Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Camille Paglia Speaks

While everyone is trying to figure out what did or did not happen when President Donald Trump met with the Russian Foreign Minister and Ambassador last week, we turn our tired eyes to Camille Paglia.

In an interview with the Washington Free Beacon Paglia answers two salient questions. The first concerns whether or not misogyny doomed Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

Paglia thinks not:

Misogyny played no significant role whatever in Hillary Clinton’s two defeats as a presidential candidate. This claim is such a crock! What a gross exploitation of feminism—in the service of an unaccomplished woman whose entire career was spent attached to her husband’s coat tails. Hillary was handed job after job but produced no tangible results in any of them—except of course for her destabilization of North Africa during her rocky tenure as secretary of state. And for all her lip service to women and children, what program serving their needs did Hillary ever conceive and promote? She routinely signed on to other people’s programs or legislative bills but spent the bulk of her time in fundraising and networking for her own personal ambitions. Beyond that, I fail to see how authentic feminism can ever be ascribed to a woman who turned a blind eye to the victims of her husband’s serial abuse and workplace seductions. The hypocrisy of feminist leaders was on full display during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which incontrovertibly demonstrated Bill Clinton’s gross violation of basic sexual harassment policy. Although I had voted for him twice, I was the only feminist at the time who publicly condemned Clinton for his squalid and unethical behavior with an intern whose life (it is now clear) he ruined. Gloria Steinem’s slick casuistry during that shocking episode did severe damage to feminism, from which it has never fully recovered.

Second, Paglia opines on the retro masculinity of one Donald Trump, and suggests that someone needed to counter the media and academic mania over gender:

Having said that, I will don my political analyst hat and say that Donald Trump’s retro style of confident masculinity (which dates from the Frank Sinatra/Hugh Hefner period) was surely a major factor in his victory and represents what was probably an inevitable and necessary course correction in American gender relations. The delirious excesses of unscientific campus gender theory, translated into intrusive government regulations by elite school graduates saturating the Obama administration, finally hit a wall with the electorate. The mainstream big-city media too have become strident echo chambers of campus gender dogma, as demonstrated by last year’s New York Times fiasco, where two wet-behind-the-ears reporters fell on their faces in trying to prosecute the Trump of his casino days as a vile sexist.

Have a nice day!

10 comments:

Katielee4211 said...

I do appreciate Paglua's no nonsense, pragmatic perspective and viewpoint. Thanks for posting.

Ares Olympus said...

Paglia: Misogyny played no significant role whatever in Hillary Clinton’s two defeats as a presidential candidate.

It is interesting that Hillary Clinton got more votes in the 2008 Democratic primary than winner Obama, and got more votes in 2016 general election than winner Trump. And a shift of 100k votes between certain states in both 2008 and 2016 would have changed the results. So we might just say she got unlucky.

Misogyny can be defined in different ways. Like saying "Women should be barefoot and pregnant" isn't any more misogynist than Muslim societies that say a women should stay in the home. Both can put women up on a pedestal just like we have Mother's day. We honor our women by recognizing their biological role, right? And if any complain about this single box, we can say they are ungrateful, or say that they are demeaning their own biological gifts.

But by prejudice against leadership, whether accurate or not, women are perceived as less competent than men, although maybe no worse than short men are perceived as less competent than tall men. And if we admitted humans had our own silverback bias, what should we do about that? Can we turn off our biology that looks for a big belligerent male to protect us?

We were just talking about "external self awareness" and recognizing our individual biological advantages is a part of that. So that means Trump can rant like a maniac and be loved by his followers, while a woman who acted like him could never get ahead, not anywhere. Not even Trump understands why this works. He just exploits what works.

So is that collective misogyny or just collective stupidity?

Anonymous said...

I have no interest in what Camille Paglia says. She complains about the liberal standpoint but doesn't have to courage to leave her cushy position on the left.


Blahgga the Hutt

Ares Olympus said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Stuart Schneiderman said...

Brevity is the soul of wit... I asked you to stop filling up so much space. I really did mean it.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

What is most striking about all this again and again is how the media is not doing their job. They no longer understand their role. They are modern town criers claiming authority, not skeptics reporting on what they see. And what they cry about is exactly as Paglia describes. There's no trust in the media anymore because they are nakedly ideological, proselytizing their deeply-held, uniform beliefs.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

And a happy story today from the modern academy...

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/05/15/congratulations-carson-huey-you/

Sam L. said...

Blogger Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

What is most striking about all this again and again is how the media is not doing their job.

This is HOW and WHY we'll Get More Trump.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

Sam L.: I think of the Grinch high on Mount Crumpet on Christmas Day, very puzzled and upset about what he hears in the valley below. I hope that is what we hear from the American people on Election Day 2018. If we beat them again then, I think we'll make headway.

Anonymous said...

The total degradation of culture.

From Pauline Kael to Lena Dunham.

From Susan Sontag to Emma Sulkowicz.

From John Simon to Justin Brown.

Shoot me please.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygIA8tYWRsY

Get a load of this guy:

https://www.facebook.com/pawsup247/photos?lst=100015738846942%3A1408214226%3A1494736680&source_ref=pb_friends_tl