Also discovered on my sorting through Paglia's back catalogue, this snippet from a February 7, 2003, Salon interview with her:
As we speak, I have a terrible sense of foreboding, because last weekend a stunning omen occurred in this country. Anyone who thinks symbolically had to be shocked by the explosion of the Columbia shuttle, disintegrating in the air and strewing its parts and human remains over Texas -- the president's home state! So many times in antiquity, the emperors of Persia or other proud empires went to the oracles to ask for advice about going to war. Roman generals summoned soothsayers to read the entrails before a battle. If there was ever a sign for a president and his administration to rethink what they're doing, this was it. I mean, no sooner had Bush announced that the war was "weeks, not months" away and gone off for a peaceful weekend at Camp David than this catastrophe occurred in the skies over Texas.From the point of view of the Muslim streets, surely it looks like the hand of Allah has intervened, as with the attack on the World Trade Center. No one in the Western world would have believed that those mighty towers could fall within an hour and a half -- two of the proudest constructions in American history. And neither would anyone have predicted this eerie coincidence -- that the president's own state would become the burial ground for the Columbia mission.
Including one small town where the debris fell called Palestine, Texas.
Yes, exactly! What weird irony with an Israeli astronaut onboard who had bombed Iraq 20 years ago. To me this dreadful accident is a graphic illustration of the limitations of modern technology -- of the smallest detail that can go wrong and end up thwarting the most fail-safe plan. So I think that history will look back on this as a key moment. Kings throughout history have been shaken by signals like this from beyond: Think twice about what you're doing. If a Roman general tripped on the threshold before a battle, he'd call it off.
More:
It doesn't seem that Rice or any other member of the Bush inner team has spent any real time in the Mideast.No, they have no visceral feeling for the people of that complex region. The Middle East has been a seething crucible for thousands of years. All the border lines there are provisional -- they're always being drawn and redrawn. So this is madness -- even trying to sustain Iraq as a national entity after destroying Saddam's tyranny. Iraq is just a self-serving idea that the British had at the end of the Ottoman empire. It's a cauldron of warring tribesmen. Clinton never understood this either -- about the Mideast or the Balkans. He just wanted everyone to get along. What naiveté! The fierce animosities, the blood memory in those parts of the world. I understand it from my family background in Italy. We have long memories: Things that happened decades or centuries ago are as vivid as today -- it's tribal memory. That's what the Bush administration is missing about Iraq. They think that destroying Saddam will create a nation of happy Iraqis.
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From "Palestine, Texas," by T Bone Burnett:
Presidents come and presidents go
They rise like smoke they fall like snow
Do you believe the things you say
Your lofty thoughts are filled with hay
What is this faith that you profess
That led to this colossal mess
When you awaken from this coma
You'll find you were in Oklahoma
When you crawl out of this self delusion
You're going to need a soul transfusion
This version of the world will not be here long
It is already gone It is already gone
This version of the world will not be here long
It is already gone It is already gone
Oh, that space shuttle thing? I didn't realize there were too many people outside the aerospace science community who still remembered that. I certainly don't, unless someone brings it up. As much as I'd like to believe in omens, I'd like a more reliable prophetic voice than some lesbo academic.
All the same, maybe Bush would have been better off reading chicken entrails than listening to his strategists on Iraq. Good thing he's finally brought in some folks who seem to know what they're doing...or maybe they just have more favorable astrological charts, who knows?
Good Grief LOL
PErhaps the future Obama or McCain adminstration should guide future POlicy based on the Mayan Calender since according to that the gig is up in 2012. ABout makes as much sense
Perhaps they should make Camille Paglia chief of staff, although she's really better suited to McCain.
How odd that Rod chose to highlight the one bizarre, ridiculous comment Paglia made in an otherwise smart, logical, well-reasoned interview.
Paglia presented a host of hard-headed, realistiv arguments for avoiding war with Iraq. Her take on the space shuttle disaster was embarrassingly silly, and threatens to undermine all the intelligent things she said.
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