Camille Paglia: Dud or Dudder ?

Whatever happened to her colum on Salon ?

also, her opinions on pop culture are the dumbest of anyone of her predilections and generation. in class she once claimed that "driving is an american pop culture dream with no european analogue" and i said "what about kraftwerk?" she just kind of stared for a second and kept talking.

i dropped out in the second semester.

She has this majoritarian "the masses are always right" philosophy.

I mean the comment is stupid anyway cos if that was true why does like half of America drive European cars, I mean clearly there are cars there ergo cars must be PART of their popular culture, wtf?

The whole thing is like blowing my mind right now, it's like the stupidest thing that's ever happened in a classroom, I really thought every teacher I've ever had has been insane but at least I didn't have that.

haha

Julie Burchill does manage to make herself look completely terrible in that exchange, though.

She does talk awful fast, doesn't she? Is there some obscure Howard Hawks screwball comedy from the 30s called The Cliche-evading Feminist that I missed that she bases her persona on?

Duddest.

On Gaga.

This is for you, Generation Gaga:

Furthermore, despite showing acres of pallid flesh in the fetish-bondage garb of urban prostitution, Gaga isn’t sexy at all – she’s like a gangly marionette or plasticised android. How could a figure so calculated and artificial, so clinical and strangely antiseptic, so stripped of genuine eroticism have become the icon of her generation? Can it be that Gaga represents the exhausted end of the sexual revolution? In Gaga’s manic miming of persona after persona, over-conceptualised and claustrophobic, we may have reached the limit of an era…

Gaga has borrowed so heavily from Madonna (as in her latest video-Alejandro) that it must be asked, at what point does homage become theft? However, the main point is that the young Madonna was on fire. She was indeed the imperious Marlene Dietrich’s true heir. For Gaga, sex is mainly decor and surface; she’s like a laminated piece of ersatz rococo furniture. Alarmingly, Generation Gaga can’t tell the difference. Is it the death of sex? Perhaps the symbolic status that sex had for a century has gone kaput; that blazing trajectory is over…

even when I don't really disagree with her she's tiresome

I mean really, she's the arbiter of what qualifies as "sexy" now?

Lady Gaga is a manufactured personality, and a recent one at that. Photos of Stefani Germanotta just a few years ago show a bubbly brunette with a glowing complexion. The Gaga of world fame, however, with her heavy wigs and giant sunglasses (rudely worn during interviews) looks either simperingly doll-like or ghoulish, without a trace of spontaneity. Every public appearance, even absurdly at airports where most celebrities want to pass incognito, has been lavishly scripted in advance with a flamboyant outfit and bizarre hairdo assembled by an invisible company of elves.

Worst slash fic ever.

was really hoping this would pass by ilx unnoticed

if i didn't see the byline i'd figure this was out of a college newspaper. laughable. every sentence has something wrong with it.

xp it's already been on some other thread!

Hated her stuff for Salon ages ago, and I love that she had faded from relevance.

it's kinda weird/sad that Paglia can't draw the connection between Gaga's pronouncements about lies/art/fakery and the fact that Gaga is, obviously and openly, a manufactured fake. Like, that is not grounds for criticism Cam, Gaga SAYS SHE'S MANUFACTURED in BOLD, ALL CAPS LETTERS, like ALL THE TIME

every sentence has something wrong with it.

also ^^^ this

missing the point that for gaga, the rather inhuman machinery of celebrity is both playground and subject. never get the impression that gaga intends to be sexy, but rather sex-like, in the way that pop celebrity is always sex-like, a strained parody. agree with CP's observations, but not with what she makes of them.

or: what shakey said

So how many symbolic ends of the sexual revolution have we had so far? Does the number have five digits or six?

in her defense, i really did enjoy reading/struggling with/tearing my hair out over sexual personae like 20 years ago

never get the impression that gaga intends to be sexy, but rather sex-like, in the way that pop celebrity is always sex-like, a strained parody.

lol totally. btw this sentence is more insightful than all of the sentences in Cam's piece.

lotta concern for the "symbolic end" from a woman who hates hates hates the "pomo" academy, pissing and moaning about it's lack of good old hardness of mind, meanwhile numbers on young sexual behavior have been changing dramatically between oh 1970 and now oh fuck me in the ear why am i writing

goole has restarted the sexual revolution by being fucked in the ear

bad bromance

if you want a good laugh go look up the old salon column where professor camille sounds off on the subject of PUNK ROCK. i was halfway through a scathing reply before i realized the article was over two years old.
― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, October 7, 2003 7:46 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark

I would like to read this article, but I don't think I found it on Salon.com.

I think Paglia's angry that Gaga has eclipsed her beloved Madonna in the relevancy sweepstakes.

rudely worn during interviews!

lol the same way noel gallagher swept paul mccartney in the relevancy sweepstakes in 96

or taylor swift has swept lisa loeb in the relevancy sweepstakes

or taylor swift has swept lisa loeb in the relevancy sweepstakes

missing the point that for gaga, the rather inhuman machinery of celebrity is both playground and subject. never get the impression that gaga intends to be sexy, but rather sex-like, in the way that pop celebrity is always sex-like, a strained parody. agree with CP's observations, but not with what she makes of them.

Yeah, this. I'm surprised how often people point out how unsexy Lady Gaga is, as if they're the first to notice, when her unsexiness seems to be part of the point of her. If you want to be sexy you don't dance around in that horrid old underwear she wears in Alejandro or put on the drag queen make-up she has in the Telephone video, a lot of what she wears seems purposely designed to look unflattering. It's definitely more of a parody than a sincere attempt at being sexy and it's a bit odd how people look at her and think "failed sexiness" rather than wondering if a female pop singer might have other aims.

Other aims, like entertaining people?

making crutches sexy

I don't know if this is challops or what but I think Lady Gaga is sexy as hell.

Some old women find cats sexy.

Paglia votes Green: http://www.salon.com/2012/10/10/camille_paglias_glittering_images/

(she proclaims “Star Wars” creator George Lucas our greatest living artist)

But I think that Mitt Romney is a moderate — like Nelson Rockefeller, who as governor of New York poured money into the state university system that educated me. Romney is an affable, successful businessman whose skills seem well-suited to this particular moment of economic crisis. Hence I want to use my vote to make a statement about my unhappiness with the Democratic Party and the direction it has taken. The biggest issue for me is the Obama administration’s continuation of endless war, war, war. I denounced the Iraq incursion before it even happened.

My third reason for going Green is the creeping totalitarianism of Obamacare, which Jill Stein as a physician is rightly skeptical about. I began denouncing the Obamacare bill in my Salon column within two months after Obama’s inauguration. And I was also criticizing the President’s imprisonment within an insular circle of advisors who were not of sufficient quality and experience as administrators or strategists to sustain his presidency. If Democrats and their cohorts in the mainstream media had listened to me and begun criticizing the administration early on, there would have been ample time for a course correction and Obama would now be sailing into reelection.

she is so dumb

only nixon could go to china

afghanistan is the grave of empire

and other historical observations by camille paglia

obamacare is creeping totalitarianism and it also doesn't spend enough on new doctors and hospitals

whenever she talks about the 60s she's like a really uncharitable parody of a boomer

what is this weird "I totally complained about that BEFORE IT EVEN HAPPENED" rhetorical tack she seems so fond of

ugh, i can't believe this is the paglia thread that u guys bumped. we have such a better one!

did it include this

http://images.tcj.com/2011/12/Mbooty6-a.jpg

my preferred paglia thread:
sexual personae

"Her book is over 700 pages long!"

ah yes the Vision thread

xp

Hi!

Ms. Paglia observes this phenomenon up close with her 11-year-old son, Lucien, whom she is raising with her ex-partner, Alison Maddex, an artist and public-school teacher who lives 2 miles away. She sees the tacit elevation of "female values"—such as sensitivity, socialization and cooperation—as the main aim of teachers, rather than fostering creative energy and teaching hard geographical and historical facts.

By her lights, things only get worse in higher education. "This PC gender politics thing—the way gender is being taught in the universities—in a very anti-male way, it's all about neutralization of maleness." The result: Upper-middle-class men who are "intimidated" and "can't say anything. . . . They understand the agenda." In other words: They avoid goring certain sacred cows by "never telling the truth to women" about sex, and by keeping "raunchy" thoughts and sexual fantasies to themselves and their laptops.

Politically correct, inadequate education, along with the decline of America's brawny industrial base, leaves many men with "no models of manhood," she says. "Masculinity is just becoming something that is imitated from the movies. There's nothing left. There's no room for anything manly right now." The only place you can hear what men really feel these days, she claims, is on sports radio. No surprise, she is an avid listener. The energy and enthusiasm "inspires me as a writer," she says, adding: "If we had to go to war," the callers "are the men that would save the nation."

And men aren't the only ones suffering from the decline of men. Women, particularly elite upper-middle-class women, have become "clones" condemned to "Pilates for the next 30 years," Ms. Paglia says. "Our culture doesn't allow women to know how to be womanly," adding that online pornography is increasingly the only place where men and women in our sexless culture tap into "primal energy" in a way they can't in real life.

She's got to stop reading Momus' old clickopera blog.

i hate to go there (really) but, if you're so twisted up about disappearing masculinity, why did you name your kid 'lucien'

every paragraph is funnier than the last

http://time.com/72546/drinking-age-alcohol-repeal/

both dionysus and PCP are referenced

http://www.salon.com/2015/07/28/camille_paglia_how_bill_clinton_is_like_bill_cosby/

It’s a very sophisticated style among the French, and generally in Europe, where the heads of state tend to have mistresses on the side. So what? That doesn’t bother me at all! But the point is, they are sophisticated affairs that the European politicians have,

lol waht

she's such a buffoon

DSK raping a hotel maid, Berlusconi banging underage prostitutes, so sophisticated

otoh "I’m not talking in terms of the men’s rights movement, which got infected by p.c." is pretty A+ zing

I don't even know what that means tbh

MRA guys are generally virulently anti-pc, aren't they?

nah, they are always adopting tumblr pc lingo (which turns out to be very malleable for whatever u need)

you'll forgive me for staring at the URL a little while longer

i find that she's always on the right side of the line between tedious and hilarious

are you serious

yeah, someone mentioned ann coulter in the salon comments but i can't read any coulter. she's just asinine + shrill + stupid. paglia is really trolly but can be provocative. she's like off-beat enough that i find her more of a crank than just some boring ideologue.

paglia is a cruel ideologue

http://www.macleans.ca/authors/emma-teitel/camille-paglia-on-rob-ford-rihanna-and-rape-culture/

Can we teach men not to rape, as some argue?

A: You can try to teach people to make ethical judgments. Telling a rapist not to rape? [Laughs] A liberal ideology is out there that people are basically good. It’s a bourgeois version of reality—this idea that the whole world should be like a bourgeois living room and anyone who doesn’t belong, you can retrain. No you can’t! I was raised in the Italian working-class way, which is “watch out!” The world is a dangerous place. It’s up to you to protect yourself, not just from rape, but from anything. The lack of imagination for criminality amazes me. There are people who are evil. The problem here is the inability of women to project themselves into the minds of men. Feminists say [proper, mocking tone] “women have the right to do whatever they want.” Of course we have the right to do whatever we want–to be jogging with earphones on with our breasts going like this [simulates breasts bouncing]. Yes you have the right to but it’s also stupid! I see with the eyes of the criminal. I must have a criminal mind.

"lack of imagination for criminality," you don't say

But like I think there's truth in what she's saying. I think there is this current in popular culture of "tell your sons not to rape" which ignores that rapists are already violating serious + widespread social taboos and probably are not just confused about the ethics of their behavior. there's a psychopathy to these kinds of violent crimes (i'd include murder too) that means that certain social remedies - like robust legal prosecution of rapists, believing rape victims - can definitely help and others - explain how rape is wrong - are just silly.

Now, in order to understand that, people would have to read my first book, “Sexual Personae”–which of course is far too complex for the ordinary feminist or academic mind!

bet she insisted on inserting the exclamation point

Paglia is the Great Kat of philosophy.

The one place we should be worried about is India.

Because it's concerning to see a problem with rape in a rapidly developing, pluralistic democracy? Or is she actually implying that India has a larger rape problem than any other country in the world, which seems absurd?

Thanks for that link, 誤訳侮辱!

I'd guess the latter why because she is an idiot

Thanks for that link, 誤訳侮辱!

yep, i'd forgotton about the Great Kat and her website is now the highlight of my day

She is a liberal arts humanities scholar, then? On her Wikipedia page, she is described as an 'academic and social critic' with no mention of her discipline, as far as I can tell. From her University of the Arts page, I can see that she teaches in Humanities and Media Studies but her degrees are listed with no mention of what fields they were granted in. Seems curious.

Were her degrees in art history? I have a bachelor's in art history and there is plenty of scholarship in that field which is more difficult than her magnum opus, which seems to have been written for people who were angry at the difficulty of liberal arts scholarship. It was pandering.

We’re in a period right now where nobody asks any questions about psychology. No one has any feeling for human motivation. No one talks about sexuality in terms of emotional needs and symbolism and the legacy of childhood. Sexuality has been politicized–“Don’t ask any questions!” “No discussion!” “Gay is exactly equivalent to straight!” And thus in this period of psychological blindness or inertness, our art has become dull.

do any of these sentences ring true to anyone?

i'd answer but i'm afraid of getting yelled at for contradicting the orthodoxy

there aren't as many freudians around as there were in the 70s, that's true i guess

i'd answer but i'm afraid of getting yelled at for contradicting the orthodoxy

just ask yrself "what would Camille Paglia do?"

Again with the neo-caveman aesthetic rockism. Technology has changed everything. We don't have time for Sistine Chapels anymore - what's more, I don't think we miss them. People are currently more literate in stuff that really matters, like the environment.

"Our art was better in the past" is a fascist sentiment. She has a lot of pompous Nazi aesthetics. We don't need fascist mouthpieces right now in the US.

camille paglia likes being yelled at i think xp

Godwin's Paglia

when it doubt Mordy just say something catty about Gloria Steinem

She keeps doing Ancient Greece, especially the different periods in art, and we should all know what an unhappy society that was. She's, like, stuck there. Why read her when you could read much better works on Greek art and society - written by people who don't think we have to live there.

it is kinda weird how fixated she is on the virtues of her own cultural heritage, Italian manly men and peasant matriarchs, etc.

I'm Italian, too, and she's full of shit and insulting. My Italian great-grandparents were practically socialist, and none of my relatives insulted women. None of the guys in my family were particularly macho, and my own grandfather married a feminist who worked in the steel mills.

She has no business making ignorant comments like this about the industrial working class:

Politically correct, inadequate education, along with the decline of America's brawny industrial base, leaves many men with "no models of manhood," she says.

Right. I'm sure she's a brave class warrior.

if I had to hazard a guess I'd bet she prefers Mussolini to Gramsci (also lol she appears to have been completely silent about Berlusconi)

Does she discuss Italy ever? Prob. not for fear of embarrassment. They have enough traditionalists over there anyway, and the ones they have are prob. less egotistical.

It's like she needs the brawny working class to suffer for her argument. When were they ever a role model for anyone above them?

like, contemporary Italian politics etc.? idk, altho I did find some interview she did about Pope Francis and the Church recently. She is always citing her Italian family and Catholic upbringing tho

Paglia knows politics like Rick Perry knows Montesquieu.

Paglia is 100% CLASSIC

...when discussing what a phony Hillary Rodham Clinton is.

she's seriously just...like...a moron? like in one of her books, she sets up this "I hate Chaucer but I love Spenser! Fairie Queen rules, Canterbury Tales drool!" interminable thing and it's like look. It's one thing to have a sandwich vs. pizza poll on ilx. But Paglia really wants to hang her hat on these moronic oppositions. "Oh, you say people shouldn't rape? Well I say it's a tough world! Did I BLOW YOUR LIBERAL MIND?"

she's like John Lydon at his most embarrassing only with much higher aspirations

eh, i'd take five seconds of metal box over paglia's entire career.

But like I think there's truth in what she's saying. I think there is this current in popular culture of "tell your sons not to rape" which ignores that rapists are already violating serious + widespread social taboos and probably are not just confused about the ethics of their behavior. there's a psychopathy to these kinds of violent crimes (i'd include murder too) that means that certain social remedies - like robust legal prosecution of rapists, believing rape victims - can definitely help and others - explain how rape is wrong - are just silly.

― Mordy, Tuesday, July 28, 2015 5:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is wrong btw

sorry, i disagree in ways that i should probably try harder to articulate than a misfiring zing, but also i feel like the camille paglia thread is probably not the place to get into it, in that people probably want to look at this thread just to clown on camille paglia, mainly

well tbf shakey mo treats every thread as an excuse to demonstrate the superiority of shakey mo to the subject at hand so we can probably do this here. i think theres something cramped and insufficient in the current discourse that paglia is getting at in that quote, although shes expressing it in a way thats sneering and easy to dismiss. but i dont really agree with mordys reformulation

Whee, more hate-reading on Salon this morning:

Richard Dawkins was the only high-profile atheist out there when I began publicly saying “I am an atheist,” on my book tours in the early 1990s.

hahahahaha

i wonder how much money she makes off this stuff

she's an egomaniac and a namecaller, and JCLC is right that her standard tactics are v trollish. her main goals are provocation and self-aggrandizement (has there ever been a piece where she does not reference her "bursting on the scene" in the 90s or the "controversy" around Sexual Personae? Her enthusiasm for her own hagiography and self-promotion is boundless), which, you know, might be entertaining or amusing (I gather this is Mordy's reaction) if she didn't regularly come down on the side of political stances that are so repugnant eg classic blaming of rape victims. she is indeed "the Don Rickles of the literati", only not as funny.

yeah, she's entertaining + provocative. so is mencius moldbug. i don't get w/ this the pov that if you disagree w/ someone, or even think they're evil or whatever, that means you shouldn't engage w/ their work at all. on the contrary - i'm primarily interested in reading ppl whose view of the world + politics are diametrically opposed to my own, and it's only a plus when they disagree in an amusing manner so it's fun to read. i'm really not interested in reading another Salon article about the social justice issues of the day. i already know what they all say. they don't contain anything surprising.

neither does Paglia's work. you know exactly what she's going to say from her subject line. you can't seriously be claiming any of her positions surprise you in the past 20 years, can you? she is as predictable as the tides. she looks at what might irritate somebody who holds some basic handed-down humanist values, then says that several times, then collects her paycheck. me flipping a coin is more likely to contain a surprise than a Paglia piece.

Regardless of what CP says in general, she is totally right that the slew of sexual misconduct allegations against Bill Clinton will present difficulties for Hilary's reelection campaign. Clinton is not a known serial rapist like Cosby but there is at least one rape allegation against him and his "caddish" repuation does seem a bit sleazier/more exploitative than your average man who has affairs. I don't necessarily think this should be held against Hilary but you know, it will be.

I think Hillary's got bigger problems than that, I'm not sure her husband's pecadillos are really going to come up at all tbh

I think she's right about Jon Stewart too. I mean no she's not as unpredictable as flipping a coin and I'd generally prefer to hear the thoughts of Steve Tyler to hers... But she's an interesting figure- very unique and entertaining

I'm not fan enough of Stewart to run to Facebook and post last night's yuks but to call him smug is inaccurate.

Stewart to me is just this ball of making exasperated faces for the benefit of ppl who already agree with him. Is that smugness? Idk it's something distasteful enough that I haven't watched the Daily Show in like five years

Agree on the Daily Show but Paglia reeks of taking the easy way out intellectually every damn time

She strikes me as someone I'd have championed at the height of my priggish undergrad self-righteousness, her clarion of liberalism and unchecked sexual expression appealing to my horny underdeveloped young mind as the very ambrosia of intellectual freedom

Sexual Personae still has good bits, even if I'm misremembering if she gets into Emily Dickinson orgasming.

I'm not disputing that some of her ideas might pass muster under challenge, but someone so cavalier as her must be challenged. Like Mordy, I have no problem with her propagating these ideas, so long as they're properly scrutinised.

+ like say what u will about her, the whole pre-institutionalized religion pagan-focus and admiration for religion even from the pov of atheism is not a widely disseminated pov in american letters

describing her as ‘fascist’ (upthread) seems v off the mark & unfair to me
i don’t take her v seriously as like a deep thinker & disagree with like half of what she says
& yes she’s hilariously self-aggrandizing; her idiosyncrasies now seem predictable;
yet i still kinda like her personality/ as a personality
she’s one of v few contrarians/ mavericks on the american pop-pundit scene nowadays (most pundits well-ensconced in a political-ideological corner); & she’s among the more entertaining/ less insufferable i think
& sometimes, on some things, she’s otm

drash i was thinking i hadn't seen a post from you in a while and i was getting worried u bailed on ilx

:) still hooked

not that i would've blamed u :/

Regardless of what CP says in general, she is totally right that the slew of sexual misconduct allegations against Bill Clinton will present difficulties for Hilary's reelection campaign. Clinton is not a known serial rapist like Cosby but there is at least one rape allegation against him and his "caddish" repuation does seem a bit sleazier/more exploitative than your average man who has affairs. I don't necessarily think this should be held against Hilary but you know, it will be.

― Treeship, Wednesday, July 29, 2015 5:40 PM (3 hours ago)

i dunno if this will be a major issue in 2016 but i definitely think the allegations against clinton would be treated a lot differently now than they were in 1992. i remember salon reviewing the hitchens book and basically ridiculing him for taking the accusations seriously at all.

I think the issue of Clinton as a sexual predator should be treated separately from Republican's exploitation of it.

Sure, but I think either way this is a conversation Republicans are going to force us to have, which worries me because much as I dislike the hawkish, crypto-conservative Clintons I am afraid of having a Republican in office.

The problem with Kathleen Willey, one of the accusers, is she admitted to lying about testimony and had shopped her story around w/Linda Tripp as her unofficial agent.

Also Bill Clinton was the fucking worst on so many issues progressives care about now and Hilary certainly wasn't publicly critical of him then

Sure, but I think either way this is a conversation Republicans are going to force us to have, which worries me because much as I dislike the hawkish, crypto-conservative Clintons I am afraid of having a Republican in office.

― Treeship,

I don't think so. I mean, let's check this space in a year. The GOP can't discuss women because they don't like women. That's why so many of them are gay.

There are just a lot of ghosts that come with a Clinton candidacy

Hm, idk Alfred. Republicans are opportunists and i think they can twist feminist ideals to their own benefit

I haven't seen it work yet. Plus, there's the NYT story published a couple days ago leaking (or allowed to leak) the RNC's approach to attacking Clinton. Anything that impugns her femininity is out.

^^^

The GOP can't discuss women because they don't like women.

this is, sadly, v true - there's no way angle they can approach this from without tripping over themselves.

way

insofar as the RNC has any power (it doesn't).

They could claim the left was hypocritical in protecting Bill Clinton while being aggressive in going after accused people like the Duke lacrosse players or the more recent UVA thing or even that Columbia guy who still claims he is innocent. This could confuse and demoralize Clinton's more lukewarm supporters, turning them to a third party or discouraging them from voting altogether. The republican base, meanwhile, would be more motivated to vote if the relublicans successfully paint Bill as an "abusive psycopath." They might hate women but they def could flatter themselves by thinking they are women's protectors as misogynists often do.

This is all speculative obviously but it seems plausible

treeship, how old were you in the 90s?

Single digits

bringing up bill clinton's personal issues while in office as a way to get at hillary would be disastrous and total amateur hour politics imo

so like treeship said, it's a plausible plan for the republicans to attempt

american political media is not going to rehash bill clinton again. they just aren't.

This could confuse and demoralize Clinton's more lukewarm supporters, turning them to a third party or discouraging them from voting altogether.

there is 0.0% chance of this happening. maybe it should happen! but it won't.

If there is a credible rape accusation that emerges wrt Bill Clinton the progressive media won't ignore it. It's just impossible in this era imo. The right wing media also won't ignore it - i think it would be a "thing" although i can only speculate on how it would play out exactly

There are also harrassment allegations. Just a bunch of stuff

Treeship, how much is Ken Starr paying you?

there were credible rape accusations (which is to say, there were rape accusations) while he was in office and progressive media (hitchens aside) by and large defended him

you're talking about this as if it's some new explosive thing that just showed up and not a very established part of the clintons' life in public for 20 years

Tell me more about how the living ex-president with the highest "favorable" rating among them all, at 64% as polled by Gallup last year, is going to be an albatross around Hillary's neck. It's fascinating!

it's too perfect we're doing this in this thread

never say never i guess

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3176293/Woman-accused-Bill-Clinton-sexual-harassment-launches-anti-Hillary-website-recruit-victims-chronicle-scandal-day.html

ha goole otm

The media and the culture were extremely different in the 90s, like comparing apples to holograms of oranges

Every generation thinks they are the first to discover sex - and political scandals.

Things were in no way totally different in the 90s, you little rascal. Or are you talking about the 1890s? I'm not sure that would work either.

You don't think social media has changed how people read the news and which stories gain traction?

It's just a different news delivery system. Any story that has "gained traction" lately I could probably find several similar 80s-90s stories that also "gained traction" - and for the same basic reasons: sex, violence, moral outrage, spin, & did I mention sex?

I guess I don't want these cases to be re-opened bc i don't want a Republican president. But I also don't have much love for the crypto-conservative Clintons so w/e. I have no trouble believing the worst about that dude.

They already got Bill Clinton. It involved a stained dress. They got him as much as they are ever going to get him.

It took years of concerted and mostly failed effort to pin something on him. I remember when the stained dress emerged, I was like, oh my god, finally, they found something. And they made the most of it.

They managed to turn impeachment into a partisan joke. Why did this happen? Because everybody knew that they had spent forever finding it, had done nothing else but look.

By the way, Hitchens attitude on Bill Clinton was merely the first indication he was actually crazy. I'm no Clinton fan, but I did once really admire Hitchens, having read a bunch of his articles in Harpers during their great period (late 80s to late 90s).

So long as Hitchens kept to Clinton's fiscal and socialpolitical calamities ("welfare reform," the crime bill, DOMA) he was in peak form. If you want to read his Clinton book, stick to those chapters.

Oh, Clinton is despicable on that stuff -- does Hitchens make the case particularly well, given that I've seen it many times elsewhere?

Since you're here Alfred, I'll mention the attack on Norman Podhoretz that CH did is just one of the great jugular knifings ever - did you ever read that one?

Hey, back to Paglia, I was one of those people who bought Sexual Personae when it came out and thought it was really interesting. Speaking of Harpers, they thought she was interesting too....then they had to backtrack. I'm going to hide behind Greil Marcus and Harold Bloom now.....um, those guys thought she was okay, don't blame me!

I don't want to review the horror of those times, but let's not forget how Ken Starr's Whitewater panel transformed into a Starr Chamber when the Paula Jones lawsuit joined forces with it as if they weren't already one and the same (the first independent counsel, Republican Robert Fiske, was treated curtly when in 1994 he found nothing illegal in the Clintons' bungled cattle futures trading). Then there were the leaks to the press, the manipulation of a moronic Newsweek reporter who couldn't see that Linda Tripp had been hanging around Starr's office bringing witnesses since 1993, the SCOTUS decision (for which, regrettably, John Paul Stevens showed no remorse years later) affirming that a sitting president had no immunity against civil actions (I don't oppose the ruling in theory, but the facts dictated that the Court tailor this decision as narrowly as possible).

treeship can you explain what you mean by "crypto-conservative" here bc afaik the clintons are kind of completely wysiwyg?

secretly conservative. bill's record is atrocious, from the "welfare reform" to the crime bill to the trade agreements to DOMA and beyond

I suppose it might be "secret" to those who imagine Democrats are what they have not been for quite some time now?

Kind of a big selling point in his view.

bill was pretty open about his not-liberalness -- he ran as a "new democrat," promised to "end welfare as we know it," was a former DLC chair, and was fairly hawkish.

alfred, do you know of a good book on the clinton impeachment fiasco?

yes right I understand what u mean by "crypto" but I'm not sure what you believe is being concealed

alfred, do you know of a good book on the clinton impeachment fiasco?

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.)

Ignore the title: http://www.amazon.com/The-Death-American-Virtue-Clinton/dp/0307409457

roger, she is concealing it from some people. facebook friends post pro-hillary things alongside articles that bemoan inequality and the militarization of the police, as if hillary's legacy is of having resisted these things. i think she gave a speech in ferguson that people were impressed with. the "new democrat" schtick wouldn't land anymore so clinton is remembered -- dimly of course by my generation -- as simply a democrat/progressive imo.

i think people of mine & treesh's generation who became politically aware during gwb presidency were kind of vaguely scooted towards the impression that clinton was a really good liberal president, like idk ppl didn't really tell you "you know bush is awful but bill clinton wasn't so hot either" and teach you about welfare reform and i only became aware of that reputation later in college, like when i was a teenager the only bad thing i knew about him was that he got a beej, which i thought was hilarious

anyways the democratic party is moving left, even if at a glacial pace & whatever her personal politics or history hillary's economic platform will reflect that

No one talked about Clinton-era policy because the media was trained to regard neoliberalism as gospel, and lots of pundits were stupid enough to think 2000-era Bush drivel about compassionate conservatism represented a genuine, uh, compassionate break from the '90s (and the economy really was booming from '97-'01).

People were too busy making money (dotcom boom!) to notice how shitty bubba was, plus his enemies were significantly worse

when we say he was a shitty prez, who are we comparing him to?

there needn't be a comparator. anyone to the left of joe lieberman can look at his record and find it wanting

the democratic party is moving left

still don't see it, email Senate leader Chuck Schumer about it next term

where the hell are Hil's female lovers, that's what me n' Camille wanna know

there needn't be a comparator. anyone to the left of joe lieberman can look at his record and find it wanting

well, yeah

but someone [who is not ralph nader] has to be president. maybe we need a poll

oh you're one of those

lol

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/227359/camille-paglia-jews-and-feminism

apparently paglia voted for sanders in the primaries and stein in the general

thought I was losing my mind. there's more than one thread on her that got updated today. WHY
also BRING BACK SEARCH?

Camille Paglia

So, good for the Jews. xp

As for Trump and his oafishly loose words, liberal Democratic women have been in serious mauvaise foi in their ceaseless attacks on him, given the sycophantish pass they gave to the serial sexist behavior and concrete sexual exploitation and abuse of Bill Clinton (for whom I voted twice). The unwillingness of so many middle-class feminists to hold Hillary Clinton responsible for her cold and demeaning treatment of her husband’s working-class accusers seems inexplicable to me.

Apparently she didn't get the Always Believe the Woman EXCEPT for...memo.

DUUUUUUUUD!

Camille Paglia's Profiles in Cocaine continues with saying Sinéad O'Connor deserved to be abused as a child pic.twitter.com/vLlqVsrOe0

— cris (@ilchinealach) June 29, 2023

(just posted same clip in the Sinead thread, but figured it is worth emphasizing here)

vile human being

paglia was and remains an idiot