Free Republic

Having said that, I must confess my dismay bordering on horror at the amateurism of the White House apparatus for domestic policy. When will heads start to roll? I was glad to see the White House counsel booted, as well as Michelle Obama's chief of staff, and hope it's a harbinger of things to come. Except for that wily fox, David Axelrod, who could charm gold threads out of moonbeams, Obama seems to be surrounded by juvenile tinhorns, bumbling mediocrities and crass bully boys.

.......But who would have thought that the sober, deliberative Barack Obama would have nothing to propose but vague and slippery promises -- or that he would so easily cede the leadership clout of the executive branch to a chaotic, rapacious, solipsistic Congress? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I used to admire for her smooth aplomb under pressure, has clearly gone off the deep end with her bizarre rants about legitimate town-hall protests by American citizens. She is doing grievous damage to the party and should immediately step down........

May 13, 2009 | In John Frankenheimer's taut 1964 film, "Seven Days in May," the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appalled at a disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union, plot a coup d'état to remove the president whom they regard as too soft and naive about the evil of America's enemies. The screenplay by Rod Serling (based on a 1962 novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II) is filled with passionate lines that seem right out of today's talk radio -- "intellectual dilettantes" versus patriotism; America's loss of "greatness"; the superiority of military experience to civilian judgment and governance.

(Listen) Camille Paglia, noted democrat, dissident feminist, college professor of Humanities and Media Studies, and registered Democrat whose 2000 presidential vote was Ralph Nader, slams her fellow liberals for straying away so far from the free speech ideals of the Democratic Party with their support for the Fairness Doctrine. Forward this link to your democrat representatives.

Salon editorialist Camille Paglia might very well be the last remaining liberal in the true sense of the word—as opposed to the liberty-suppressing “progressive” leftists who now occupy the White House and dominate both Congress and the mainstream media.Why? Because Paglia is actually a liberal/Democrat who opposes the “Fairness” Doctrine! I know, I know, you’re shocked. I was too. The blog Freedom’s Lighthouse posts this statement by Paglia: If there’s anything that demonstrates the straying of the Democratic Party leadership from basic liberal principles, it’s this blasted Fairness Doctrine—which should be fiercely opposed by all defenders of free speech. Except...

The debate on the 'fairness doctrine' is heating up(audio) American author, teacher, social critic and dissident feminist, Pamela Paglia, blasts the democrats for wanting to re-institute the so called 'fairness doctrine'. She called them 'immature' and said they want to violate the 'essence' of free speech and the 'soul' of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, former President Bill Clinton said we need something like the 'fairness doctrine' to provide 'balance'. Is he serious? We need to provide balance to the Main Stream Media, not political comment. Audio is here. 'fairness doctrine' debate(audio)

"These guys, Rush and Sean and the others, have worked their way up from the bottom, from nothing!"

Let’s be honest. The down-to-earth, at times radical, and always controversial libertarian Camille Paglia — nicknamed “Hurricane Camille” because of the blasts she still aims at the liberal feminist establishment — favors Obama/Biden over McCain/Palin. However, despite her Democratic leanings, Paglia stands out as one of the nation’s most important voices in exposing the perversity, danger, and superficiality of liberalism, a fact powerfully exemplified by what she has to say about Sarah Palin in a recent “Salon” piece.

Rip tide! Is the Obama campaign shooting out to sea like a paper boat? It's heavy weather for Obama fans, as momentum has suddenly shifted to John McCain -- that hoary, barnacle-encrusted tub that many Democrats like me had thought was full of holes and swirling to its doom in the inky depths of Republican incoherence and fratricide. ...Having said that, I must admit that McCain is currently eating Obama's lunch....[Saddleback Church] where a surprisingly unprepared Obama met the inevitable question about abortion with shockingly curt glibness -- began his alarming slide. [snip] Pow! Wham! The Republicans unleashed a doozy...

It wasn't an intentional double entendre in the title of the post (Paglia being a proud, self-proclaimed lesbian and all), but I had to tie in that Palin was the subject of the comment . . .. Anyway Camille Paglia is, by far, one of the most intelligent Democrat commentators I can think of, and even Rush Limbaugh digs her - a lot - even if she is, as Rush says, totally in the tank for Obama. I have the deepest admiration -- the most profound respect and love -- for Camille Paglia. I think Camille Paglia is absolutely brilliant...

...But Hillary herself, with her thin, spotty record, tangled psychological baggage, and maundering blowhard of a husband, is also a mighty big roll of the dice. She is a brittle, relentless manipulator with few stable core values who shuffles through useful personalities like a card shark ("Cue the tears!"). Forget all her little gold crosses: Hillary's real god is political expediency. Do Americans truly want this hard-bitten Machiavellian back in the White House? Day one will just be more of the same.

Dear Camille, To those of you against the war in Iraq, here is what you do not understand: Iraq is but one battle in the 60-plus-year ideological struggle we call "the war on terror." Do you really want to leave Iraq and wait for the enemy and ideology that dropped the World Trade Center to grow into a much stronger, deadlier and efficient killing force? Did you not understand or believe President Bush in his address to the nation on Sept. 20, 2001, when he said: "Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but does not end there ......

I know you are a Democrat, but you certainly have very strong libertarian opinions. I was wondering where you stand on the Second Amendment. I'm a registered Independent who, the older I get, leans more toward libertarianism. Ideally there would never have been a Bill of Rights, and all freedoms would be understood to be the rights of every American. But since we have one, the rights listed, to me at least, are sacrosanct -- all of them, not just the first and third through the tenth! I am pro-gun ownership. I have never been arrested, and the sum total...

Barack Obama commands respect while Hillary Clinton overacts. Plus: John Edwards' disappearing act, Mary Shelley debunked, and Ann Coulter's gender weirdness. Nerves, nerves, nerves: The contenders in both parties for the 2008 presidential nomination have been acting like skittish race-track thoroughbreds rearing and shying as their handlers try to shove them into the gates. Each campaign is super-concerned about its candidate getting distracted, winded or making a crippling misstep. What in tarnation was the Hillary Clinton camp thinking when it threw a tantrum about Hollywood producer David Geffen making a few critical remarks about her to a fagged-out media scold?...

WHAT went wrong at Harvard? Tomorrow, Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences will meet for the first time since the resignation of the university's president, Lawrence H. Summers, two weeks ago. The dean of Arts and Sciences, William Kirby, resigned in late January, reportedly after clashing with Mr. Summers. When Mr. Summers leaves on July 1, there will be a serious leadership vacuum at Harvard, which has been torn by strife during his short five-year tenure. Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary, assumed the presidency with a high sense of mission. Determined to effect change, he took bold and confrontational...

April 2005 Daniel Nester features An Interview with Camille Paglia Before she became the porn-friendly pundit who pounces on Puritanical feminists and the poststructuralist powers-that-be, Paglia was a humanities professor. When I lived in Philadelphia, her students would tell me about this crazy professor who walks in with a boombox and blasts Led Zeppelin at top volume. Paglia’s academic life changed upon publication of 1990’s Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. Her Yale dissertation published some 20 years after taking her degree, the 700-page tome remains an energetic, Freud-friendly reading of Western art, and one that,...

The Magic of Images: Word and Picture in a Media AgeCAMILLE PAGLIA Education has failed to adjust to the massive transformation in Western culture since the rise of electronic media. The shift from the era of the printed book to that of television, with its immediacy and global reach, was prophesied by Marshall McLuhan in his revolutionary Understanding Media, which at its publication in 1964 spoke with visionary force to my generation of college students in the United States. But those of us who were in love with the dazzling, darting images of TV and movies, as well as with...

America's most telegenic feminist, Naomi Wolf, has touched off a media firestorm with a forthcoming condemnation of two decades of alleged sexual harassment against women at Yale, her former university. According to advance "tasters" of the expose, she describes herself as a victim of harassment and names a senior professor as her tormentor. Her high-profile denunciation of alleged sexual misconduct at the Ivy League university has already drawn a furious response from one of her feminist sisters and another former student of the professor. Camille Paglia accused Wolf of launching a witch hunt similar to those that swept New England...

"DRUDGE RADIO SPECIAL, TODAY, SUB-HOSTING FOR RUSH LIMBAUGH, SPECIAL GUEST PROF. CAMILLE PAGLIA..."

This Iraq adventure is a political, cultural and moral disaster for the United States. Every sign was there to read, but the Bush administration is run by blinkered people who are driven by ideology and who do not feel the largeness of the world and its multiplicity of religions, ethnicities and customs. Despite the multicultural ambitions of higher education in the last 25 years, there has been a massive failure in public education. Media negligence also played a huge role in this cataclysm. Throughout all of last year, as the war drums were beating, the media did not do its...