Only a week before, Shepard had expressed fears about being killed. Given that apprehension, it is still inexplicable -- if the case is examined only through a political lens -- why Shepard would leave a public place in the company of such blatant thugs.

With all due respect, I think you need a new lens because that one reflects pretty poorly on you.

I have never before posted on a Paglia thread before. I simply don't care about her opinion on most things. Her ideas in these Salon columns tend not to be very well thought out or defended, so I don't feel I learn much from her. I am very disappointed, since I would love to read a persuasive dissenting voice here at Salon.

I'm posting, though, because I find Paglia's blame-the-victim tangent here to be deeply creepy. It has nothing to do with the validity of hate crimes legislation. I disagree with Paglia on the nature and value of hate crimes laws, but I can understand the principle behind why she opposes them. Why she decided to weave in her opinion on Shepherd's personal safety decisions is beyond me, and it comes across as a deep-seated resentment of Shepherd for having the temerity to try to have a social life while gay.

It's a weak argument, a bigoted argument, an argument that is fundamentally flawed on every level - ethically, logically, rhetorically. It is, frankly, beneath her and beneath this publication.

Palin's breathless and insane stream of moronic non sequiturs full of false bravado and undeserved and embarrassing self-congratulation was at least a one-off.

Camille Paglia on the other hand has been doing it for years, including once a month right here in Salon.

Palin's prior interviews and debate performances were bad, but nothing achieving the level of this recent rapid-fire manic dribbling idiocy. Paglia however does it every time she speaks or writes a word.

as Geraldine Ferraro was to Hillary Clinton.

That is not good. Stop while you're only a marathon behind.

A very visible (due to the size of the letters) post of thomas dumm demonstrates a few major flaws of the American education system.

1) Not too many people know the difference between an educated and an intelligent person.

2) One very important subject is not taught even at the Ivy League schools:

How to be polite and professional while discussing something.

3) Nobody teaches a philosophcal definition of the hate crime. Nobody, therefore, learns that a verbal assassination of somebody you hate is still a hate crime. Luckily for the readers of Salon, the perpetrators of this crime are not punished by the prison terms yet.

4) One more degree should be given to the outstanding students, namely, H.D.

You guessed it: Hate Doctor. I am sure a lot of Salon readers would be qualified to get such a degree.

5) Somehow, quite a few persons with various degrees fail to understand that the freedom of speech is not only when you say what YOU want, but also when other people say what THEY want.

6) Finally, a very short technical course should be introduced for all the future recipients of any degree in Liberal Arts: How To Use a Switch. It is a fairly simple device, which is used, for example, to turn off the lights. The same approach can be utilized by a reader who does not like a particular article.

All he or she has to do is to switch to another one.

Professionals would have never released such a rambling, disjointed resignation statement. But that's not really the problem which Paglia, who's invested in Palin, can't acknowledge.

Palin, like Marc Sanford, rode into office as a social and fiscal conservative. Sounds good right? But where's the beef with respect to crunching the numbers?

Palin presented herself as "a member of the middle class." And it's not nice to raise taxes on the middle class. Yet she never identified a single program she would cut to balance the federal budget. She wanted war. She wanted benefits for the elderly. She wanted increased funding for Americans with disabilities.

Sanford seems pretty much the same. Both governors endeared themselves to the Republican right by rejecting Obama's stimulus money. Whether that sat well with their constituents is irrelevant, it got them favorable publicity.

Given this lack of policy substance, is it any surprise they lack a commitment to public service when the going gets tough? Palin's quitting and Sanford went AWOL. Now he wants to stay on and "milk it," presumably because he has no other income, not to serve the people of his state. She's got dollar signs in her eyes and the work, compared to other opportunities in the lower 48, is kinda boring.

Well, good luck to both of 'em and hopefully the Republicans can find replacements who are engaged by legislative work.

Well that was funny. Do you actually not see the hypocrisy in what you wrote? On the one hand writing a lengthy critique of letters you took the time to read that you didn't like, and on the other hand admonishing people that if they don't like something they should just not read it?

Not only did you read the letters you dislike, you took the time to write a lengthy, not to mention snide ("it's called a switch") comment criticizing others for being mean and nasty by commenting, in which by the way you also echoed Sarah Palin's misunderstanding of free speech fairly well.

It doesn't mean, for one thing, that criticizing someone is a violation of their right to speech. It's actually pretty much the other way around, the right to criticize would be one of the main things that the right is meant to protect.

The notion that someone like Camille Paglia would be given a forum to write this kind of nonsense and that readers of the magazine would stay silent and demure out of some odd notion of free speech is ludicrous.

You may be right about one thing, based on what Sarah Palin and you have said, the education system in this country is failing badly.