People I’m Sick Of: Part II — Camille Paglia

I could write an entire series of blog posts around the theme “People I’m Sick Of.” As a matter of fact, I think I will ….

You can read the first entry in the series here. And while I’m on the subject, there’s somebody else whose undeserved fame and political pontifications are as irritating as — well, as Arianna Huffington’s. I’m talking about Camille Paglia, author of Sexual Personae, a head-ache-producing tome of inordinate length and middlebrow airs, who, in the first installment of her revived monthly “column” for Salon.com, has this to say about the death of Anna Nicole Smith :

ABC’s “Nightline” called via my publisher for comment, but I felt far too upset to go on TV. Nevertheless, I was riveted to the tube all night and didn’t mind in the least that this tabloid drama, with its mythic themes of ambiguous paternity and contested wealth, had pushed Iraq to the back burner.

Yeah, right, Camille: it’s perfectly okay that we should look away from the horrific mess we’ve created in Iraq — a country that never threatened us, couldn’t threaten us, and posed no threat to its neighbors, and yet which we continue to violate and torture with impunity — to feast our eyes on the spectacle of our own decadence. But, of course, Camille is in favor of decadence, as she’s told us many times — her own celebrity yet another indication that our over-ripeness is practically terminal.

P.S. Oh, and don’t forget how Paglia backed away from raising her voice in protest against the war back when it really counted. In an interview with Salon.com [February 7, 2003] , she was asked why more public figures weren’t speaking out about the war, both pro and con. Her answer was that she didn’t want to be put in the same category as “the intellectuals like Susan Sontag and Noam Chomsky who’ve made a career abroad out of anti-Americanism. Sontag’s made no secret of her lifelong adulation of all things European. My take is different: My immigrant family escaped poverty in Italy, and so I look at America in a very positive, celebratory way. So I’m reluctant to become part of this easy chorus of anti-Americanism. I also don’t want to do anything to undermine national morale, if we are indeed going to war. It’s wrong to be divisive when families have parents or children in danger on the front lines. I don’t want to add to their grief.”

Ah, but she doesn’t mind being “divisive” now that’s it’s popular to be against the war — and to heck with anyone’s grief, eh Camille?