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Paglia half gets it, too — 58 Comments

1. Reminds me of some Germans who blamed Himmler and the General Staff for the Holocaust and all the atrocities. Paglia is at least on the right track. Too many will never make the slightest effort to discover the true malice of Obama, especially here in NYC.

2. Paglia once said she could have taught at better schools–which is to say been hired there–save for her prickly independence which occasionally collides with conservatism, libertarianism, or common sense.
   She is far more flexible and self-aware and has more potential to see zero as a conman than do more conventional lib/left/progressives.

   The trope “Imagine if Bush had done [this or that]”does not get much traction because it presumes the other side has principles. They do not. It wasadvertised as bad because it could be used to bash Bush. It is good if it helps zero. No principle is involved and no shame at being caught as a partisan hack.
   If Paglia thought she’d see libs objecting to the snitch thing, she has been fooling herself about liberals.

3. I saw this article this morning and was also struck by the mixture of honest assessment of certain facts and complete denial about others. I don’t suppose we should be surprised that anyone who could see Axelrod as charming would ignore the mote in Obama’s eye so evident in the “solicitation of private citizens” to rat out perceived troublemakers.

4. It’s OK, it’s OK. Paglia’s critique is tellingly and strongly accurate, and she has readers, most of them presumably Obamaphiles, so the beach is being eroded by Paglia. Hopefully, probably, more waves from her quadrant will follow. Most co-dependants do not become fully independent in one sudden rush of clarity.

5. Ed Driscoll has a post at PJM on the media. He ends it with a quote from Karki: Obama would rather see the country come apart than not get his way.

6. expat, as proven by Barack’s debate response to Charlie Gibson, in which Barack openly showed he is more interested in tax “fairness” than in being effective at raising revenue from taxation. Barack would rather raise less tax revenue than not get his way.

7. “It’s OK, it’s OK. Paglia’s critique is tellingly and strongly accurate, and she has readers,”

   Yeah, can you imagine her writing this on January 21. Or even February 21. We’ve come a long way, baby!

8. I credit Paglia for her fierce independence and insights, but I can’t think of an example of when she changed her mind as an adult.

9. Neo,

   Why not just send Paglia an email with a link to your column? One blogger to another, so to speak, and see how she responds.

10. Here’s the BIG problem, something I think is far too often overlooked in these debates, particularly with progressives of good heart like Camille Paglia. People like Camille, many of my highly educated friends and relatives, even the not-so-goodhearted Obama, have a gigantic blind spot that I don’t think they will ever see past: they honestly believe that government bureaucrats, regulators and honest politicians, not having a vested pecuniary interest in the matter like the evil capitalists and imperialists, will bring a better and more equitable life for all. They do not see the deep rooted corruption at the UN and other NGO’s. They do not see the venal, corrupt, lazy and power-hungry power-seeking regulators and administrators for what they are. They did not learn the lessons of totalitarian fascism and communism, of the limousines and dachas and death camps. They are the wise. They know what is good for us, just like the intelligentsia always has and always will. That is why the framers of the US constitution tried desperately from leaving an avenue for them to take control, an experiment that did quite well for almost two and a half centuries.

11. The one thing that gives me hope is the “independents” who are so opposed to this. I think these are the people who voted for Obama because they were willing to take him at his word. They are now seeing what he said and what he had in mind are two completely different things and so he has lost much (if not all) his credibility in there eyes. In the Gospel of John the apostle Thomas refuses Jesus has risen until he has seen him with his own eyes.

    Maybe the independents are finally seeing with their own eyes.

12. Obviously I meant Thomas refuses to believe Jesus was crucified then rose from the dead.

    And in reading Paglia’s piece it is apparent the only thing she really holds Obama responsible for is hiring incompetent people. She is still under his spell and believes he can rescue us if he gets the right team together and takes control himself.

13. I have been an ambivalent fan of Paglia’s for many years. I’m especially grateful for her critique of academic feminism, but it seems that for every clear-eyed insight, there’s a wrongheaded rhapsody. Pelosi was once an idol of hers, apparently because she is a self-assertive Italian woman. Paglia thinks in terms of “personae,” or archetypes. It’s a largely aesthetic way of categorizing public figures, and that’s where she often goes wrong.
    Huxley is right: she won’t change her mind.

14. I really like Paglia because she THINKS. But, I am often struck by the disconnect. She has remarkable insights, then I read her opinion of Obama’s exceptional foreign policy ability? What the? It makes me think she is constructing it…it seems contrived.

    I guess I sound a bit conspiratorial. Perhaps there there is an element of the “battered wife syndrome”. She seems so reasonable. It is perplexing.

15. I would remind Noonan and Paglia and others of: Ayers, Wright, Rezko, Emanuel, Sibelius, Arnie Duncan, Napolitano, Holder, and Science czar John Holdren. He chose them all, the first three as associates and the rest as part of his administration. A gorier, more hateful, and corrupt rogue’s gallery you would be hard pressed to imagine. Obama fanciers cannot forever deny Obama’s lying down with dogs is not caprice but a compulsion born of his own beliefs, judgments, desires, plans, and vision for this country.

16. I don’t know if anyone else mentioned it but something smacked me the face a minute ago.

    The democratic leadership is completely projecting their anti war template onto these healthcare protests (so completely they’re even throwing in the same pejoratives they imaged we were using against them… un-American… terrorists… et cetera).

    Let’s run down:
    Spinning an issue they wouldn’t normally care about (the wars) into a partisan one to bring down the president. Outside support and coordination. On and on.

    I’m a big, ‘houses on unsound foundations can’t stand’ guy. Any way to use their errors against them (the error being, we are not against the healthcare bill as a partisans or to hurt Obama*….. For most of us, we just really dislike the bill)?

    * probably shaking loose some more memories about what the democrats found noteworthy about the debate from the other side.

17. huxley Says:

    “I credit Paglia for her fierce independence and insights, but I can’t think of an example of when she changed her mind as an adult.”

    Yeah, she devotes tons of time criticizing (re: trying to fix) groups she claims membership in… but never considers leaving them (feminism, democrats, academia, et cetera). It’s a definite pattern….

18. Ms. Paglia may indeed be a a good-hearted progressive with a major blind spot in terms of government interventionism as Ricardo mentions above. However she also is a wonderful essayist, and as Tom points out, she is accessing an audience that would never find its way to non-leftist websites. And eventually one would assume that she will realize that the clothes have no emperor.

    I just finished reading a book by David Mamet about the movie business published in 2007. For whatever reason, the book contains some gratuitous swipes at conservatives. However, in 2008, he wrote his quasi-famous “Why I’m no longer a brain dead liberal” piece for the Village Voice. So things change!

19. I have been an ambivalent fan of Paglia’s for many years. I’m especially grateful for her critique of academic feminism, but it seems that for every clear-eyed insight, there’s a wrongheaded rhapsody. Pelosi was once an idol of hers, apparently because she is a self-assertive Italian woman. Paglia thinks in terms of “personae,” or archetypes. It’s a largely aesthetic way of categorizing public figures, and that’s where she often goes wrong.
    Huxley is right: she won’t change her mind.
    

    Well, she did change her mind about Pelosi. Same could happen with Obama . . .

    But yeah, Paglia seems to put a lot of store in apperance and presentation, part of why she doesn’t like Bush but likes Obama.

20. She does put a lot of store in appearance and presentation. She can be quite blindingly self-absorbed – for instance, some years ago in Salon, she wrote an essay about how uninterested in the world today’s college students are. Her evidence for this thesis began and ended with the fact that she had gone to speak at some college and not many students showed up to hear her. Around the same time she argued that Gwyneth Paltrow is a bad actress — beginning and ending with the fact that Paglia didn’t like her neck.

    However, she grew up in the same hilly rural area of upstate New York farm country where I now live, and I absolutely love it when she writes about this place. She has an unerring feel for the people of this area — especially the farm women — and she has some interesting thoughts about how growing up an oddball in this hardscrabble place affected her independent turn of mind and helped her see past the walls of the usual liberal/intellectual/elite cocoon. Also, she certainly can write. I don’t always agree with her, by any means — but I do admire her.

21. I second physicsguy’s suggestion, neo. Why not send her a link to your blog? I don’t see how it could hurt.

22. The left is already calling Paglia names.

    Obama will try anything, including buying votes to get his way. I hear he is talking about subsidizing people with incomes up to $88,000 a year on this plan.

    I live in southern Indiana, and in this part of the country that is a lot of money. Outrageous.

23. Althouse, Noonan, Paglia and the ‘half gets it’ thing. I’m not particularly interested in them and their current trials and tribulations with squaring their vote for Obama with the facts of his behavior. They’ll have to live with what they’ve helped to do. But I am wondering and am not sure why — somebody please help me out — what males with the same reach in influence appear to be going through the ‘half gets it’ thing?

24. Be sure and click the link to the article about Sarah Palin. I don’t always agree with Paglia, but she’s one of those folks (like Patrick Buchanan) that can make a sound case for her side.

25. The democratic leadership is completely projecting their anti war template onto these healthcare protests (so completely they’re even throwing in the same pejoratives they imaged we were using against them… un-American… terrorists… et cetera).

    An interesting idea. It feels good when I roll it around in my mind.

    … eventually one would assume that she will realize that the clothes have no emperor …

    … helped her see past the walls of the usual liberal/intellectual/elite cocoon …

    In order to understand Paglia, McArdle and Althouse we have to see the political spectrum itself differently. Strictly political characteristics are no longer adequate to explain or predict the political behavior of certain parts of that spectrum. We must also take into account the social and cultural strata with which they identify.

    It used to be that if someone were a conservative or liberal their vote for the Presidency could be predicted with a fair amount of accuracy. In fact a list could be presented of, say, 15 political issues and a subject asked to pick one or two, yes or no, and the rest of the subject’s responses could be predicted with good accuracy. But the continuum has changed and more variance is there as long as the variance is of minor import.

    Let’s take Paglia: I would say that she is a Progressive(which is different than that dying breed, the liberal), who has embraced some non-Progressive traits probably in order to make her intellectual stance more interesting to publishers, her readership and to her students. Ya gotta be different to be noticed because the classical Progressive horse has been ridden to boredom — the phenomenon could be termed The Homogeneity of Progressive Intellectualism and makes for a host of slightly strange bedfellows straining for originality in inconsequential ways. After all, there’s only so many tacks they can take to condemn America — after awhile it gets repetitive.

    So, Paglia is a Progressive with some libertarian traits. As such she could be expected to vote for ANY Democrat black candidate that could win the nomination, whether they be Michael Jordan, Al Sharpton, Harry Belafonte or Obama. Likewise Althouse and McArdle. Of course, Republican black Presidential candidates, if there were such a thing, would only garner contempt and veiled racism from a Progressive.

    The litmus seems to be attitude toward foreign policy and toward history. If you believe that America is the Great Satan of the world (as the Islamists put it), responsible for all ills overseas and that America’s domestic history is a record of perfidy against its own citizens, then you ARE a Progressive, no matter what Libertarian side-issues you may embrace for the sake of novelty, teaching positions and book sales.

    The trouble for some of these creatures is that some of them were not prepared for the naked power-grab the Obama is attempting and not prepared for that scary look inside the man to the absolute emptiness that is there: the Joker Poster. It was all supposed to be romantic and sweet. The moves for domestic power becomes the focus and subject of anxiety but that is rationalized away with excuses. There will always be forgiveness because, after all, the One is right on track on the foreign policy train.

    I think we can expect some mild carping from McArdle, Althouse and Paglia, children rebelling against the parent, but they’ll fall into line and when the next Presidential election rolls around they will all throw the lever for Obama, in a psychic combination of Who’s Your Daddy and Daddy Knows Best.

26. and that furthermore he’s been surrounded by bad company all his life.

    No kidding! Poor guy started out with a typical white person for a grandmother! One step away from the wicked old woman with the gingerbread house!

27. Axelrod being charming.

28. Yes, the rush to legislate healthcare is part of a scam. It is a tactic to pass a bill that no one can actually read. No one can tease out all the combinations of clauses that hide the intended meanings. Those meanings will come forth after passage when the “clear meaning of the bill” is discovered as surprising policy.

    Reading the bill(s) is torture, an attempt to decode something that is obviously in code. So, I say, where are the official, government policy papers that lay out the plans, principles, and justifications for the legislation? It is the responsibility of the government to officially explain its policy, not the job of each citizen, or even the press, to decode a 1000 page bill. Whatever I extract or infer, I am drawing my own conclusions, and the government can say that I am misguided.

    If Obama is wise and good, then have him show his ability and insight by presenting the policy papers that guide the legislation. He has to have them. It would be unthinkable that Obama would attempt to legislate major changes in society without a written, organized analysis of proposed results, expected evolution, methods, justifications, comparative studies, past successes, funding sources, the works.

    Regardless of your party or philosophy, you should demand this display of analysis and investigation. Demand it ahead of any legislation. The rule of construction is “Measure twice and cut once”.

    Obama wouldn’t try to legislate from some scribbles on a cocktail napkin, would he? He wouldn’t say “give me anything, we’ll rearrange it later to do what we want”, would he?

    Join me in the demand to “Show me the policy paper!“. If Obama or any politician refuses or says that the analysis doesn’t exist, then I suggest mocking him with “Show me the cocktail napkin!”

    A Few Words About Policy

29. Pelosi was once an idol of hers, apparently because she is a self-assertive Italian woman.

    Please tell me you’re kidding. Please. Lie, if necessary.

    Thanks. Appreciate that.

30. If Paglia, Althouse, Noonan, etc. can’t bring themselves to admit they were wrong about Obama, maybe they could try the, “I was misled!” tack.

31. Paglia, Althouse, et al., who simply can’t bring themselves to admit to the logic of what they are witnessing and chalking all of Obama’s actions off to “bad advise” remind me of Stalin’s ’38 show trials when fellow Communists, staring at their own death sentence paperwork with Stalin’s signature affixed, still couldn’t bring themselves to believe that Stalin was behind it; rather they continued to believe that Stalin was simply a victim himself–a victim of bad advise and mis-information. Those convicted in Stalin’s show trials went to their graves with their belief in, and love for, Stalin the man almost totally un-diminished. Such is the power of ideology and self-deception and refusal to admit of error once a total psychic investment in Stalin and what he stood for had been made.

32. The vitriol exhibited in the lefty comments to the Paglia article are breath taking. It’s hard to believe people can be so intensely hateful. I thought the left were supposed to be the caring, tolerant people.

33. Paglia is a cultural critic, which can be entertaining, though rarely important.

    Different topic: it looks like the White House wants to gin up some race hysteria by re-opening immigration “reform.” No links yet, am just reacting to the topic’s sudden re-appearance on CNN. This is a good wedge issue for splitting up the Opposition. A straw in the wind.

    Give Obama credit, he’s upping the ante. No backing down there.

34. You’re right, Mr. Frank. They’re ill-spelled and venomous.

    After puzzling over them for some years, I still can’t figure the Leftists out. The mass of them seem to be in the grips of some kind of intensely powerful reaction-formation to “protect” themselves against their deepest, unacknowledged fears.

    Their leaders are just power-mad. And often cross over to outright evil. Such as condoning mass murderers if they happen to be in a pet class.

35. Obama would LOVE a race war. It would stroke his paranoid fantasies about “typical white people,” and give him buckets of justification for doing what he longs to do anyway: training the guns on all of us.

36. Let me clarify: I don’t think the guy will start a race war, but if one broke out, it would warm the cockles of his hater’s heart.

37. and she has some interesting thoughts about how growing up an oddball in this hardscrabble place…

    If by “oddball”, you mean carpet-muncher….

    Just because you don’t like the dick doesn’t mean you have to throw your lot in with enemies of freedom.

    You can love liberty and the free market even if you are a cat who digs cats or a chick who digs chicks!

    The personal is not political!

38. Very few liberals can step outside the wall of their certainty. It takes a major shift in perception–like the illustrations showing optical illusions–“a vase” or “two people talking,” a scene from Escher, etc.

    Once one gets the new perception, it’s almost impossible to go back to the old one.

    Hence, the popularity of neoneocon’s blog.

    I’m sure most of neoneocon’s loyal readers are those who see things from an entirely new perspective.

    Paglia will never “get it” until she opens her brain to see the landscape that we former liberals see, i.e. Obama’s a con man; the majority of Democrats in the Senate and the House are crooks and statists; Congress is dominated by Evil Clowns, etc.

    How does one become a former liberal? I don’t know. I’m the only former liberal that I personally know. The rest of my family and friends are trapped in the wall of their ignorance. They can’t get out. They know everything, so they think.

39. Mr. Frank Says:

    ” I thought the left were supposed to be the caring, tolerant people.”

    Thats what they never stop telling us all….

40. “Paglia will never “get it” until she opens her brain to see the landscape that we former liberals see,”

    One of the problems here is that you have to become a former “liberal”, one can still clearly be a Liberal (in the more classical sense) and decide the Democrats are Evil Incarnate. Paglia is still of the mind that the R and D nomenclature has some relation to being a liberal or conservative. Yes, on each side one is somewhat worse than the other, yet neither on is actually someone who would be covered by those labels.

    Same thing with my group (conservatives), many of us only vote Republican because it is the less worse of the choices. There is no need for me to become a “not conservative” to decide they are mostly politicians too. Indeed, you can hear me say “What would they say if a Republican had done that” over and over – while true the R’s haven’t represented me for a long time (since the death of the Contract with America).

    The people I work for have mostly been dems but are more properly “liberals”. It has been … interesting … to note their individual progression on Obama in that he spoke like an older Liberal and functions like a modern day Democrat. They, in a similar manner to me, have no where to go politically. They are still Liberal (as I am Conservative) but have realized there is no party out there for them.

    Paglia still can not accept that, she still sees a “D” as being inherently “Liberal”. Until she has someplace to go that is also “Liberal” I expect the mental gymnastics to continue for a great deal of people.

41. The issue of health care is only a means to an end for Obama and his minions. He simply does not hold the same core beliefs that most Americans do on most any topic, regardless of political persuasion, regardless of his protestations to the contrary. For example, Obama is now saying that he is not in favor of a single payer health care system, yet there are multiple youtubes circulating of him espousing exactly that and explaining why it will take ten or fifteen years to accomplish it. Which Obama are we to believe? What’s the old saw? Truth is what you do when you think no one else is looking?

    To see where his allegiances lie you need to peak behind the curtain to see who he’s been hangin’ with. We all know who they are and what they represent, but 52% of the electorate either didn’t do their research or subscribed fully to Obama’s vision.

    From time to time I return to this article to see if this author’s premise is being borne out.

    http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html

    If there were such a thing as a plausibility index, the plausability of Simpson being correct continues to rise sharply in my opinion.

42. Thanks for a good read Neo,
    I’m always amazed at the quality and thoughts of the blogs on a lot of blogs on the conservative side of the web and the emotive whining on the liberal side. Perhaps the wind is blowing some seeds of reason over there as you noted with Paglia. We can always hope.
    Nothing more to add but I appreciate reading your thoughts.

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44. I think being a socialist- as opposed to a classic 19th century liberal is a , as Churchill said,” a loser’s philosophy”. The socialists can’t compete without the crutch of a tribal support group, or manipulations of abstruse rules and regulations. That is why they are so emotional when challenged, it is insecurity. They see their own failings being dragged out into the light. Camille Paglia, to her credit, at least is an original thinker , and has written some interesting books. She is strong enough in her own personality, or perhaps originality, that she can disagree with the “mainstream”.

45. Projection abounds in the assessment of the Beloved. If he can just dispense with these incompetents who are leading Him over the cliff… Or, it’s those evil 60s and 70s radicals… No matter who’s to blame, whether it’s all of them or just he, our destination remains–the bottom of the cliff. He, with or without them, will be there waiting to tell all of us what to do. That’s what authoritarians do best.

46. Meanwhile Rasmussen reports a new low for Obama: 47%/52% Approve/Disapprove.

    Healthcare reform is dropping even faster. Whatever Team Obama is doing, it’s not working.

    But what they are doing is mostly dodging, spinning, lying and blaming, so it’s not surprising. They don’t seem to have any other gears.

47. Richard Fernandez — at Belmont Club, “Anything I Own,” 8/13/09 — gets to the center of Paglia’s problem with his characteristic, humerous simplicity: she still loves him.

48. Don’t miss .

    “bihag ng pagibig.”

49. Oops, boogered the HTML
    http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/08/13/anything-i-own/

50. yeah neo…why dont you chime in over at BC..unless you already have….

51. I think being a socialist- as opposed to a classic 19th century liberal is a , as Churchill said,” a loser’s philosophy”.

    Louise, interesting. I’ve long characterized socialism as a loser’s philosophy myself, without realizing I was echoing Churchill’s thought.

    My reasoning was simple: being lumped in with everyone else only makes sense if you’re in the bottom half. If I were going into business as equal partner with Bill Gates, I’d be thrilled if we both went “all in” when financing the venture. /g

52. I’m not saying this is true, but I am saying it’s the first thought that popped into my head when I saw a suggestion that Neo send this link to Camille Paglia:

    Style, meet substance.

    *ducks and covers* Okay Paglia fans, I’m ready!

53. To all who suggested I send the link to Paglia: why don’t you do it for me? I can’t figure out how—there’s no email address at the Salon site, at least that I can locate.

    And by the way, the vileness of the vitriol Paglia’s getting in the comments section has to be seen to be believed. Much of it seems to be of the anti-lesbian variety, too—just another example of the hypocrisy of “tolerance” on the Left.

54. Oh, bother said “Style, meet substance.”

    I love it.

55. Occam’s Beard Thanks. I wish I felt more original- but Churchill was truly a deep thinker about politics and leadership.

56. Mrs Whatsit: My blushes. Thank you.

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