When did Paglia become an astute political commentator? When she started going after Hillary Clinton?

I thought it was pretty lame. I was fascinated by the info on the make-up though -- I wondered how they got that look she had for the debates! Her skin was gorgeous!

I hope those skin geniuses won't defect to McCain!

Her absurd prose, in and of itself, is seizure inducing. However, Camille Paglia is truly awful and the criticism of her should go far beyond her terrible prose. In the context of public intellectuals, obviously a loose category, she might be the least thoughtful, least insightful human being I have ever had the displeasure to read. The article cited above, like everything she writes, is a complete mess of unsupported assertions and dimwitted attacks dressed up with what she clearly believes are clever rhetorical flourishes. She is, as always, entirely too pleased with herself and her vicious and poorly focused meanderings.

I am an Obama supporter. If I thought for a second that this meant that I would have to align myself with the ridiculous rantings of someone like Paglia, I would have to seriously reconsider my position. Thankfully, it won't come to that. She remains as irrelevant as she ever was.

While for the most part I agree with the above posts, this caught my eye:
'It wasn't sexism that cost Hillary the nomination: It was her own misjudgments and mismanagement of a campaign that had the massive support of the nationwide party establishment, constructed by her husband -- to whom she owes her entire career..... What kind of feminism is this -- .. Hillary's latest pose as tribune of the people is contradicted by ... her indifference to the legions of small vendors whom her extravagant campaign has stiffed. And no true feminist would tolerate or enable that decades-long pattern of brazen philandering and crude sexual harassment that will forever brand the Clinton chronicles. When will our paleo-feminist dead-enders wake up to the psychological reality that compulsive seducers are misogynists?'
While I do take issue with her owing Bill for her career when I believe it's vice-versa, the majority of issues in at least this paragraph is (in my opinion) valid (minus the snark).
Her campaign was mismanaged - her non-payment of debt to small vendors is fact (and before the well ran dry, there was great extravagance-as noted on FEC and other documented sources) - And well about Bill, anyone wanna argue with that one?
However, with Camille it's always over the top - too much, too long, too I'm so smart, you're not! But, amidst the drivel, there is sometimes a bit of 'spot on'. A wee bit.

What Digby said:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/cobwebs-by-digby-from-kathy-g-i-see.html

I honestly don't know how I feel about having this ludicrous sideshow act [Paglia] on my side. I guess it's a good thing --- the more votes the better, right? But I can't help feeling that something very bad will happen.

What I'd say is that Paglia's schtick relies on a very boring kind of pop cultural triangulation.

I'll take Camille over Katie Couric any day of the week.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/11/katie-couric-sexist-media_n_106595.html

If this was really about sexism and not just about Hillary, I might buy it.

Are you riffing on the Paglia quote up top, or the Paglia quote on display at the link I provided?

It's gotten to the point that I can hardly listen to my favorite [conservative talk radio] shows, which were once both informative and entertaining. The hackneyed repetition is numbing and tedious, and the overt character assassination is ethically indefensible.

Paglia's new read on conservative talk radio strikes me as a kind of indefensible cheekily-covert triumphalism. What special rule makes that OK for Camille? Perhaps it's the rule that states that triangulation for a purveyor of the American scene never carries the same penalty as the one that awaits a failed practitioner of triangulated politics? What I've obviously failed to grasp is that Paglia understands power, whereas Hillary merely wields it, or loses it, but in either case, never quite understands it. Touché, Camille. Although, if I might add, the day you're tasked with delivering a concession speech is the day I begin to take you seriously.

Oh, crap. Rabbicat wants to play. Whatever. I've run into your type before. All high and mighty and self-righteous, some kinda newfangled hybrid. Not enough to let a sleeping dog lie, is it? So now I gotta go and do my best bojangles for you, is that it? Watch the white chinaman dance, is it?

Racist.

I seen you comin' with your high-falutin' ways. Letting a sleeping dog lie is one thing, but letting a lying dog sleep is something else altogether, for Mr. Hrebendorf. And so you bring it. Carry on.

This dog's done for today.