Camille Paglia loves Sarah Palin

Go Camille!

Always glad you link to her, Rod.

Holy crap, though, it's amazing how much you like gay people. I can't believe how you let your ideology get in the way of a natural affinity.

I like Sarah Palin, and I've heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is -- and quite frankly, I think the people who don't see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma.

Me too, our host included. I think this "Palin is stupid" meme is simply a reaction to being led down the rosy path in 2000 by an actual idiot, George W. Bush. Sarah Palin is not George Bush.

I say it again, look at the reactionary vitriol of the Palin-detractors - it is of a piece with those (like myself) for whom the very sight of W. drives me apoplectic. It is ideological and visceral hatred for Christianity, at its core.

Paglia continues: As for the Democrats who sneered and howled that Palin was unprepared to be a vice-presidential nominee -- what navel-gazing hypocrisy! What protests were raised in the party or mainstream media when John Edwards, with vastly less political experience than Palin, got John Kerry's nod for veep four years ago? And Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, for whom I lobbied to be Obama's pick and who was on everyone's short list for months, has a record indistinguishable from Palin's. Whatever knowledge deficit Palin has about the federal bureaucracy or international affairs (outside the normal purview of governors) will hopefully be remedied during the next eight years of the Obama presidencies.

Yes, it will be -- IF the rabid left is not successful in poisoning the well of public opinion.

Why, oh why do you insist on quoting Paglia in your blog?

::groans in pain::

If you can't get past the Salon subsciber page in Rod's link, go to www.drudgereport.com and click on the link for CAMILLE PAGLIA in the alphabetical listing of columnists.

Palin will be on Larry King Live tonight. I predict that it will be interesting.

Rod, this has nothing to do with the above, but I misplaced your email address. Your Bp. JONAH was elected Metropolitan 35 minutes ago. Comments? Think he'll take the brewer with him? Axios to him, my condolences to y'all who are losing him (well, some condolences to him as well. You couldn't pay me enough.).

Umm... where to start.
A quick google search was enough to determine that Kathleen Sebelius is more experienced (six plus years vs. 2) at a state-wide level than Sarah Palin. John Edwards ran a respectable presidential campaign and served in the Senate longer than Palin was governor. Evidently Camille considers fact checking beneath her.

To assert that no one paid attention to the Ayers connection is incorrect, there just wasn't anything there to write about. Ayer's leftist educational project was financed by a Republican woman (Leonore Annenberg) who endorsed John McCain. John McCain's father-in-law was a convicted felon who may have been tied to organized crime but I don't think it was improper for John to associate with Cindy's father.

The reaction of Democrats, independents, and more than a few prominent Republicans to Sarah Palin was not based on her opposition to abortion, instead it was based upon the realization that if she couldn't perform well during a softball interview with Katie Couric she was not ready to be president. If you can't handle Katie Couric, you can't handle Putin, Chavez, Ahmadinejad, or Kim Jong-il. Read Colin Powell's description of why he supported Obama.

If Camille wants to accuse anyone of "irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage", she should first sit down, take a deep breath, look in the mirror and reread her article. We have serious problems to solve and need calm, sober analysis to find pragmatic solutions to the financial crisis and our foreign policy problems. An over-the-top screed like this might feel good to read but does nothing to advance attempts to find common ground among competing points of view. Mindless dismissal of all people who through hard work have graduated from elite institutions is counterproductive to building a better future for our children.

I asked: "Why was Sarah Palin picked by McCain as his VP choice?"

Derek Copold responds: "Identity politics, pure and simple."

No...that is why YOU believe she was picked. I am looking for someone to post a quote or a reference where John McCain explains why he chose Sarah Palin as his VP candidate. There are many possible answers, a few of which could be:

- "She is the most qualified person in my opinion to hold the office of VP."

- "I chose her because her abilities and skills are exactly what our nation needs in this important position at this time."

- "I chose her because she is a woman, and I want a woman on my ticket."

There are hundreds of other reasons that he may have given. But what I am really looking for is this: did McCain articulate to the nation in clear terms why he felt Sarah Palin deserved the nod for VP? What put her at the top of the short list in the end?

I honestly do not know, and I do not recall hearing such an explanation from him. I heard the word "maverick" a lot, as well as "independent thinker." But I never heard him say, "I chose her because ____."

Does anyone have an answer?

But what I am really looking for is this: did McCain articulate to the nation in clear terms why he felt Sarah Palin deserved the nod for VP?

Has McCain ever articulated anything to the nation in clear terms? I mean, other than his preternatural desire to meddle in other countries' affairs.

As for Palin having some superior set of skills, if you can divine them, you're a singular fellow. The only obvious answer is that he picked Palin for her gender and politico-religious appeal.

To add to Julie's post:

That Palin is still making Ayers a focal point shows just how clueless she is when it comes to current events and information.

If she read newspapers, read blogs, or followed the news, she'd know that Bill Ayers himself said that he and Obama were NOT close. In fact, his exact quote was:

He said that he laughed, too, when he listened to Sarah Palin’s descriptions of Obama “palling around with terrorists.” In fact, Ayers said that he knew Obama only slightly: “I think my relationship with Obama was probably like that of thousands of others in Chicago and, like millions and millions of others, I wished I knew him better.”

It's actually a fascinating interview with a complex person - not the caricature created by the McCain/Palin campaign.

Every time Palin does an interview, she gives her future opposition much more fodder.

I do love the idea that if the press has just paid more attention to Obama's passing familiarity with Ayres/Dohrn or talked more--is that possible--about Rev. Wrght, that somehow McCain and Palin would have won. As if the public is going to overlook tired ideas and apparent incompetence because they don't like someone Obama met a couple of times at meetings and parties.

I shared an office with her for a semester when I taught at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia 21(!) years ago. This was before her first big book came out, so before she was famous, but she was already a character. ;-)

I dunno, I sorta dig her. If she happens to turn un-gay, let me know...

In one of the imaginary hells that I see myself getting assigned to, I work as the closed captioning transcriber for an eternal Camille Paglia talk show. And the whole program is her monologue after she's taken a couple of Dexedrine.

P.S. If I'm condemned for an especially grievous mortal sin, toss in a really bad hangover.

McCain said he picked Palin for several reasons and I'm paraphrasing:

-She was a reformer who took on the establishment
-She was a Washington outsider
-She was a Maverick (which is really a function of the first two points)
-She was against pork/earmarks/gov't waste
-She was a regular person
---------------

Thanks, Matt. That's a lot more concise and clear than anything I heard McCain say about her. I heard a lot about her being a maverick and how she stood up to her party.

What I didn't hear from McCain was any kind of statement that she was the best person for the job. Maybe he did say it, but I certainly did not hear it from him, either at the convention or in any of the debates.

On the other hand I heard Obama say that Biden was the best person for the job several times over. Now, you can make of that what you will.

My point is that if McCain cannot honestly state of his running mate that she is the best person for the position, why should we make that assumption about her?

So much ankle biting on.

I am so very angered at the idea that liberals don't like Palin because she is pro-life. As a pro-life Democrat, that is about the only thing I like about Palin. Well, that and her hunting skills. I have the deepest respect for those who could provide for themselves and their families should the centralized food web break down.

While I acknowledge that some liberal Democrats, particularly of the feminist persuasion, call rather too much attention to the supposed incongruence of Palin's pro-life stance with her admission that she had an amnio, or her support for abstinence-only education with her daughter's pregnancy, I myself can not get beyond her boundless resentment towards anyone with non-material aspirations, and her prideful ignorance. I think I am far from alone in this.

The idea that she is reviled because she made the choice to give birth to a baby with Down's in an invention of the right wing nuttery.

No, let's hope the 'evil genie' doesn't go into the bottle again. we the dire economic situation compliments of the Bush debacle, we need all the laughs we can have. And she, Palin, while not even remotely funny herself, manages to make us laugh, uproariously laugh, each time she opens her mouth.
"I want to restore the credence and credibility of the media"....her long and meandering paragraphs. her excuses for her total ignorance of our own government and country. No, keep her out of the bottle or the box, we need the entertainment! Can't wait for another interview! and in a few weeks her wayward daughter will give birth making her a grandmother....if the baby is half black....will we be told? maybe so, that way she can try to get the Black vote. Can't wait...with McCain out of the picture we need more material, so do the TV writers and comedians.

Camille Paglia is overdrawn on her 15 minutes of fame. The contrarian academic as rock star shtick is wearing thin.

We've had eight years of dumb-is-beautiful and education-is-elitist politics. It's merely set this country up for the current economic crisis.