Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Camille Paglia, who writes for Salon magazine, is a trifle bristly – part of her charm. She is to feminism what Lewis and Clark were to the great Northwest, for there is more to feminism than meets the eye of many establishment feminists. In her most recent piece in Salon, “ Fresh Blood for the Vampire ,” Paglia, North America’s Oriana Fallaci and a self described “dissident feminist”, takes aim at the outrageous attacks on Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin: Over the Labor Day weekend, with most of the big enchiladas of the major media on vacation, the vacuum was filled with a hallucinatory hurricane in the leftist blogosphere, which unleashed a grotesquely lurid series of allegations, fantasies, half-truths and outright lies about Palin. What a tacky low in American politics -- which has already caused a backlash that could damage Obama's campaign. When liberals come off as childish, raving loonies, the right wing gains. I am still waiting for substantive evi...

Camille Paglia , whose enticing column appears in Salon, an on-line publication, does not dread going where even dark angels fear to tread. Here is Paglia commenting on Hillary Clinton’s less than adroit handling of David Geffen’s defection from the Hillary camp: “What in tarnation was the Hillary Clinton camp thinking when it threw a tantrum about Hollywood producer David Geffen making a few critical remarks about her to a fagged-out media scold? Most people in this country have never heard of David Geffen and don't give a damn about whether or not he defects to Barack Obama.” The “fagged out media scold” is none other than New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. Paglia praised Obama’s “lofty assertion of statesmanlike unconcern” and then drove the shaft home: “Hillary didn't help herself with her over-the-top sermon at the First Baptist Church in Selma, Alabama, two weeks ago. Her aping of a black Southern accent from the pulpit was so inept and patronizing that it should ge...