The Salon Interview: Camille Paglia

The Salon Interview: Camille Paglia Bad omen: Why the Columbia disaster should make Bush think twice about rushing to war with Iraq.

Camille Paglia is a rarity in the increasingly polarized world of public intellectuals, a high-profile thinker and writer who is not readily identified with any political camp or party line. She burst onto the scene in 1990 following the publication of her book, "Sexual Personae." Paglia was a rough-trade feminist not afraid to challenge the orthodoxy of the women's movement or its reigning sisterhood; a professor from a small college with no qualms about torching the Parisian academic trends then enthralling Ivy League humanities departments; a self-proclaimed "Democratic libertarian" who voted twice for Bill Clinton and then loudly denounced him for bringing shame to his office.

Given Paglia's originality and unpredictability, we had no idea what to expect when we phoned her earlier this week for her opinions on the Bush administration's looming war with Iraq. Paglia proudly describes herself as a Dionysian child of the '60s, a generation not known for its martial spirit. And yet, during her long run as a Salon columnist, she developed an enthusiastic following among conservatives, including retired and active military personnel, for her eloquent tributes to family, tradition, country and uniformed service, as well as her stop-your-blubbering take on modern American life.

Paglia retired her Salon column last year to focus on teaching -- she is university professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia - and to finish her fifth book, a study of poetry that will be published by Pantheon Books. She returns in the Salon Interview to reveal her opinions on Iraq for the first time. "The foreign press has asked me repeatedly to comment on Iraq, and I've said I don't think it's right as an American citizen to do that. I said I should reserve my criticisms of the administration for home consumption," said Paglia. "That's why I'm talking to you now."

perhaps I am as kooky as camille. I also saw a message in the space shuttle tragedy. how could you not? a fatal shuttle flight with the first israeli astronaut (one who bombed the Iraqi osirak nuclear plant no less), an indian american(hindu) and at least one devout christan (Rick Husband-flight commander)that occurs in the sky over Texas
(partly Palestine) in a shuttle called Columbia (Columbus
found america-- but you know that). the whole thing is rod serling weird. most interesting was the cause of the accident, a problem on the left wing-- likely to be the achilles heel of all three countries. the american left, israeli left and indian left will be very dangerous in the struggle ahead.

I think out of the horrfic tragedy the citizens of all 3 countries have realized that we will shed and draw blood together, dream and live and die together. we have common fates.

No one goes to war happily, we all should and must have trepidation. Could everything go terribly wrong--yes, it's possible. but perhaps it is a beautifully naieve and very
american belief, but evil will not win. it's the difference between us and the french. when the nazis came in, the french believed that their fate was to be a part of hitler's reich and as a result practiced the ways of their occupiers. we ,and the brits, are different, exceptional...we said no, "we can win, we must confront evil." during the cold war, the global left lost faith in our way of life and got seduced by communistic fascism. Lonely and brave people like reagan stood up to that evil and millons were liberated. now the global left tells us that we shouldn't challenge saddam and ,to lift from michael ledeen, the terror masters, but we must, we have no choice in the matter. there will never be a better time.the only deterrent we have in this new normal is regime change.
if the terror masters send terrorsts to kill us, it will not do to just kill the terrorists. the deterrent is to kill or overthrow the mullahs, the dictators, the leaders
of these homicidal states.

the evil will not win. and despite what hollyweird and the lefty intellectuals think we are not the evil ones. as we mourn our dead (the columbia crew) they celebrated.
we send people into space for the betterment of mankind, they send their young to die and kill. the difference couldn't be starker and barbarians like that will never win.
we are on the side of freedom and freedom must win.

I was intrigued by the three Paglia books I have read. She does have brilliant insight about art, literature and human nature. My dear Camille is way off base on this one.

According to Ms. Paglia's previously stated admiration for pagan beauty, she ignored the application of Aristotle's logic.

The space shuttle Columbia has no relation to Iraq. This huge red herring cannot be hauled up by the fishing trawler rig Madeline Albright uses to get into her girdle.

Equating the Columbia disaster with an omen or some supernatural event is best derscribed by the words of Thomas Hobbes:

Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness
Chap. xlv. Of Demonology and other Relics of the Religion of the Gentiles.
[10] Another relic of Gentilism is the worship of images, neither instituted by Moses in the Old, nor by Christ in the New Testament; nor yet brought in from the Gentiles; but left amongst them, after they had given their names to Christ. Before our Saviour preached, it was the general religion of the Gentiles to worship for gods those appearances that remain in the brain from the impression of external bodies upon the organs of their senses, which are commonly called ideas, idols, phantasms, conceits, as being representations of those external bodies which cause them, and have nothing in them of reality, no more than there is in the things that seem to stand before us in a dream. And this is the reason why St. Paul says, "We know that an idol is nothing": not that he thought that an image of metal, stone, or wood was nothing; but that the thing which they honored or feared in the image, and held for a god, was a mere figment, without place, habitation, motion, or existence, but in the motions of the brain. And the worship of these with divine honour is that which is in the Scripture called idolatry, and rebellion against God. For God being King of the Jews, and His lieutenant being first Moses, and afterward the high priest, if the people had been permitted to worship and pray to images (which are representations of their own fancies), they had had no further dependence on the true God, of whom there can be no similitude; nor on His prime ministers, Moses and the high priests; but every man had governed himself according to his own appetite, to the utter eversion of the Commonwealth, and their own destruction for want of union. And therefore the first law of God was: they should not take for gods, alienos deos, that is, the gods of other nations, but that only true God, who vouchsafed to commune with Moses, and by him to give them laws and directions for their peace, and for their salvation from their enemies. And the second was that they should not make to themselves any image to worship, of their own invention. For it is the same deposing of a king to submit to another king, whether he be set up by a neighbour nation or by ourselves.
[14] An image, in the most strict signification of the word, is the resemblance of something visible: in which sense the fantastical forms, apparitions, or seemings of visible bodies to the sight, are only images; such as are the show of a man or other thing in the water, by reflection or refraction; or of the sun or stars by direct vision in the air; which are nothing real in the things seen, nor in the place where they seem to be; nor are their magnitudes and figures the same with that of the object, but changeable, by the variation of the organs of sight, or by glasses; and are present oftentimes in our imagination, and in our dreams, when the object is absent; or changed into other colours, and shapes, as things that depend only upon the fancy. And these are the images which are originally and most properly called ideas and idols, and derived from the language of the Grecians, with whom the word eido signifieth to see. They are also called phantasms, which is in the same language, apparitions. And from these images it is that one of the faculties of man's nature is called the imagination. And from hence it is manifest that there neither is, nor can be, any image made of a thing invisible.
[15] It is also evident that there can be no image of a thing infinite: for all the images and phantasms that are made by the impression of things visible are figured. But figure is quantity every way determined, and therefore there can be no image of God, nor of the soul of man, nor of spirits; but only of bodies visible, that is, bodies that have light in themselves, or are by such enlightened.
[16] And whereas a man can fancy shapes he never saw, making up a figure out of the parts of divers creatures, as the poets make their centaurs, chimeras and other monsters never seen, so can he also give matter to those shapes, and make them in wood, clay or metal. And these are also called images, not for the resemblance of any corporeal thing, but for the resemblance of some phantastical inhabitants of the brain of the maker. But in these idols, as they are originally in the brain, and as they are painted, carved moulded or molten in matter, there is a similitude of one to the other, for which the material body made by art may be said to be the image of the fantastical idol made by nature.

Hobbes was aware of the tactical rhetoric of liberals way back in 1668...

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