<<if there were any principles left in journalism, at least a dozen high-profile print, Web and TV reporters would have been fired outright or put on probation by now because of their gross mishandling of the McCain boomlet, which they effectively created to disrupt the campaign of Gov. George W. Bush. >>
A couple of observations:
The above rant sounds Stalinist. Initially impressed with her seeming originality and boldness, I ceased taking Camille Paglia seriously after I sat down and read her books and columns over time and discovered among other things the cheap bullying techniques she uses to savage people, and her intellectual incoherence and pretentiousness. While she can be deadly accurate about feminists and it is fun to see her skewer their pretensions, I find absolutely laughable her habitual, inveterate recourse to the most utterly discredited, embarrassing, quack-Freudian shibboleths to explain people. Doesn't she realize that this stuff has been thoroughly discredited and is the most shameless kind of name-calling? Nabokov observed a long time ago with deadly insight the totalitarian character of Freudianism, how it is the 20th-century twin brother of Stalinism, and the above quotation reveals Paglia's real temperamental leanings. Her obsession with the physical aspects of people and what they supposedly reveal about them is positively Nazi. I find her attacks on McCain incoherent, mean-spirited rants serving mainly to create straw-characters in "the theatre of Camille". I find that article on Rush Limbaugh's attacks on McCain revealing--and it lowers even further my estimation of Mr. Limbaugh. As for Maureen Dowd, I don't see her as anything but cheap entertainment either--sometimes she is on target and sometimes she is just off and in poor taste, straining for effect. I am the first to agree with Dowd that if McCain has a weakness it's his temper. I don't think it's a fatal or disqualifying weakness but the flip side of his strengths and, contrary to the dagger-in-the-night Republican whisperers I think he's basically a strong-willed, sane, decent, intelligent man with a healthy sense of humor who with the right advisers would make a wise and good President. I think he's quirky--not your usual "safe" white bread Trent Lott/George Bush kind of guy. But we could use a give-em-hell-Harry kind of guy who can break a few eggs to make the omelet we need in Washington. Their are enough checks and balances in our system that I think we can turn the McCainiac loose with good, creative results! |
