nice big cup

Oh, for f*&'s sake.

I can't stand Camille Paglia.  And why Salon continues to have anything to do with her, I don't know.  

But let's back up here, lest you think I am overreacting.

Camille and I go way back.  When I was an undergraduate, I read Sexual Personae thinking it was going to give me some keen insights into gender, sexuality, art, and power.  Clearly, I was misled.  What I found was a deeply overwrought and even more deeply under-researched volume of loosely connected essays that purported to be sober treatises on men, women, and our roles in art and culture, but which were actually one long squeal for attention that basically amounted to a noisy headlong rush to embrace a bunch of sexually charged stereotypes of male and female behavior that would make Antonin Scalia proud.

(You will notice that the rise of Ann Coulter and the eclipse of Camille Paglia were convergent phenomena.  One might even hypothesize a causal relationship, but I digress…) 

But particularly offensive to me was Miss Paglia's take on gay men.

From "The Dangers of the Gay Agenda" (1998):

Ritual murder and exposure are back in the news: The atrocious beating death of gay college student Matthew Shepard in Wyoming (for which I, as a longtime proponent of capital punishment, of course demand the death penalty) demonstrates once again the dramatic differences between gay men and lesbians — the point of your question.

Completely missing from the major media's avalanche of formulaic liberal outrage was any reference to the gay-male practice of cruising, which is constantly going on with indefatigable energy virtually everywhere in the industrialized world. Rock star George Michael's arrest in a Hollywood public toilet in April this year was quickly suppressed by the major media and given significant coverage in the United States only by the tabloids. Despite the recent turn by some gay male writers toward reexamination of gay hedonism, the issue remains unconfronted by gay organizations and their media supporters, who dismiss or deride Christian conservatives' claim that there is a negative "gay lifestyle."

She then goes on to spout a bunch of hateful crap about how if Matthew Shepard hadn't been out cruising for sex, he'd still be alive.  But see, in Paglia's "mind", this is the inherent state of gay men, perpetual and uncontrollable erotic arousal.  Her essay on gay men in Sexual Personae was ostensibly in praise of the gay lifestyle, but its conclusion was basically, "I love the gays.  They'll fuck in alleys and back-rooms and public parks and just any old place!  They live lives of Pure Eros!  We can't take that away from them!  It's what makes them GAY!!"

Never does she seem to stop to consider that addictive sexual behavior might be one of the ugly effects of oppression and stereotyping.  Oh, no, that would be far too Liberal.  And besides, it's not like she's judging or anything, right?  Hell, she wishes she could be a big old queer and dress up in leather chaps and do poppers in a bondage sling in a back-room orgy at a bar called The Fist.  That's what they do, right, Those Gays?

Well, today Salon is running a new interview with the old bag .  Here she is on the Foley scandal:

I felt the Democrats were shooting themselves in the foot. I was especially repulsed by the manipulative use of a gay issue for political purposes by my own party. I think it was not only poor judgment but positively evil. Whatever short-term political gain there is, it can only have a negative impact on gay men. When a moralistic, buttoned-up Republican like Foley is revealed to have a secret, seamy gay life, it simply casts all gay men under a shadow and makes people distrust them. Why don't the Democratic strategists see this? These tactics are extremely foolish. Gay men through history have always been more vulnerable to public hysteria than are lesbians, who — unless they're out there parading around in all-leather bull-dyke drag — simply fit more easily into the cultural landscape than do gay men, who generally lead a more adventurous, pickup-oriented sex life.

Gawd, it's like my brother's description of Dean Esmay.  Even when she gets it sort of right, she gets it so, so wrong. Exposing the Foley scandal was a bad idea for Democrats because All Gay Men Have Seamy Secret Lives and We Aren't Supposed to Talk About That.

And then guess whose side she takes in the whole thing?  Who's the absolute worst you can think of?  That's right.  Drudge-packer.

The Foley scandal exploded without any proof of a documented sex act — unlike the case of the late congressman Gerry Studds, who had sex with a page and who was literally applauded by fellow Democrats when they refused to vote for his censure. In the Foley case, there was far more ambiguous evidence — suggestive e-mails and instant messages. Matt Drudge, to his great credit, began hitting this issue right off the bat on his Web site and radio show. What does it mean for Democrats to be agitating over Web communications, which in my view fall under the province of free speech? It's a civil liberties issue.

I'm sorry?  Miss Paglia?  Excuse me?  WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!

Preying on young people is NOT A CIVIL LIBERTY!  I mean, were you actually conscious when you did this interview?  Have you been having blurred vision, headaches, or periods of forgetfulness?  Do you sometimes hear voices that seem to be coming from outside yourself?  Do the things they say frighten you?  You may have a serious medical condition called BATSHIT CRAZY!  With complications from an related disorder known as DUMB AS A ROCK.

I mean, with friends like Camille Paglia, gay people don't need James Dobson and Anthony Perkins and Fred Phelps.  That responsible academic writer and cultural critic Camille Paglia can get us all sent to the gas chambers all by herself.  Thanks, Camille!

I gotta tell ya, my life of Pure Eros is kind of letting me down this Fabulous Friday Night.  I'm not wearing any leather at all.  Just a pair of sweat pants and an old Clinton '92 t-shirt.  I'm not going to be having sex with any strangers in any alleys tonight, Camille, or dancing to Madonna on a disco speaker wearing nothing but a miner's helmet and a pair of cut-off short-shorts while my brain fries on Ecstasy, nope, not tonight.  Or, like, ever.  Does that mean I'm falling down on my duty as a Hot Gay Stud?

Get a clue, woman!  But then again, we're talking about a writer who once posited that Madonna's "Express Yourself" video was the apotheosis of two thousand years of western art and culture.  We're not exactly talking about a mind like a finely tuned mega-computer.  For god's sake shut up, Camille.  Every time you open your mouth, I can feel thousands of people simultaneously getting dumber.

P.S. Gavin at Sadly, No! has more. 

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