Has anyone been listening to Sarah Palin audiences of late?? She whips them into an anti-Obama frenzy and you can hear those in the crowd yelling back "Terrorist" and "Kill him." If you think the stock market is in a downturn now, just imagine how crazy this country is going to go if one of those nutjobs acts on his/her hormones. I watched a man in a blue uniform introducing Palin emphasizing Obama's middle name and the crowd went mad. This really has to be looked and and addressed by the GOP. It is so very UNAmerican, to say nothing of dangerous and just downright creepy.

Sarah Pailin has been a huge hit among the most racist, redneck, militant and Christofascist elements of the American Right. The closest analogy would be the hysterical euphoria that Hitler's most mentally deranged thugs sparked among Germany's most deranged, racist, violent and anti-Semitic fringe during the 1920's. If she possesses any smarts, they are the smarts of a Tim McCveigh type-someone who is able to egg on and incite extremists like himself, but who also wallows in his own ignorance and delusional hell. The appreciation, admiration and probably strong sexual attraction Paglia has for Palin are not only laughable and pathetic, but also an indication that Paglia is a lifetime dead-ender.

Camille--

As a fair-minded liberal who has read you for more than a decade, I value your iconoclastic thinking and writing about a range of issues, but your opinion about Sarah Palin is absurd. Her value system, from what we have been able to glean in the absence of any real press conference, is almost in direct opposition to the values championed by most people who are in favor of women's equality. Yes, she is a governor and working mom. Good for her, glad she can govern Alaska and raise her family. But her fundamentalist religious beliefs align her with a patriarchal structure that is clearly NOT in favor of the advancement of women, or least women on the other side of the political spectrum.

Do you think for a second that the right wing would not have LOST ITS MIND had one of the Obama daughters appeared on the podium at the Democratic Convention--teenaged, pregnant, and unwed? This type of hypocrisy from the values crowd is supposed to be good for women, and good for America?

She might be "folksy" and representative of slice of blue-collar America that we don't often see on the national stage, but you engage in a transparent double standard by judging her language as "shapely and syncopated syllables", when she speaks very much like George Bush, who you have assailed for similar abuses of the English language. She can't name a single newspaper or magazine that she reads to stay up to date? How can you, as a professor, support this type of anti-intellectualism?

American presidents and vice presidents should be the best and brightest that this country has to offer its citizens. Clearly, she is neither, and was chosen by McCain strictly for demographic appeal for the campaign, not because she is prepared to step into the president's shoes at a moment's notice. So much for McCain's slogan of "Country First."

Palin? PALIN? For God's sake, woman -- come back from Pluto!

Dear me Camille - you are always a delight. Here's the thing with you: your brain is so incandescent that even though I don't always agree with you (Obama is a Marxist tool) I can still savor the pathways of your mental circuitry. Quite simply Sarah Palin reminds me of my upbringing. I was raised by a father who wanted sons and was given four daughters instead. We were raised to think like men and act like ladies. Sarah Palin is not a post feminist feminist but a true feminist. She appears to be novel because her kind have not been given center stage throughtout the years. She reminds me of my mother, my paternal and maternal grandmothers and all the ladies, yes, ladies whom I have been blessed to know and love. Warrior women who never lost their etiquette, civility, and toughness. It was and will always be a disarming combination. By the way before I had read your column I thought I was the only one who realized Sarah Palin is an AMAZON. The last time I neard that word connected to a beautiful independent woman was when the wonderful Rex Harrison said it to Gene Tierney in the Ghost and Mrs. Muir. I'd rather be an Amazon than a screaming banchee feminist anyday of the week.

A e-mailed a British friend living in London after the vice presidential debate and asked him how Palin was perceived in the UK, particularly her English, and his response consisted of just a few words:"she is considered a retard".

What did Michaelangelo do?

Leonardo Da Vinci?

It's tough being Camille.

I think she'd rather watch Sarah and Todd.

Does that make her a racist?

No, she will vote for Michelle and Barry, even though she'd rather not watch.

Maybe she knows something we do not know.

Is Barry gay?

Does Michelle hate lesbians?

Why will Camille vote for them?

Should we care?

If Ms. Paglia thinks she represents the majority of the remaining old style feminists in this countrty by warning liberals that Sarah Palin is a force to be reckoned with, she is once again indulging her own

tiresome pseudofeminist fantasies.

While it's true that Sarah Palin has been drawing large crowds, likely representing of all sorts of political stripes, some of them are members of the Republican Party "base" who are there to wallow in their bigoted fancies witnessing the mindless, scripted, shrill Sarah telling Obama off. For their benefit she is only howling to the choir - - but she is gaining no political ground. The rest are there to take in the spectacle of the infamous circus freak on the campaign trail. But she is not wearing well at all.

The unfortunate consequence is that many Americans will justifyably wonder about the preferences of the voters of Alaska who have elected someone willing to act like a trailer park bimbo to serve as their governor. That's neither smart nor a favor to real feminists, and certainly not a very favorable representastion of the state of Alaska. Or is it ?

By now I suspect that a very large number of observers wish she would just go away, indulge her overwheening ambition and outsized ego, and do her act somewhere else - - out of sight.