I couldn't get through another Paglia rant. She is such a self-absorbed asshole...I can't take it anymore.

Can someone tell me though..did she manage to mention "Sexual Personae" again? She mentions it in every column, I wondered if she somehow snuck it in there again.

Camille, mark this well: Sarah Palin is done. You can stick a fork in her. Assuming Obama wins, her career as a politician is over. She will be defeated in her attempt to keep her seat in Alaska. And if, by some disaster, she does win, we can all feel sorry for Alaskans. If she runs for President in 2012, her competition will wipe the floor with her.

And she is not some new feminish icon. She's a proto-fascist bullshitter, and not even a very good one. I'm really shocked that you, of all people, could not detect a bs'er like her. After all, being a champion bs'er yourself, surely you can see that.

Phooey. Camille, give it up. You're pretty much done yourself.

I'm happy to admit that sometimes, every 4 or 5 months, Camille makes me laugh out loud. In August it was her exact description of Madonna on the cover of her latest CD with "that ostentatiously exposed crotch and hard-bitten face lolling its tongue like a dissolute old streetwalker..."

But her supine tone in these responses to her predictably contrarian admirers is dispiriting and dull. Yes, Palin has moxie and gumption and piss and vinegar – and appalling politics and swaggering ignorance. This topic was exhausted weeks ago.

Camille, give the shtick a rest.

Professor Paglia, don't you have some papers to grade instead of writing this ode to Sarah Palin? Palin is of one of the most vile people to appear on the national political scene since Richard Nixon. Yes, she's "smart" and "vital"; so was Tricky Dick. I'll look forward to your next column praising Henry Kissinger as a model feminist statesman.

your vicious un-warranted ad hominem attack against me and my ancestors did not make your argument very clear...

My point stands...Camielle's fawing over Palin is purely a tribal thing...

People write letters to Camille Paglia, and they aren't letters about pop stars, movie stars, or Camille Paglia?

Wow...

Thank you for your observation regarding Joe Biden's conspiratorial smiles to moderator Gwen Ifill during the VP debate which you found "outrageous." I scour American and international publications daily and no one in the media has broached this troubling subject.

At first I thought Biden was brazenly sharing an inside joke with a member of the audience as Sarah Palin was speaking. However, I watched the debate again during a replay and, like you, came to the shocking conclusion that the grinning Biden was actually making eye contact with the moderator. I wouldn't have been at all surprised if he had winked at her.

In fact, Obama used the same camera-grabbing, intimidation tactic during his first debate with McCain. Obama was even more obvious. Looking toward the audience with an ear-to-ear grin, he appeared as if he could barely stop himself from breaking into a guffaw, and nodded his head slightly as if sending a signal.

Why isn't our MSM calling attention to this juvenile behavior? Biden and Obama need to take a course in debate etiquette. Can you imagine the fallout if Palin or McCain had done something similar?

Oh Camille! You can't get enough of Sarah Palin, admit it! I feel the same. She is certainly smart, charming and gorgeous. She has moxie, a big heart and extraordinary energy - supernatural, yes, a frontierswoman indeed. Your descriptions of her have been exhilarating and your analysis of the leftwing shutdown of all other opinions is very accurate. Pity it is going to take much more to open their firmly sealed minds, as most of the other posts to your column confirm. But how, after all that, after all that you have ever written, could you vote for the vapid, anti-American reflexive Obama (and the vicious Michelle)? Oh, Camille.

I usually like Camille Paglia, but this was just bizarre. Invoking feisty Italian fruitpickers and frontier women to prop up the case for Sarah Palin as a feminist symbol is terribly superficial. I'm a Northeastern Democrat, whether I like it or not; I don't have children and my sewing skills are atrocious. I have absolutely nothing against, say, a mother of five who is descended from feisty frontier people being in a position of political power. But how can you spill all this ink on Sarah Palin and cast her in the most superficial terms as a feisty frontier woman without mentioning her retrograde Christian values and insularity in both her politics and her biography? I, too, was impressed by the Republican's VP pick as a strategy. I see nothing to impress me otherwise. If detestable liberals and media harpies or whatever are horrified and can't shut up about Palin, it doesn't mean that she should be conflated with symbolic ideals that might have more universal resonance. She is not a great example of warrior feminism. Her proclivity for hunting does not bring the goddess Athena to my mind. And how can you mention Palin's verbal circumlocutions without admitting that they are both dodges and private asides to her supporters? Her meaning in the debates was clear enough. I did not have trouble following, and do not worry about her ability to express herself.

I was watching the VP debates with a bunch of young democrats (can't avoid them). At the end one person wondered if Palin knew she was going to have a child with Down's Syndrome and how she could have had the child. I (gently) ripped at this person. I think Sarah Palin's family should be outside criticism and remarks such as this are petty and even immoral. And I agree that the media attacks on Palin have been outsized and do not serve the cause. But they are outsized because in some sense she is running for President, and one cannot help but have an opinion when someone asserts herself into that position.

If Palin is the only symbol of old-fashioned feminism that America has, then we are just lazy, and need to get off our asses and go to the history books. Sarah Palin, for me, does not do.