A friend of mine and I are engaged in a pretty good debate about you at the post linked to from my signature (below)---in and under the post "God bless Camille Paglia's bizarre Palin fangirl heart." To give you a sample of how things kicked off:

DISCURSOR: But that’s an old argument if not a settled one. The key point I’d like to make is that I don’t suspect Paglia is being disingenuous, for all that her Palin defense attracts Drudge’s loving eye. Her skepticism towards the elite norms of erudition is a long familiar theme that goes back through her career as a public intellectual. She’s a believer in the intelligent non-verbal person (and frankly so am I). But I don’t see alternative outlets of profound meaning for Palin (neither practical evidence of technocratic or bureaucatic vision, nor any particular evident facility—pageant level flute playing aside—with music or art, as useful as such skills are in politics). She’s good at reading speeches professional Republican speech writers compose for her. Otherwise she’s a projection screen for both liberals and conservatives. By my reading of Paglia, I suspect she serves no less in that function for Paglia herself. She is a vessel into which Paglia can pour her negative arguments against liberal elitism, and “correctness,” and her generalized positive arguments for alternative forms of expression. It’s telling to me that she doesn’t get into details [...] returning to the details of Palin’s “virtues,” Paglia cites “her complete freedom from routine micromanagement and business as usual,” and her doing “her own thing with seat-of-the-pants gusto.” This virtue, again, is defined purely negatively; against routine micro-management, against expected procedure. Without offering any reason for why the way in which Palin defies micromanagement and handling has any particular merit, there’s nothing that separates this argument from the post-structuralism she derides.

BLOGBYTOM:To get back to her fascination with, and defense of, Palin–I got sidetracked above–I must say that I think it stems from her valuation of gender norms as represented in the status quo. She’s essentially an essentialist (and she defends her essentialism by dismissing other philosophers’ credentials in science, not by dealing with their arguments, and which…oh yeah, she doesn’t have, either). Her writing on gender and sex and sexual relations all reeks of misogyny. Palin plays an idealized role for Paglia, then, one of the woman empowered in a man’s world–a woman, we shouldn’t forget, who didn’t rise by virtue of her intellect but who got there by “being” a woman. Which is to say, in my opinion, “playing the role” of a woman.

I at least come to your defense from there. Anyway, thought I'd post this on the odd chance you'd be interested... "netroots" or whatevs.

Thank you for Camille's column. Her thoughts are so refreshing. I am dismayed at the angry letter-writers who denounce Camille simply because she is not a straight-ticket (i.e. none-thinking) liberal. Open-minded means open-minded, and these letter-writers, sadly, are demonstrating how closed-minded they are. (And I completely agree with Camille on the straight actresses being the hottest, just as in real life, unfortunately!).

If you define winning a debate as not answering any questions directly and spouting off whatever you happen to feel like saying, then certainly, Palin won the debate.

On the subject of lesbian love scenes...

You probably remember the delightful 1995 movie, "The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love."

While I enjoyed this engaging indie movie and its characters, I found myself troubled by the inevitable love scene, and I wonder what you thought of it...

My problem, while possibly colored by 'heterosexual heebie-jeebies', was that the movie was undoubtedly presented from a middle-aged perspective. The audience is invited to laugh, perhaps in self-recognition, at the attitudes of its protagonists. When the love scene did arrive, I was horrified to be forced into the voyeurism of two minors. The audience was never asked to put themselves in the actresses shoes, so to speak; we were always the older and wiser adults watching them. This perspective made watching the love scene feel like a horrible invasion of the characters' privacy.

What do you think?

Ok. You are saying that we currently cover 250 million of 300 million people. I get that.

I understand you also to be saying that with a single payer system the patient would not have to pay anything. I assume that means ALL PATIENTS would pay nothing.

Next, I understand you to admit that it will still cost what it currently costs to PROVIDE that health care (ignoring for the moment who pays that cost and the money charged by private insurers for premiums in the current system). Right?

So, for sake of argument let's say that the cost of providing all of that health care (apart from any take by the insurers) is $100 billion annually. Nothing in the transaction of relieving me from paying for my health care and shifting that obligation to a third party 'single payer' implies ANY reduction in that $100 billion cost does it?

The only cost savings I read in your argument is in two assumptions:[1] that a single payer bureaucracy will not be as expensive as a profit motivated insurance industry, and [2] that a single payer will have monopoly power (actually the word is different when the power is in the purchaser rather than the seller, but I can't look that up right now) to force down prices. I do not yet see in your conclusions any basis for [1], and many believe that [2] will come only by restricting what patients can demand from providers for service.

Now, we still have to address who actually "pays" for health care since none of us who receive it will pay anything. All the arguments about the "glory" of a single payer system seem to me to avoid discussing who that 'single payer' really is. A lot of people act as if the Government is some separate busines that has its own money, when of course it does not, so what the 'single payer' pays for all of this health care has to come from tax revenues. Let's just say to start with that we share that tax equally (which of course we won't, but imagine for the moment that we all have equal resources). That would mean that none of us pays for our own healh care, but we all pay for everybody's health care. Ok, what is that result? Well, that's pure insurance. Those who are healthy or who incur less than average costs for health care, will pay more so that those who are unhealthy or need above average health care don't have to pay for that extra health care. This is classic insurance theory where we are spreading the total cost evenly over everyone.

But of course, we can't just spread it evenly over everyone. Some people cannot afford to pay much of anything because of whatever disadvantage they suffer economically, so they have to be excluded from the 'single payer'. Next you have some people who can pay some, but not as much as others. Then you have some who could pay a lot. Kind of like income taxes? But, as it stands now, almost 50% of us do not pay income taxes, so if we use income taxes, that means half of us pay for everybody's health care and half of us pay for nobody's health care, but everybody gets health care. If you argue health care is some form of right that eveyone has, that argument is contradicted be placing the burden for health care on only half of us. How can it be a an equal right when the full burden is imposed on a few, or at least seriously less than all.

That's why health care, like cars and shelter, isn't, and can't logically be, an equal right. Instead, the focus of our efforts should be on providing health care for those without, as a matter of charity or societal responsibility rather than a right to be demanded of others. So I favor efforts in that direction, and particularly in the areas of education and prevention where the need for health care can be dramatically ameliorated, as in the case of obesity. A doctor in a federaly funded public clinic in Rhode Island recently told me that 70% of our health care costs are related to problems of obesity.

What if we all paid for ALL of the cost of the health care we demand or need, except that we provide it, or some assistance, to those who can't pay for it. That would elminate the 'profit-taking middleman'. Beyond helping those who can't afford it, what is the argument, really, for why we should provide everyone free health care.