Who the hell, aside from Camille “I Heart Camille Paglia” Paglia, thought it would be a good idea to get Camille Paglia back on Salon?
Quoting the late, great Molly Ivins in 1991:
What we have here, fellow citizens, is a crassly egocentric, raving twit. The Norman Podhoretz of our gender. That this woman is actually taken seriously as a thinker in New York intellectual circles is a clear sign of decandence, decay, and hopeless pinheadedness. Has no one in the nation’s intellectual capital the background and ability to see through a web of categorical assertions? One fashionable line of response to Paglia is to claim that even though she may be fundamentally off-base, she has “flashes of brilliance.” If so, I missed them in her oceans of swill.
One of her latest efforts at playing enfant terrible in intellectual circles was a peppy essay for _Newsday_, claiming that either there is no such thing as date rape or, if there is, it’s women’s fault because we dress so provocatively. Thanks, Camille, I’ve got some Texas fraternity boys I want you to meet.
There is one area in which I think Paglia and I would agree that politically correct feminism has produced a noticeable inequity. Nowadays, when a woman behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, “Poor dear, it’s probably PMS.” Whereas, if a man behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, “What an asshole.” Let me leap to correct this unfairness by saying of Paglia, Sheesh, what an asshole.
The feminist blogosphere has blown up in the six years since Paglia was last a regular at Salon, and I’ll expect her to meet some, uh, resistance from her contemporaries.
You bring the beer, I’ll bring the popcorn and Twizzlers.
Yeah, Paglia is one of the more tiresome hacks out there, and Ivins’ takedown of her is glorious. The only thing remotely original about her ideas is how violently she’s dumbed them down. As Ivins says, “she has become popular by reaffirming common prejudices.” Why anyone is still wasting time with this second-rate bullshit artist is beyond me.
duuuuuhhhhhhhnnnn da duuuuhhhnnn da duuhhnn DUHN! duuuuhhhnnn duhn Duuuuuh! (sorry, I’m watching Jim Lehrer)… what I wonder is: what happens to future generations of feminists when people like Camile Paglia aren’t challenged outright by mainstream media? I was thinking about how little acknowlegement of feminist trends/issues/conflicts there is in the general media. Even at the liberal arts college level there is relatively little information disseminated beyond the doors of Gender and Sex/Sex and Gender. In mainsteam media there is, at best, reference to the “three waves” and little else is explicitly investigated or explained. For young women it can be hard to break into a movement whose internal workings are so occult. When a young woman, such as myself, becomes interested in doing a critical review of contemporary feminist literature I am not greeted by a wealth of widely reviewed citicism… no major publications are as interested in recounting the development of feminism as they are the development of wing-nuttery and evangelical fascism or leftist eco-terrorism for that matter. How is it that our broader media, even those with an explicit liberal focus (not fucking BIAS), can’t really make useful heads nor tails of how a relatively contained movement has developed and subsequently defined its constituent parts? I want to send my little sisters out into the fray but don’t know where to point them anymore.
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But… You don’t understand…
According to the United Nations, America leads the world in childhood poverty and teenage obesity and is first in the world in lacking child health and safety…
What better representatives for this great leader among nations then a dry sometimes drunk, a megalomaniac with an artificial heart, a congress owned by corporations and a crassly egocentric raving twit spewing, uh, bullshit…
Black is white (brown is not ‘black’ enough), up is down and being a total asshole is a bonus…
I first read your last word as “Twisties” as in Twisty Faster. Seems like a good idea.
Salon? Putting the spotlight on an anti-feminist? I…I am shocked. Deeply. To my core.
My favourite takedown of Camille Paglia is the Burchill-Paglia fax war of 1993 (http://website.lineone.net/~jon.simmons/julie/paglia.htm). How anyone could take her seriously after that defeats me.
I do like her columns, they’re like some hypereducated John Stockdale alternately blurting out pop culture tidbits and high-concept factoids: ANNA NICOLE SMITH! THE MYTH OF PERSEPHONE! RINGTONES! FLUXUS!
Hear hear!
Isn’t this like the 10th time she’s vowed to come back and hasn’t?
to answer your own question, simply replace the word “feminists” w/ the word “journalists” and paglia’s name w/any of the current hardly-ever-right wing pontificators (coulter, hannity, limbaugh), and take a long hard look at things.
That Ivins piece is one of my most favorites ever.
Susie Bright had a nice(r) skewering of her as well, especially after Paglia “broke up” with her.