As I noted – possibly snidely, but probably not, alas – in the blogroll, you have to encourage liberal writers and pundits who don’t actually hate conservatives. Come, I will hide nothing from you: Paglia is a guilty pleasure for more Right-bloggers than you might think. Possibly because she’ll write things like this:
As I have repeatedly said in this column, I have never had the slightest problem in understanding Sarah Palin’s meaning at any time. On the contrary, I have positively enjoyed her fresh, natural, rapid delivery with its syncopated stops and slides — a fabulous example of which was the way (in her recent interview with John Ziegler) that she used a soft, swooping satiric undertone to zing Katie Couric’s dippy narcissism and to assert her own outrage as a “mama grizzly” at libels against her family.
Ideology-driven attacks on Palin became clotted liberal clichés within 24 hours of her introduction as John McCain’s running mate. What a bunch of tittering lemmings the urban elite have become in this country. From Couric’s vicious manipulations of video clips to Cavett’s bourgeois platitudes, the preemptive strike on Palin as a potential presidential candidate has grossly misfired. Whatever legitimate objections may be raised to Palin on political grounds (explored, for example, by David Talbot in Salon) have been lost in the amoral overkill that has defamed a self-made woman of concrete achievement in the public realm.
And let me take this opportunity to say that of all the innumerable print and broadcast journalists who have interviewed me in the U.S. and abroad since I arrived on the scene nearly 20 years ago, Katie Couric was definitively the stupidest. As a guest on NBC’s “Today” show during my 1992 book tour, I was astounded by Couric’s small, humorless, agenda-ridden mind, still registered in that pinched, tinny monotone that makes me rush across the room to change stations whenever her banal mini-editorials blare out at 5 p.m. on the CBS radio network. And of course I would never spoil my dinner by tuning into Couric’s TV evening news show. That sallow, wizened, drum-tight, cosmetic mummification look is not an appetite enhancer outside of Manhattan or L.A. There’s many a moose in Alaska with greater charm and pizazz.
Or maybe it’s just because Paglia sounds like she’d be fun to go drinking with, preferably on somebody else’s tab. Either way, read the whole thing.
Moe,
Camille Paglia has long been a favorite of mine…she was Ann Coulter before Coulter was Coulter. She is an extremely bright woman with outrageous opinions who tells the truth (delightfully). Ann is also a favorite; would love to see the two of them discussing “politics today” on Hannitty’s new show. I really don’t think that their outlooks would be that dissimilar.
I never minded her too much, but when I read her I generally find there’s a massive culture gap between us. It’s as though she’s not in the same country I’m in.