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

Wow...

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...

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.

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.

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.

Joan,

I will keep this simple. I was a long-time Salon subscriber until last year. Why did I stop? Not because of personal finances. I stopped because of Camille Paglia.

Don't get me wrong. If Salon was in the practice of inviting "contrarian" viewpoints into its midst, I would understand. But I watched as Salon dropped David Horowitz, so it wasn't a matter of "balancing" ideologies within the columns of the magazine. And that is fine with me. Saying good-bye to David Horowitz was good for Salon and, yes, good for America.

As an academic and intellectual, I cannot for the life of me figure out what Camille Paglia has accomplished to earn a prominent (and probably well-paid) spot in what had been one of the most important media outlets for reasonably-enlightened (if not high-brow) liberal thought in the last decade. Yes, Camille Paglia published her well-written doctoral dissertation to wide acclaim a couple of decades ago. Since then she has published hastily drafted columns and screeds, which have then found their way into hastily edited books, whose intellectual content both shrinks and becomes less relevant with each passing day.

Joan, do you have any idea, I mean ANY idea, how many brilliant academics writing on similar themes you could tap--and for far less money--to write these culture columns for Salon? I can think of at least a hundred, many of whom are far more extensively published than Camille, in just the time it has taken to write these sentences.

Joan, quit treating Camille Paglia like she is some sort of rare gem of intellect whose writing simply MUST be showcased in Salon. She was once a promising thinker who has become a third rate hack. I can't believe you cannot see this for yourself!

Yes, her writing generates responses. So would a column by, say, Adam Sandler, David Duke, Victoria Jackson, or Kathie Lee Gifford. So, stop it. This magazine ought to be better than this.

I will not put one penny toward renewing my subscription until Camille Paglia is gone. If she wants to write for Salon, she should compose letters to the editor like the rest of us.

Is paranoid bigot considered an ethnic group? If so, it must be multigenerational in your family. Unfortunealy, it is a conspiracy itself, but oly by default. You don't have the brains or social skills to form an authentic conpsiracy.

" She's no pre-programmed wonk of the backstage Hillary Clinton school; she's pugnacious and self-created, the product of no educational or political elite -- which is why her outsider style has been so hard for media lemmings to comprehend. And by the way, I think Tina Fey's witty impersonations of Palin have been fabulous. But while Fey has nailed Palin's cadences and charm, she can't capture the energy, which is a force of nature."

My wife noted tonight that Clintonis better schooled and much more knowledgeable, but she lack the "it," the charisma that would have carried her to victory. Obama doesn't have "it" either. Essentially he is a metrosexual type. If he wins, he is not going to grow on the country.

If passive-aggressiveness were a recognized literary style, Paglia would be its dean. How many sneering references to Ivy League education can one cram into a 4-page article? Answer: Just enough to make sure your readers know that a) you are from that world, but you are by no means of that world, certainly not, and b) despite your disavowal of the Ivy League's bankrupt elitism, your readers should recognize that all paths to cultural and political power do indeed lead to and from there, thus reinforcing your authority on the matter. Just in case the last dozen or so columns hadn't clued you in.

I thought the level of myopic self-indulgence in Paglia's column had reached his peak with her mooning over American Idol Kelly Clarkson as proof that "American music will revive." But no, she's topped it.