...Camille always thinks with her dick. I guess she got tired of jacking off to Madonna.

I am a conservative, pro-life woman from a working class background who grew up in, and still lives in, a fairly gritty area, and I can't stand Sarah Palin. Camille Paglia does the strong, admirable women of her childhood a disservice by comparing them with Sarah Palin--Sarah Palin is not fit to lick their boots. The women I grew up with were tough, strong, no-nonsense women who had their priorities straight (e.g., if you have a five month old with Down's syndrome and a prenant 17 year old, running for national office, on top of being a governor, is probably not the right thing to do for your family). Fortunately, I've inherited their common sense assessment of people--in other words, I have a pretty good bs meter. Consequently I see right through Palin's cutesy ignorance, arrogance, and blatant power lust. Palin does the resilient, frontier woman act without the character to back it up.

Paglia's assertion that we need to indulge Palin's "creative" use of language is extremely patronizing to all those for whom English is a second language and still express themselves clearly, even eloquently. The immigrants I grew up with all demanded that their children learn and speak standard English. I was not allowed to slip into the local "dialect" either. If we've reached a point where we can't even expect those who wish to lead to communicate clearly (seems like the minimum to me), we're lost. Since Paglia seems to know what Palin is saying at any given point, perhaps she could be hired to translate.

"I understand in principle the idea of admiring a person's abilities and political skills while totally disagreeing with the ideas s/he stands for." Couldn't have said it better myself. I was ready to write an angry diatribe deriding the knee jerck paleo-feminists and liberal witch hunters on here as exactly what Camille is talking about... but now I won't And you got it on page 3! Kudos!

My answer to your question about how Camille would be able to separate her admiration for what Palin embodies with her opposition to Palin's views is this:

The idea that Camille is fighting on a specific battleground -female identity- should not be lost. She can't allow the policies of the possible veep to cloud the fact that she is still symbolic of the success of the newest wave of feminism. The very fact that she is ideologically at odds with the feminist establishment is a feminist mitzvah in its own right. However, that's where the praise ends and the criticism begins. It is very easy to admire a person for what they symbolize and revile them for what they do and who they are.

That is the point: You no longer have to subscribe to an entire set of ideals or political party in order to be a feminist, or at least take part in the current shape feminism is taking. No longer do you have to agree with every dictated extrapolation from the feminist ideal into every facet of your personality and moral coda. Amazing, isn't it? You can start calling yourself a feminist even if you don't buy every single ideology espoused by a bunch of old white lesbians from the sixties.

Too bad this board doesn't attract people smart enough to grasp that nuance. Shame on all of you.

It has been said of nuance and liberalism that "liberals write with quills and conservatives with crayons." While that is most certainly true in Camille's case, it is unfortunate that so many libearls (as evidenced by this board) seem to belong to the crayon crowd. Why are they reading Salon? Does it make them feel all smart and cultured?

At least conservatives know they are crayon people, and celebrate it. While I think it really isn't something to celebrate, honesty certainly is.

Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken any more than reading Salon makes you literate, or admiring a woman as a symbol makes you her ideological twin.

Grow up.

Dear Camille,

I was raised on a farm by a father who taught me that there was no "women's work" , there was no "men's work" there was just work and we all worked together until the work was done. I was taught that there was no job I was too good to do. If he needed me to shovel shit off of a cow lot then I shoveled shit. He also warned me to "beware of educated idiots" when I went off to college. All sound advice.

I went on to become a physician. My mentors were the enormously tough,intelligent and often exceptionally feminine women physicians who became MDs before Title 9. They knew how to charm and disarm the often sexist males they worked with.

I love my career. I love being a woman. I love my femininity. I love men. I WANT men to be manly.

I totally get your excitement about Sarah Palin,your contempt for the whining class of feminism and your contempt for "ivy league" pseudo-intellectualism and it's intolerance for non-conformity. Bravo.

Things must be dull up in the old ivory tower, now that Madonna is all old and ugly. Now she's having fantasies about the right wing nutjob that would be shutting her queer old ass back behind bars. What, she's fantasizing about hearty pioneer babes, sitting around the old campfire at night, and then crawling into the tent...ick, ick, ick. Yeah, Palin has 'energy'. So does a bug. So what? She's still the sadistic jailer who would slam the door on all the rights and advances women have made over these decades, hot babe or not. Look, someday soon this compassionless Republican puppet is going to be saddling up and trekking back to where she came from and tend her retarded baby, taking a well-deserved rest. Before she does, Camille, know that she's not at all like your sainted Italiano gramma in that she would cheerfully use some of that marvelous energy to pick up the same rifle she uses to slaughter wildlife. And she would cheerfully and energetically blow off the top of your pointy head. Incorporate THAT into your sick fantasy.