or, she was an idiot that had no business being so close to the presidency.

her detractors weren't working on emotion; that was her supporters.

burndtdan: her detractors weren't working on emotion; that was her supporters.

Hell, if you look at freerepublic, they STILL are. Might as well call them PalinWorld now.

Well, yes. But it's because we hate her so much.

Carl Cameron would like to have a word with you.

So would various other "McCain campaign insiders."

Self-loathing is a hell of a drug. Good luck with that.

A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and infantile rage was exposed

And this is in some way entirely different from what lies at the heart of Republican ideology?

If Sarah Palin represents the future of feminism, I'll be in the kitchen.

Irrational emotional (ism? WTF?) and infantile rage are what unites the Democrats as a party.
Without that, they'd just be a bunch of people who care about various stuff Republicans don't. There's nothing wrong with that.

What's sad is that the Republicans are in such bad shape that the Democrats' rage was even visible. It should be like starlight at noon. Republicans are going to have to face the fact eventually that we're running out of rage as a people, and unless they find a new supply of it, we're going to run out. Fear is no replacement for rage.

my anti-palin feelings were quite rational, thank you.

A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and infantile rage

Why yes, that is a great way of describing the right's attacks on Obama.

HE'S A TURRIST! A SOCIALEST TURRIST!

By the way guys, I'm always "up" for an orgy, but leave the whips and chains home next time, you farking freaks.

A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and infantile rage was exposed



Sometimes it is well-placed and appropriate. Amusing, even.

Yes, Camille. We are well and truly terrified of Sarah Palin, as we know she is the only candidate who can bring the GOP back to it's senses and claim victor*WHEEEEEZE*

Dammit, I thought I could get that one out without laughing my head off.

$10 says Alaska gets tired of her in the next 24 months and her future career is on the rubber chicken circuit.

Drugs. They've taken many a writer down.

cpttripps: By the way guys, I'm always "up" for an orgy, but leave the whips and chains home next time, you farking freaks.

If your "up" longer than four hours please consult with your physician.

2wolves: If your "up" longer than four hours please consult with your physician.

That's never an awkward conversation.

She managed to work Laird Hamilton into the article?!

Dude

Yep. The Democratic party is in big trouble. This election has been good news for the Republicans.

irrational emotionalism and infantile rage
This deserves the Ironic tag, I think.

/Don't tell me that I'm using "irony" incorrectly
//Cracks open another beer

2wolves: If your "up" longer than four hours please consult with your physician.

I did, but unfortunately this is my doctor:



She's hot, like the link

IHateHipHop: /Don't tell me that I'm using "irony" incorrectly

Don't tell me what not to do you son of a biatch!
I VOTED!

Irrational is former House majority leader Tom Delay recently standing by his critique of Barack Obama as a Marxist who wants to shred the Constitution. In other words, the batshiat crazy people aren't on the fringes in the GOP. They've been running the party.

Concluding that Sarah Palin was shockingly ignorant and unprepared for the role of VP was completely rational. I can't say the same for watching her horrendous interviews and camera winks and deciding that she's perfect.

I used to have a lot of respect for Camille Paglia. No more. What the hell happened to you, biatch?

Camille? Andrea Dworkin called, she wants her crazy back.

When Andrea Dworkin died, it left a giant vortex in the planetary space/time/ideology continuum.

Camille got sucked into it.

So I guess Republicans are sticking with their plans that worked so well for the during the election... whatever Republicans do wrong, accuse the Democrats of doing it.

Yeah... they should keep running with that one because it worked SO well for them.

As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is -- and quite frankly, I think the people who don't see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma.

Im registered Independent and am also a classroom teacher. I think Sarah Palin is an idiot who happens to be good at politics. Kind of like the company VP who played the system to get promoted but has no clue about the actual job.


So she doesn't speak the King's English -- big whoop!

It is a "big whoop", Camille. She's in the White House. There are standards.


"There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes."

It's called "crazed religious fervor."


"She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist."

And I wouldn't have a problem with it if she were a be-bop saxophonist.




You forget that with that comes religious fundamentalism, generally. And that will NOT save feminism, it will kill it. It will also kill reason, if given half a chance.

I used to respect you, Camille. Now you're old and busted, and your rhetoric is tired. It's actually kind of sad to see. You used to be a thinker. Now you're just an academic.

I pretty much gave up after she complained about Obama's birth certificate not being published, despite acknowledging that is was published.

I then became completely frustrated after she complained that Obama had not spread his thesis work to the press and forced them to publish it, because, of course, Mainstream Media was desperately trying to hide Obama's radical work on constitutional law.

But after reading a few comments in the thread, I briefly attempted to read page 2. This is what I found:
The U.S. Senate as a career option? What a claustrophobic, nitpicking comedown for an energetic Alaskan -- nothing but droning committees and incestuous back-scratching. No.

SO, I have decided to state whatever blindly comes into my mind and claim that the author is a lesbian for Sarah Palin because she believes she is too beautiful to be bothered with actually working in government- instead she should perpetually campaign. Also, I hear when you eat Palin out it tastes like strawberries and caramel.

A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and infantile rage was exposed at the heart of Republican vice-presidential candidate"

Fixed that.

This is retarded.

It's like a janitor applying for a job doing heart transplants and then accusing them of hating the janitor when they don't hire him instead of acknowledging the very obvious fact that he wasn't qualified.

The author seems to think the big problem is Palin's abortion stance. It isn't; this is merely symptomatic. The big problem is her stance on teaching "cdesign proponentsism". Together, they point to her being a theocon.

Moneycons at least have some intelligence; even though they're often greedy and selfish, they do at least understand that there's no free lunch. Neocons, while pie-in-the-sky dreamers about how they'll make the world fall into line behind them with a quick shave and haircut, at least show some prospect of eventually learning for their biggest mistakes... maybe. But theocons are flat out enraptured by their own delusional psychosis, and believe reality will give way before their dreams because God himself wills it so.

Moneycons keep the liberals in touch with reality. Neocons might stop believing their own propoganda. But there is no prospect for those in the far-gone theocon faction to give us anything but WHARRGARBL.

Hm. Wolves are fairly bright. How hard would it be to modify rifles for them to use, and teach them to shoot back at the helicopters?

Camille Paglia has lost creditability for years. Between her own shennanigans with interviewees and interns, and the apologist lines to cement a place in academia as the Conservative Lesbian Feminist--with the appropriate capitals to make it an official title so that she can spout whatever she likes, and avoid fallout.

Her brand of feminism is bothersome, because it inherently relies on her being unassailable from criticism herself--and much of what she spouts is revisionist pandering, and has gotten worse over the years.

Paglia, back in the 90s was a refreshing voice. She challenged a great many of the entrenched ideas about feminism, and moved to bring feminism away from shrill and ugly voices of separatism and division. But, then she realized that as a career path, that was not the way to keep getting speaking gigs. In order to keep teaching, and in order to keep her hat on the table, she has swung further and further into the pocket of folks who just need her as a prop, and it's a role she's embraced over the years with some zeal, since so many feminists turned from her, but they pale in comparison with the gigs she can get as Pet Feminist from those in power.

What's sad about it, is that this is entirely the role that she decried in the 90s, but not so much, when she can be the one who gets stroked.

I sort of wonder how she will evolve as a commentator and columnist with this new Administration coming in, and with her backers being relegated and pushed back. She could, once again, become a voice of balance and reason, but more likely, after years of apologist lines rehearsed and laid down, with years of combat with loonies on both sides of the fence, and with the power structures that she finds at the same time restrictive and cumbersome, comforting in their familiarity and blanket of insulation from a world outside academia.

She is, at heart, an opportunist, and that nature asserts itself. She can be brilliant, but it's an unsteady thing, since I don't think that it's really a fully formed ideology or philosophy, as opposed to a smart gal who sees the ways the winds blow, and then adjusts herself to take advantage of them to remain just outside the mainstream, and to take potshots at ANYONE who is in the lead and to support any underdog in order to make herself look magnanimous and a rebel scholar.

She prefers to be just out of step with the rest of academia, because it reinforces her own personal legend, as opposed to having a real philosophy to back herself up. She just twists and winds to fit the circumstances.

It's a heart of intellectual dishonesty that bothers me about Paglia--she very often has interesting insight, but it's more often than not, intellectual exercise, as opposed to belief in what she thinks is correct or even right. She defends a position that she takes, but I question her motives very often for the positions she takes.

FTA:
How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada!

WTF?! IT'S ON.

Western Canadians do not speak like that!!

I'm going to send a letter demanding a retraction to Salon. A paper letter, in an envelope with a stamp. This insult will not stand. Not only is it a tremendous insult to my region and nation to be compared to this vapid failed candidate in any way, it is profoundly ignorant.

Irrational emotionalism is the tin hat libtards wear to keep godess out of their brainwaves

Apparently Paglia missed the RNC.

He complains of my party's constituents, while the things he describes are perpetrated no less ashamedly by his party's leaders.

Palin is a distraction. While we're all making fun of her (and of course she deserves it) Olympia Snow is being fitted for a steel bra.

I think that was arguably the most irrational and emotional defense of Sarah Palin I've ever read.

Re: my above post

*her party's leaders

Golly what an infantile, emotional rant. Is the Ironic tag on a shopping spree at Neiman Marcus or something?

Best case scenario on Palin: she's not an imbecile, but she is a fear/hate-mongering hypocrite

Worst case scenario on Palin: she's both an imbecile AND a fear/hate-mongering hypocrite

good luck with that

Camille Paglia is back from the dead and rehashing GOP talking points. Yeah!

bobbette: FTA:
How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada!

WTF?! IT'S ON.

Western Canadians do not speak like that!!

I'm going to send a letter demanding a retraction to Salon. A paper letter, in an envelope with a stamp. This insult will not stand. Not only is it a tremendous insult to my region and nation to be compared to this vapid failed candidate in any way, it is profoundly ignorant.

That one really got me. She's apparently never been through any part of Western Canada.

cameroncrazy1984: burndtdan: her detractors weren't working on emotion; that was her supporters.

Hell, if you look at freerepublic, they STILL are. Might as well call them PalinWorld now.

or PalinDrones.

/too lazy stupid to make a palindrome about it

Paglia has always been a complete idiot.

darkhorse23: I used to have a lot of respect for Camille Paglia. No more. What the hell happened to you, biatch?

Nothing happened to her - Camille has always been a contrarian. She takes some sort of perverse pleasure in basically just saying up is down and black is white.

Sometimes this leads to great critical essays on certain subject matters, and other times it leads to loopy crazy bullshiat like this column.

Frankly, her fangirlness is probably due to part that and part to the fact that she has the hots for Palin and is thinking with her clit.

darkhorse23: I used to have a lot of respect for Camille Paglia. No more. What the hell happened to you, biatch?

She's trying to f*ck Mann Coulter and is a tad rusty with her "game".

correction to the article, which cites "Yes, it's true we know relatively little about Barack Obama, and his triumph is a roll of the dice."


We actually know quite about about him. He is simply a typical Chicago politician:
Link (new window)

with a socialist background that he hid and the media refused to investigate
Link (new window)

and

Link (new window)


He's a longtime disciple of a man whose mission was to teach radicals to disguise their ideology:

Link (new window)

The big unknown is what is he going to do. We know what he wants to do (i.e. socialism) but he will be limited to the needs of the office. He could be a lot more moderate than his ultra-liberal voting records imply. Then again, he might not.

hubiestubert:

It's a heart of intellectual dishonesty that bothers me about Paglia--she very often has interesting insight, but it's more often than not, intellectual exercise, as opposed to belief in what she thinks is correct or even right. She defends a position that she takes, but I question her motives very often for the positions she takes.

I haven't read any interesting insights in Paglia's writing lately. If we take that article as an example, she works in a comparison of Obama to a surfer - lazy, considering he's Hawaiian. Then she works into an attack on Bernardine Dorhn after admitting she didn't bother to learn anything about the Weather Underground during the entire campaign, but has worked up some objections after seeing the 2002 documentary in the last week of the campaign.

Read over these paragraphs:
Another issue that I initially dismissed was the flap over William Ayers, the Chicago-based former member of the violent Weather Underground. Conservative radio host Sean Hannity began the drumbeat about Ayers' association with Obama a year ago -- a theme that most of the mainstream media refused to investigate or even report until this summer. I had never heard of Ayers and couldn't have cared less. I was irritated by Hillary Clinton's aggressive flagging of Ayers in a debate, and I accepted Obama's curt dismissal of the issue.

Hence my concern about Ayers has been very slow in developing. The mainstream media should have fully explored the subject early this year and not allowed it to simmer and boil until it flared up ferociously in the last month of the campaign.

Translation: despite writing about popular culture and social movements, I'm actually not at all well informed about history or about American countercultural movements, and I'm too lazy to examine any attacks that come up during a primary myself to see if they have any merit. I didn't bother with this Ayers guy until Sarah Palin made it a talking point. But now, now I will be OUTRAGED!... about Ayers' more interesting wife! (She does have a point there: Bernardine Dohrn is more interesting and charismatic than Ayers.) I find it shocking that she says outrageous and unpopular things, although I have made my career on being provocative on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum. And, despite having spent all my time in a university setting where I would have been forced to interact with people with very different ideas, I am happy to use guilt by association to back up something Sarah Palin decided was a good attack.

The entire article is a mess of contradictions, attempts to rationalize talking points and somehow defend the vanquished Sarah. Pitiful for someone who was once respected for at least doing the job of a public intellectual somewhat well, if not for her ideas.

Some people are despised largely because the people who despise them are being irrational and childish.

Others are despised because there is no other rational way to feel about them and they are truly deserving of it.

Sarah Palin easily falls into the latter category.

There's very clear-headed, rational, intelligent and common sense reasons to hate Sarah Palin's guts!


I mean, c'mon really...this is all the right-wing has left: "You better not hate Palin, or you be sorry!"

Meh, what--ever.

that's hilarious... Paglia wants to be a part of Real America.