Camille Paglia still hearts Sarah Palin

Oh, please (via Salon):

"I like Sarah Palin, and I've heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is -- and quite frankly, I think the people who don't see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. So she doesn't speak the King's English -- big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes. She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist."

Yeah, jazz! That's it! Here is Palin apparently riffing like Coltrane on the economy:

"That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh -- it's got to be all about job creation too. Shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track. So healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, um, scary thing, but 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We've got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that."

Ms. Palin, you insult our intelligence, and Ms. Paglia, you insult be-bop.

Camille Paglia: Palin's Not Dumb!

Professional contrarian Camille Paglia has a long respond-to-emails piece on Salon that, among other things, heaps praise on Sarah Palin. Paglia has long used the discourse of academia and feminism to attack academes and feminists, so I wasn't surprised to see her sycophantic fawning over Mrs. Palin. But, for chrissake she just sounds so inane! How can you so vociferously defend the intellect of someone who cannot name one newspaper or magazine she reads? It may be chic in conservative academic lesbian circles to tout Palin as some sort of amazon warrior goddess or whatever, but this is just ridiculous:

One of the most idiotic allegations batting around out there among urban media insiders is that Palin is “dumb.” Are they kidding? What level of stupidity is now par for the course in those musty circles? (The value of Ivy League degrees, like sub-prime mortgages, has certainly been plummeting. As a Yale Ph.D., I have a perfect right to my scorn.) People who can’t see how smart Palin is are trapped in their own narrow parochialism — the tedious, hackneyed forms of their upper-middle-class syntax and vocabulary.

Yeah, whatever, Pags.

Nobody’s dummy (via Salon)