An Elegy for Two Once-Divine Female Critics

The American Thinker ^ | December 8, 2012 | Robert Oscar Lopez

[Cincinatus' Wife]

As recently as five years ago, I counted Ann Coulter and Camille Paglia among my favorite authors, and my guiltiest but most delicious reading pleasures............

.......................It's Paglia that has lost the ability to understand feminine complexity. As she has turned sourer in the last few years, I have tried to psychologize her Orphic descent from edginess to banality. I can't reduce the problem to a simple case of self-pitying bitterness, though she does write, "Paradoxically, a key problem with the current youth cult, which is devouring both entertainment and fashion, is that aging women have become progressively invisible." It seems that Paglia has trouble understanding that Taylor Swift, and many of the other women Paglia derides, are not vain old women trying to pass as young. They are really young, and it's their turn now. They are from a different generation and don't want the faux, fruitless feminism of the second wave.

Which brings me to Ann Coulter......................

........... But whichever way you choose to dissect the situation, the fact is that people born after 1980, as a whole, aren't buying what Romney -- and increasingly, Ann -- tried to sell them in 2012. They are one generation, not several generations separated by race, so we have to analyze them as an organic whole.

Whatever happens to Ann and Camille, one thing is clear: it's time for a new generation of critics. Whatever transpired in the case of Laura Ingraham, I must say I respect her immensely for stepping away from the radio mic for a while. It is a natural thing for life to move in cycles, for older generations to quiet down and soften. There are new ideas out there. I'm all ears.

[FreedomPoster]

As importantly, they acted as if 2010 never happened. Or as if it happened because the GOPe replaced Steele with Priebus, and not because of the TEA Party movement.

[FreedomPoster]

>>I call the GOP the Washington Generals.

I just LOVE that! I am so going to use it.

In fairness, it’s more the GOPe that rates the appellation. We have seen Republicans who have overcome that role, but that have been relative outsiders - Reagan in the 80s and Newt in the 90s are probably the best examples.

How do we get another such to the top?

[jocon307]

“And way too into Doris Day.”

LOL, agreed!

[x]

Camille's thing was how wonderful the Dionysian release of erotic energies in the 1960s was. She was part of that generation and experienced all that first hand. Here she's just reverting to her one big -- or small -- fundamental idea.

For a while, Paglia got a lot of mileage out of attacking the political correctness of the 1990s as a damper on the energies and passions she celebrated. Bill Clinton was also a major gift to her: she could be controversial about her in a way that she wasn't about Bush or Obama. She could also be interestingly ambivalent about Hillary. They allowed her to cut across ideological lines in a provocative and unpredictable way. But without the Clintons -- and having said just about all she can about political correctness -- Camille just hasn't been that interesting.

The comparison to Coulter seems forced. Coulter's writing about Latinos/Hispanics probably provoked Lopez to the point where he couldn't organize an response and couldn't just let it alone, so he rushes into an attack on her at the end of his article on Paglia. Sure, there are similarities between Ann Coulter and Camille Paglia, but they aren't the most revealing thing one could say about either writer.