Camille Paglia, last of the open minded liberals

American Thinker ^ | October 24, 2009 | Danny Huddleston

[neverdem]

What would you call an acknowledged member of the intellectual elite who is skeptical of global warming, likes to listen to Rush Limbaugh, has an ongoing battle with the feminist establishment and is a fan of Sarah Palin? I would call her the last of the open minded liberals. Don't get the wrong idea, she's no dittohead. And she has some controversial and disturbing ideas that would be right at home in the far left universe. But what she doesn't do is blindly follow today's liberal orthodoxy.

Today's liberals consist of two groups. One group includes the far left ideologues who believe that government is the answer to all our problems. Obama, Reid and Pelosi fit into this group. Also included in this group are those liberal politicians who may be uneasy with what those three are up to but are too afraid to speak out. The other smaller and shrinking group is made up of open minded liberals who are not afraid to speak out when they see corruption and incompetence in today's leaders.

Camille Paglia is a leading voice in the latter group. She is a Professor, Author and Cultural critic who writes a column for salon.com. It's no secret that she has been very critical of the Obama administration since his first week in office. In a recent column she answers a letter from a reader who asks how she can continue to support Obama in spite of her withering criticism of his administration.

Her answer is similar to the main theme of many of her other recent columns. She has some harsh words for those around Obama and some of his policies while still holding out hope that he can turn it all around, as reflected in this comment: "Count me among those who are very critical of many of Obama's actions or evasions but who continue to like him and to believe in his potential as a world leader."

A good example of her disdain for those around Obama can be found in this excerpt from a column she wrote in March of this year:

Yes, free the president from his flacks, fixers and goons -- his posse of smirky smart alecks and provincial rubes, who were shrewd enough to beat the slow, pompous Clintons in the mano-a-mano primaries but who seem like dazed lost lambs in the brave new world of federal legislation and global statesmanship.

Heads should be rolling at the White House for the embarrassing series of flubs that have overshadowed President Obama's first seven weeks in office and given the scattered, demoralized Republicans a huge boost toward regrouping and resurrection. (Michelle, please use those fabulous toned arms to butt some heads!)

Interestingly this is not the first Democrat administration that Camille has had a problem with. In a 1995 interview in Playboy she was asked: "Were you optimistic when Clinton was elected?" Her answer:

Of course. We finally had a great opportunity. It was a chance to rethink everything that had failed as a result of the shoddy thinking in the Sixties and to try again with a new, reasoned approach. The Clinton administration should have been a think tank for the nation--he himself should have led the debate, reaffirming all Sixties ideals but correcting them where they had become excessive. It's a tragedy that he didn't. Instead of surrounding himself with progressive intellectuals, he surrounded himself with Eighties yuppies--like George Stephanopoulos, whom I loathe with a passion. I wish Clinton would fire everyone around him. I want a Saturday night massacre. I hate them all. But Clinton has totally lost the persona of leadership. It's pathetic. He's looking like a salesman.

It's deja vu all over again, she has a chronic case of buyer's remorse.

Notice her criticism of the Clinton administration extends all the way to the guy at the top. She even criticized Clinton for not resigning after the Monica Lewinsky scandal. But today with her critique of the Obama administration she stops short of blaming Obama himself. It will be interesting to see if this changes in the future.

Why do influential liberals like Camille continue to give Obama a pass? Clearly Obama and those he has surrounded himself with are far more radical than the Clinton administration was. A new video has surfaced showing Anita Dunn, the White House communications director extolling the virtues of Mao Tse-Tung. This is just the latest in a string of marxists and radicals found serving in the Obama White House.

There is a logical reason the Obama administration is far more radical than the Clinton administration was. It is the culmination of a decades long trend. Professor Paglia's colleagues in academia have been a little too successful in their efforts to change our culture. Many parts of American society including political parties -- particularly the Democrat Party -- have been moving to the far left for many years now.

Camille and a few other liberals like her who still believe in liberty and freedom and reject political correctness have been shut out of the debate. No one is listening.

Her writings are filled with heartfelt questions for her party. Some may wonder if her thought process is taking her down the same road that Robin of Berkeley traveled recently? That's not likely, Camille has traveled too far as a Democrat. Here are some of her pleas to the Democrat establishment from her September 9th column:

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year's tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? [...] It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings.

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.

How has "liberty" become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals? [...] I always thought that the Democratic Party is the freedom party -- but I must be living in the nostalgic past. [...]

[A]ffluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it's invisible.

It's almost painful to read the lamentations of a JFK Democrat pleading with today's Democrat establishment. Camille doesn't realize that the Democrat party has been taken over by leftists. She believes that Obama is a pragmatic rational liberal like herself and all his missteps to date come from the bad advice he's been getting from his inept advisers.

The idea that Obama's problems may be self-inflicted is probably too terrible for her to contemplate. Camille doesn't realize that Obama is a product of the new Democrat Party. The Democrat party of her youth is no more. It has been replaced with a party that is flirting with socialism and dare we say it -- communism. Camille is shocked that the anti-establishment hippies of the 60's now see no problem giving up their freedom to a huge government bureaucracy. Perhaps it's because those hippies from the '60s have become the establishment.

As the Democratic Party continues to ignore the advice of open-minded liberals like Camille Paglia and heads down the self-destructive path of radicalism there is a valuable lesson here for conservatives. We should always vote for the most conservative candidate we can find because once he or she gets to Washington . . .

Well, you know what happens. Surrounded by the trappings of seemingly unlimited federal power politicians from both parties seem to be inexorably pulled to the left. Even Reagan couldn't get rid of the Department of Energy.

[neverdem]

Camille is very close to the last, if not the last.

[Arthur McGowan]

Camille is interesting in the way a bicycle-riding bear is. So, she occasionally says something true. Big deal. Thoughtful conservatives say MORE things that are true—and they say them all day long.

She is fundamentally an unserious and uninteresting person.

[aliquando]

Who would be the conservative equivalent?

[RobbyS]

She can’t admit that Mr. Obama is no more than he seems to be: a salesman like Bill.

[Jim from C-Town]

As a true Salesman,I resent the implication that Obama is a Salesman. A true salesman has conviction, and the ability to CLOSE. Obama couldn't close a door.

He is a loser. He was ACORNed into the nomination and the White House. He is a failed president at less than one year in. His personal charisma and like ability (though I see none of it) are the only thing he has left. And he is determined to spend even that by constantly being on Television, and whoring himself and the presidency out for any two bit rubber chicken circuit fund raiser he can find.

[Vendome]

This guy is a joke and couldn’t close a closet door.

[DemforBush]

I always enjoy reading Paglia, even if I don’t agree with her very often. A keen mind and a sharp wit are always in style. Plus, she takes such delight in batting that doofus Naomi Klein about, the way my cat bats around his favorite catnip toy. :-)

I’d also suggest Pat Caddell qualifies as an open-minded liberal. He’s another one I always enjoy, even when I don’t agree with him.

On the “maybe list”...Doug Schoen and Diane Feinstein, though the latter only infrequently. Schoen is on Hannity a lot, and strikes me as a fairly straight shooter. He seems much more interested in the “nuts and bolts” of issues than spinning them. As for DiFi, well...she’s way down the list, but there *are* times when she “gets it”. It may be more out of politically necessity than any true conviction, but she is (IMHO) still light years ahead of Boxer or Pelosi...or most of the current administration.

[TChad]

I will be more impressed with Camille Paglia when she follows David Mamet's lead and says that she is no longer a brain dead liberal. What is she waiting for?

[SupplySider]

I'm a fan of Paglia, but I'm not sure I'd describe any liberal as open minded. Their defining characteristic is a superstitious belief that, against all evidence, massive government spending and regulation lead to more prosperity and a better society.

Paglia is great at skewering liberal and conservative idiocy, but, typically, in a recent column, she went with pure emotional bias in her continued support of Obama. Liberals are fundamentally irrational.

[billmor]

I love this little ady...Sharp, witty, and so much wiser than some of her liberal friends, but she still believes in Camelot and the ideals of the hippies where war is immoral and the Military-Industrial complex was wrong; a benevolent liberal Democratic government is best for the country, and the name of the game was Kennedy...But unfortunately the world moved too fast and before we knew it nations had fallen, ideologies had crumbled, and during many of our years our nation just plodded along with no grand view of things..She is trying to pull the far leftists back towards the center and back to their senses...but the hole in the dike is just too big now and we have to suffer under the worst WH in decades..The pain she feels as a liberal is nothing like the pain we conservatives are feeling as we watch our country disintegrate...

[MuttTheHoople]

My favorite liberal lesbian columnist. At some dinner party, somebody thought it would be hilarious fireworks to put Paglia and Rush Limbaugh at the same table. Turns out, they had a great time together...both have a disdain for government control of our lives, and a love for really fine cigars.

[Larry Lucido]

Newt Gingrich (and I don’t say that in a complimentary way).

[backhoe]

My favorite liberal lesbian columnist. At some dinner party, somebody thought it would be hilarious fireworks to put Paglia and Rush Limbaugh at the same table. Turns out, they had a great time together...both have a disdain for government control of our lives, and a love for really fine cigars.

Exactly.

I like the woman- naturally, don't agree with her about some things, but I recall when she used to appear on C-Span, she cut no slack for sloppy reasoning, no matter which side it came from.

[Wife of D28Man]

Agreed. Obama is not a salesman; he’s a thug.

[MNJohnnie]

Think Juan Williams is the last open minded Liberal.

[MNJohnnie]

Who would be the conservative equivalent?

There can be none. Conservatism is a rational approach to life.

In order to be Conservative, one must be open minded to the realities of the world as it is where as Liberalism is an emotional response demanding the world be changed to fit the emotional whimsies of the Liberal.

[neverdem]

Cap and Trade Could Be a Boon to New York (Gillibrand's shilling for Wall St. now. Before, it was tobacco.)

How We Can Win in Afghanistan

Scozzafava Declares Herself Part of Abramoff Wing of GOP: Funnels Campaign Cash to Family

Senate GOP campaign chief Cornyn turns his attention to NY race

Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign or military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[raybbr]

Yes, free the president from his flacks, fixers and goons -- his posse of smirky smart alecks and provincial rubes, who were shrewd enough to beat the slow, pompous Clintons in the mano-a-mano primaries but who seem like dazed lost lambs in the brave new world of federal legislation and global statesmanship.

What's her point here? It seems to me that she's saying get rid of those guys and the real Obama will come out: The post-racial, bipartisan one-for-all and all-for-one Obama.

However, I believe these people represent the real Obama. Sorry, I don't believe Ms. Paglia's reading the liberal tea leaves right. It sounds reasonable when you read it but when you stop and think about she's the one getting fooled.

[xkaydet65]

Charles Krauthammer.