets to it, at the faculty party with her coterie, dissing the old and the young between drags, but especially the new dept head, the woman who does what she cannot do? nasty and jealous and lost? Mrs. Robinson?
Hard NOT to see it that way given this: "What has she ever achieved on her own -- aside from the fiasco of healthcare reform?" Uh, she is a senator from New York, praised by both sides of the aisle for effectiveness, whereas you...wrote a book. Splinter, meet plank.
I too lean toward Obama, but not because he has her guts or experience. Your point, stripped of the inane costuming complaints, has validity: Obama seems steadier, and, of late, many in the military think so, too. Yet I doubt that steady, for Obama, precludes emotion.
Your blindness to professional comedian Rush's role as shill defies belief. You say you were "surprised and disappointed by Rush Limbaugh's call for Republicans to vote for Hillary in the Texas and Ohio primaries to keep the Democratic campaign in costly turmoil". That makes you, and no one else in the solar system.
Then there is this:
"Nubile, exploited Monica Lewinsky will always hover around Hillary like ghostly baggage. "
Only because media-addled uber-intellectuals insist on it. Not to mention, the sentence doesn't actually mean anything. And, um, "nubile"?
Hillary deserves scrutiny, and her positions even more so. If overt behavior gives us reason to question, to speculate (such as slurred speech, in-coherency, rubbing the shoulders of a German head of state in a frankly sexual way at a summit), then by all means interpret, investigate, even. But to interpret the day-to-day nuances exclusively through a cat's filter, during the most high-stakes campaign in our history, by historically unique and qualified candidates, when our constitution, reputation and national wealth are at stake like never before, is just, well, shallow. If not Just Like a Woman.
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As an editor, I really wonder how you have all decided that this time around, this kind of "personal journalism," where writers express their convictions instead of those of the public at large, is all right.
Doesn't the context of a piece help determine how much you must lead your audience? That is, you can attempt things hitherto unknown to man in the art-jounalism precincts of e.g. Esquire without labeling the resulting pieces "faux bio" or "fiction based on fact."
Why, then, pester Paglia, who, whether you admire her opinions or despise her opinions, pretty much does nothing but issue opinions? She is, after all, a well-known, widely-admired, more widely-despised, critic, not a journalist.
I remember that my freshman comp professor thought that it was the nadir of Western civilization when the Washington Post took to labeling Art Buchwald's column "Satire and Whimsy" rather than forcing its readership into the difficult intellectual position of having to Get the Joke.
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This is a shame
Why is she speaking about Obama and Clinton as if she really knows them? She is speaking of her impressions as if they reflect objective reality. Who knows if Obama will be calm and steady in a 3am emergency; or if Clinton's "obsessive" workaholic wonkishness will render her ineffective? Paglia just makes this stuff up out of cliches and floating zeitgiest.
I guess you pay her to get people like me riled. Well, you did. Last time I read her vaporings in Salon, I decided to let my Premium subsription run out without re-uping. Good work.