yes, you'll have 8 billion hits for your advertisers but this Palin idiocy is too much to take a month before the election.

As always, Paglia finds her little niche...the zone where no one else has tread... and she weasels it onto the page as some kind of flash of distilled-down insight and brilliance.

It would be fun with a capital F on her own blog, but on Salon?

Get real; this is irresponsible, shallow and cutesy-poo contrarian. She is drinking the same kool-aid that people do who vote for spark! and energy! and bone structure! --and this makes our democracy a sham.

The response to the letter about Palin is hilarious! I can't recall reading such an over-the-top piece of satire in the last few months. Very well done. "Amazon", "force of nature", indeed. It parrots the ridiculous Republican lines perfectly.

You are COMPLETELY out to lunch. I've thought for years that you were an unreliable witness, but YIKES! To complain about Biden's smiles without even once hinting about Palin's down-low winking at the audience and hickster-drivel cranked up to 11.....Oh my goodness are you full of it. You are IN LUB, baby. L. U. B.

Camille, you say it isn't sexual, but your pen positively quivers. Amazon, my eye. You and Rich Lowry got Hit in the Futurehead with those funky little Starbursts, and you haven't come down yet. Maybe the Starbursts are like black holes, I don't know, but sweetie, get help.

PS: Madonna is not an icon anymore. You need deprogramming, seriously.

Camille, are you on crack?

Palin could not give one coherent answer to anything Couric asked.

Nothing!!!

Not even tough gotcha questions like "What newspaper do you read?" She couldn't even lie her way out of that one!

And for her debate she RELIED CUE CARDS.

How anyone can defend that empty insult-spewing shell--the perfect embodiment of modern Republicanism, btw--is beyond me.

You bought into the image of Palin and not the reality. Way to go Camille!!!

...but nah, I'm confident it's ridiculous. Camille, I remember Thanksgiving 1994...tutoring people how to pronounce your name and why they should heed your words. Uhhh...now, I'd ascribe it to the tryptophan, but it was before we ate.

Paglia is tied to the intellectual bed post; bent over, gagged and smiling. Her lust blinds her long lost wit. This trite example of gutter thought reminds us all how shallow she was, how irrelevant she is, how laughable she always will be. And fuck Salon.com for pimping this fascist whore on us all.

I am saddened that America is leaning toward a phony egotistical stringbeam that whistles when he talks and bumbles when off script and pronounces Pakistan in a phony ass way. Is this the best we can get?

Camille is right to a point about Palin. Suppose hypothetically she were a very reluctant pro-choicer, like Pataki, or a very reluctant pro-lifer, like McCain pretended to be in 2000. Leave everything else the same. I admit it, the media would not only love and adore her - she would be carried around on its shoulders, and so would the country. A lot of people are pretending not to like her because, shock of shocks, she said some critical things about, gasp, Obama's supposed Mother Theresa stint in Chicago, as if no v.p. has ever criticized someone before. (He was a radical folks, which I admire. Hate it break it to you). Sorry, Spiro, the country has forgotten you. The real issue, honestly, is abortion.

Gosh darn it, let's face it, she's cute as a button. I call her Belle the Republican Disney princess, and only half in jest. Belle, as you might know, is a very popular princess.

The reason I say it doesn't matter much now is that *we* all tried to knock her down, and off the stage, and it didn't work. I mean the media, US Weekly and the tabloids, Saturday Night Live, Leno and Letterman, the View. For pete sake, she's going to be on SNL soon like a Roman conquering hero striding through Carthage after the fall of Hannibal!

If McCain somehow manages to pull this election out of his cranky ass, we'll all have to get used to seeing Palin's pretty face. If not, I think her *15 minutes* will be over, and any future national career for her will have lost its game show contestant vitality. But for now, like I said, we've got to face facts that the game to *defeat* her is over. Best to keep talking about our best issue -- 8 years of Bush/Cheney deadwood must be cleared out! -- and try to put the princess out of our thoughts.

@Everythings Jake

"Also, it's the nuclear age and the nuclear issue is probably the most important any leader will have to face in the immediate and coming years - let's, for the sake of any god still extant, pronounce the damned word correctly in the interests of common meaningful useage since we're all going to need to be a part of that discussion."

While you yutzes quibble over her pronunciation, Palin demonstrates an actual understanding of the issue.

"That she holds views completely opposed to mine is irrelevant".

[Paglia's words on Palin, which could be lost in all her other words.]

I know I'll be a minority here when I say that I really do think it's great that we get to read Camille. For all her blind spots (she clearly doesn't get Joe Biden's sex appeal, perhaps because of her obvious personal crush on Palin, or maybe because he represents intelletual competition), I continue to laugh and applaud Paglia's unique intelligence and energy. She's a cyclone who gets things stirred up...not that the pot she's stirring is all that large. I'm glad she's back tonight.

"pronounces Pakistan in a phony ass way"

Yeah, how dare someone pronounce the name of a country properly. And, any candidate who doesn't pronounce Iraq as Eye-Rack is an East coast liberal phony elistist terrorist baby killer who can't be trusted.