Kathy G is on it—-Camille Paglia has outdone herself in the stupidity department, if you can believe it. People always wonder why Salon publishes her, but I don’t. She was a founder; she probably has an iron-bound contract that says they have to. Mickey Kaus and Lord Saletan are harder-working contrarians, and that’s saying a lot, because being a contrarian is just a matter of guessing what your average liberal thinks and disagreeing. It’s not really different than being a conservative, except you maintain a pose—-some people pull it off for years—-that you’re a liberal who just finds your fellows thoughtless or disagreeable. Paglia’s twist on this is that she’s the feminist who hates women, unless they give her girl wood. So naturally, she luvs Sarah Palin. Her crush reminds me of this post Samhita linked yesterday for discussion. I disagree that men as a whole are so dick-oriented in their thinking, but I couldn’t disagree that this is going on in light of the wood-based voting comments offered by Rich Lowry, and Palin’s winking and wiggling her way through the debate.
However a lot of men, especially older men see her as hot. She’s a fantasy come to life. She’s the naughty librarian ‘MILF’ who they’d love to get with. This manifest itself in the form of male talk show hosts giving her a pass. Many actually spend valuable time talking about her looks and small time stuff and not her scary politics.
It manifest itself in people actually giving John McCain props for picking such a nice ‘looking babe’ versus’s focusing on his shortcomings. It sort of like him having a trophy wife. Except this one will have serious impact on US policy. It manifest itself in male producers who are behind the scenes spending time editing film and audio tape giving her a favorable look as she is a welcome break from the daily onslaught of old wrinkly white males who they are usually editing.
Paglia is one of these guys. She denies that her main attraction to Palin is bone-ability, but seriously, she invokes Madonna and she waxes poetic about Palin’s motherhood, as if that’s unique amongst female candidates. She actually tries to compare Palin’s unintelligible answers to questions to the dialects of recent immigrants who speak broken English, which is inventive and charming, but I have to point out is a product of necessity. Palin is a lifelong English-speaker. Paglia waves her hands about voting for Obama, but seriously, she writes like a full-blown wingnut.