Jebus Camille, give it a rest

When I first saw this article, I laughed in derision.

Now I laugh with confidence.

That's an inexpert writer, right there, seeing a common soul in a person whose levels of discourse and rhetoric are only rivaled by President Bush. How disappointing, Ms Paglia. A person who doesn't read, no matter how musical the voice or "vital" the presentation, really is less informed.

she did work in a plug, and a link, to her book on poetry, "Break wind, Blow me, Burn this book." So I think if you're playing a drinking game at home that's worth a chug.

Palin's vitality & "smarts" are not the issue. Plenty of smart people would not be able to speak effectively & fluently about many of the issues facing a Vice Presidential candidate.

The problem is that Sarah Palin IS running for Vice President, which is to say she is basically running for president, & she has not been able to demonstrate either a deep knowledge of the issues or the ability to communicate what little information she has.

Palin's success among republicans in spite of these handicaps is indicative of the inability of the right to divorce itself from the politics of cultural divisiveness & radical religious fundamentalism (see Bush, 2000-current day).

This means that although an Obama reason-based campaign may succeed in the near-term, the right will conclude that Palin's success among the far-right forms the blue-print for their future success, & america will soon fall victim to more anti-illectual mullahs in pretty packages in the next election.

Their "one-sixteenth" came from thousands of miles way from the New World while Todd Palin's "one-sixteenth" is rooted in the ancient land of pre-European discovery and exploitation. Such is the vengeful mood towards the Palins that the man's DNA is now being scorned. Sarah Palin hasn't read Madeleine French's "The Women's Room" either,I suppose, and is not a bookworm or a worm of any kind. This is outrageous, I gather, but she certainly is getting all the publicity, most of it itmalicious and hoity-toity. Her name is known by the media and television viewers in the English-speaking world, and possibly elsewhere (although not in Kenya) while Joe Biden might as well be Joe Bloggs as far as anyone cares.

I'm sure the vitriol directed at Paglia in this comment section is a result of partisan feelings but I suspect the human tendency to avoid having a mirror held up before one eyes when one doesn't want to see one's flaws is more the cause. Paglia is more relevant than ever and Palin's popularity proves this. Mainstream feminism's condemnation of anything that smacks of genuine strength and femininity has kept me away from the woman's movement all my life. I've never understood why a movement that's supposed to be about the advancement of women thought it could achieve it's objective by rejecting real womanhood. Supposed feminist icons such as Hillary Clinton present a picture of women uncomfortable with their femininity and sexuality, who traded their mother's milk for gall to gain power. Why the hell do we want to be men? And how is it possible to gain real power by chronically playing the victim as so many feminists do? The emergence of a woman on the national scene who embodies the spirit of the pioneer women of the West, who climbs the ladder without breaking balls and playing the victim simultaneously, who celebrates her sexual powers of attraction, is married to the archetypal macho man so many feminists fear, and who has borne numerous children has set mainstream feminism on it's ear. It's not supposed to be this way. Only a handful of feminists have had the courage to challenge the conventional thinking of the movement. Paglia is one of them. She has been the Cassandra of the women's movement. Take heart, Camille. Some of us are listening.

to chew and spit, cultural-political gristle in the teeth.

I land on the Mormon woman who writes in with paragraphs of details about how good she is, how virtuous her husband and children, how Christ-like generous she is in the face of ignorant-contemptuous-unskilled with their hands-liberal-women.

And we are supposed to infer from the life of this saint and martyr that human beings who are full participants in the contemporary age (people who believe we are responsible to find solutions to our problems beginning with an exhaustive consideration of the causes of those problems, people who have been stung with the artificiality of the limitations of traditional culture and have pursued a critique of that culture, people who know virtue does not stop with the boundaries of any nation and are eager to build trust and understanding across the planet-- you know-- liberals), are without exception fractured, hollow of heart, effete, hypocrites?

I am at a loss to know how to address such sloppy thought.

Why Paglia loves Palin? I think Paglia has had one good idea in her career: that people who re-make themselves are kinda cool (e.g., Madonna). Since we have known Palin nationally for about six weeks, there have already been three Sarah Palins. Paglia would have to love her for this. Palin is Paglia's next example, and the specific attributions loaded onto Palin are just transitory and-- empty.

I can't believe ANYONE who isn't at least a closet Nazi can support Sarah Palin for VP, particularly since McCain has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana. I believe she is intelligent, and viciously ambitious and closed-minded. One can find videos of her as governor speaking perfect English with good grammar and no dropped "g"s. The "aw-shucks, I'm just a hockey-mom" act is just that, an act. But she does it well. But she's stabbed in the back any number of people who helped her on the way up, and her attempts to fire the town librarian who said she wouldn't remove books from the library should strike fear in the hearts of any American who loves the First Amendment. And I can't talk about her fundamentalist, dinosaurs-walked-with-humans religion without foaming at the mouth. Sarah is no dummy, but she's incredibly dangerous. And her hunky husband - he's a traitor.