Yeah. First IOZ, addressing Paglia's genius at connecting the dots between separate universes and wagging the dog by its tail. IOZ:
Because he is a cruel man, Daniel Larison reminds us all that Camille Paglia . . . exists . A . . . passage:
The slaughter of the Holtzbergs and other Jews at Chabad House should be a wake-up call to Western liberals who believe that jihadism can be defeated through reason and happy talk. Only other Muslims can launch the stringent internal reform necessary to stomp this barbaric extremism out. But the events in Mumbai confirmed my opinion about the looming problem of a nuclear Iran: While I oppose all American military operations and bases in the Mideast, I continue to believe that Israel, whose security is directly threatened, has every right to take preemptive military action against Iran.
Why? Why indeed? Why, why, why is she still writing about politics?
Now Larison, on Paglia's defense of Palin's vapid strings of nonsense. Among much, much else, Paglia says:
Cavett's piece on Sarah Palin was insufferably supercilious. With dripping disdain, he sniffed at her "frayed syntax, bungled grammar and run-on sentences." He called her "the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High," "one who seems to have no first language." I will pass over Cavett's sniggering dismissal of "soccer moms" as lightweights who should stay far, far away from government.
I was so outraged when I read Cavett's column that I felt like taking to the air like a Valkyrie and dropping on him at his ocean retreat in Montauk in the chichi Hamptons. How can it be that so many highly educated Americans have so little historical and cultural consciousness that they identify their own native patois as an eternal mark of intelligence, talent and political aptitude?
How is it that Camille Paglia has so little consciousness of what an ass she sounds when pontificating in her own native patois---we call it "spatter prose" in honor of the 20th Century artist of her choice who rose to fame by randomly flinging paint at the canvas---that she takes her incoherent ravings as an eternal mark of intelligence, talent, and political aptitude? Hmmmm? Responding to her comments about Palin, Larison says:
Yes, it’s a lack of historical consciousness that causes people to think that spoken English should be coherent and comprehensible. No one should be concerned about declining standards or setting an atrocious example for those learning how to use their own language. Poor grammar and disjointed sentences aren’t lamentable signs of cultural deterioration–they’re just “colloquial locutions”! In other words, Cavett’s criticisms of Palin’s use of language were entirely accurate, but are supposedly too fusty and outmoded for the hip blogspeaking kids…and Camille Paglia....
” This is the hyper-condescension of the anti-bien pensant person, who in this case makes a grand show of her sympathy for a target of conventional ridicule to show how even more enlightened and thoughtful she is than the merely “provincial” bourgeoisie....
Or, er...let us hope that Salon gives Paglia her pink slip to spare us more blastings from her musty bellows o' Vulcan in the service of her Pagliaphilia. TBogg:
The Shame of Salon continues her 2008 Ladywood for Sarah! campaign by upbraiding that effete snob Dick Cavett over his dismissal of the Mukluk Marblemouth....Camille From the Block..., in her best slam poetry "patois":
My conclusion was that Cavett the Nebraska native had gotten far too processed by his undergraduate experiences at Yale, at a time when Yale was stuffily insular and a bastion of WASP pretension. An incident from 40 years ago flashed into my mind: During my first semester as a graduate student at Yale in 1968 (10 years after Cavett had graduated from Yale College), I was taking Anglo-Saxon from a dashing young professor with one of those classic WASP dynastic names -- like "The Philadelphia Story's" C.K. Dexter Haven. He was an affable fellow, a medievalist who went on to become a popular master of one of the undergraduate residential colleges.
As Mona Lisa Vito used to say: "Oh yeah, you blend. "
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