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About Camille Paglia
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A S K_C A M I L L E +|+ C A M I L L E+P A G L I A | PAGE 2 OF 2
Dear Camille:
Although we're still about a year away from campaign season, at this point it seems as if Elizabeth Dole will be running for president of the United States in the next election, making her not only the first female president, but the first president in the 21st century. I don't think it takes a psychic to predict that in Gore vs. Dole, the winner will be the one wearing high heels. Mrs. Dole is smart, energetic, dignified, powerful, not terribly likable, but that's what she has her husband for (they were hilarious recently on Letterman. I can't imagine the Gores being that funny together), and is overall one tough broad. How can she possibly lose?
Don Klein
Dear Mr. Klein:
What a hilarious irony if Bill Clinton's designated heir, Al Gore, is toppled by Bob Dole's wife! The 2000 election would be a drag-ball reversal of 1996. Its Fleetwood Mac anthem would be not "Don't Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)," to which the Clintons and Gores did their 1992 Little Rock victory dance, but "Tusk" -- as Elizabeth Dole spears Hillary's butt right out the West Wing door to the accompaniment of the U.S.C. Trojans marching band.
I think Mrs. Dole would make an excellent senator or governor, but I'm not sure she has the foreign-policy expertise or credibility to be president. On the other hand, like Margaret Thatcher, she seems decisive and principled enough to win the confidence of the military, who must report to her.
It does unnerve me that a Southern belle with such an archaic, conventional, saccharine-tending, 1950s feminine persona is the leading woman candidate for national office. By Saints Janis and Jimi, how the hell has my 1960s generation so totally screwed up?
If the Republicans are smart enough to nominate Mrs. Dole (don't hold your breath: They were stupid enough to nominate her husband, whom even geriatric units thought was worn out), Democratic feminists like myself will be in a quandary, since women desperately need practice in leading nations. Mrs. Dole might very well erode the Democratic base.
But tarnished Republican luminaries like Newt Gingrich are just as likely to drive away crossover votes in droves. Campaign year 2000 may have the suspense and melodrama of a Jackie Susann novel!
Dear Camille:
"This is a farce! This is not a debate!"
Those were Gloria La Riva's words as she rushed toward the stage Oct. 15 in San Francisco during the debate between California's Republican and Democrat gubernatorial candidates. She too is running for the position and is on the ballot, but because she is with the Peace and Freedom party she is prohibited from speaking at one of these so-called debates. Because of her disruption, she was locked up in jail for five hours (on a radio talk show she pointed out that of the hundreds she was jailed with, most were in for victimless crimes, i.e., prostitution, drug possession).
Do you think that all candidates on a ballot for elected office should be allowed to speak at these major debates? And if so, do you have any suggestions on what can be done to change these rules? I suppose that the supporters of this unfair, unproductive two-party system would say it's impractical to have the half-dozen or so candidates all taking part in a debate, so how do you think that problem could be dealt with?
Gwyn
Dear Gwyn:
Thank you for your fascinating letter. Yes, the United States is stuck with an outmoded two-party system that stifles new ideas and entrenches a party establishment that is appallingly cozy with big-money interests. The Republican and Democratic parties have increasingly blurred into one another. However, America does escape the endless factionalism that tears apart nations with splinter parties and brings governments down overnight. Because the U.S. is so geographically vast and ethnically and racially diverse, our two parties are like big tents that act as unifiers.
When they accept the two-party ground rules for televised debates, the media are certainly complicitous in this problem. Major debates are already far too staged, with the candidates' responses scripted and rehearsed by cadres of handlers. Adding more participants would liven things up by introducing an element of the unexpected.
The solution lies in the hands of the electorate. People, you must VOTE! The mammoth two-party system will roll on like a juggernaut until massive numbers of votes accrue to third and fourth parties. The pathetic failure of ever-arrogant American leftism over the past 50 years is shown by its complete inability to launch an enduring alternative party of national importance.
Citizens who don't vote, even in slow midterm elections, are political imbeciles. Democracy cannot function without an engaged electorate. Feminism was born in the century-long drive for woman suffrage; the voting rights of African-Americans were secured at terrible cost. Not voting (out of complacency, pessimism, pique or sloth) is an insult to every modern reform movement.
Dear Camille:
You remind me a lot of Ayn Rand. Both of you are foreign-born American writers who are unafraid atheists and brilliantly and fiercely analytical. Do you welcome this comparison? What is your opinion of Ayn Rand?
Kevin Gregg
Dear Mr. Gregg:
Many people have noticed the very real parallels between Ayn Rand and me. (I was born in the United States, however; my mother and all four of my grandparents were born in Italy.) A New Yorker profile of Rand several years ago in fact called her "the Camille Paglia of the 1960s."
Ayn Rand was the kind of bold female thinker who should immediately have been a centerpiece of women's studies programs, if the latter were genuinely about women rather than about a clichéd, bleeding-heart, victim-obsessed, liberal ideology that dislikes all concrete female achievement. Like me, Rand believed in personal responsibility and self-transformation as the keys to modern woman's advance.
Rand's influence fell on the generation just before mine: In the conformist 1950s, her command to think for yourself was brilliantly energizing. When I was a college student (1964-68), I barely heard of her and didn't read her, and neither did my friends. Our influences were Marshall McLuhan, Norman O. Brown, Leslie Fiedler, Allen Ginsberg and Andy Warhol.
When my first book finally got published in 1990, a major Rand revival was under way. I was asked about her so often at my book signings and lectures that I researched her for the first time. To my astonishment, I found passages in her books that amazingly resemble my own writing: This is certainly due to the fact that we were inspired by the same writers, notably Nietzsche and the High Romantics.
The main differences between us: First, Rand is more of a rationalist, while I have a mystical 1960s bent (I'm interested in astrology, palmistry, ESP, I Ching, etc.). Second, Rand disdains religious belief as childish, while I respect all religions on metaphysical grounds, even though I am an atheist. Third, Rand, like Simone de Beauvoir, is an intellectual of daunting high seriousness, while I think comedy is the sign of a balanced perspective on life. As a culture warrior, I have used humor and satire as the most devastating weapons in my arsenal!
Postscript: A profile of me by Bryan Appleyard appeared in London on Oct. 18 in the Sunday Times Magazine. In a weekly feature called "You ask the questions," I answered 25 sharp queries from British readers in the Oct. 7 issue of the Independent.
In the Current Pop Music Sucks Department: Late one night last week, after dreamily listening to the great Dinah Washington on my car radio, I was knocked out to hear the inimitable voice of Grace Jones come crackling out over a Caribbean/Mediterranean/Eurodisco beat I'd never heard before. It was "Pars," sung by Grace in moody French, on a new, two-CD release from Island Records, "Private Life: The Compass Point Sessions." Recorded in 1980, "Pars" still sounds utterly fresh.
What an extraordinary pop personality Grace Jones was! Oh, how I'd love to see that mannish battalion of glowering, stylish Jones clones in the "Demolition Man" video tread and trample on today's simpering crop of Zellwegger-Paltrow-Diaz-Flockhart wimpettes. Maybe Grace would do us a favor and take out the ranting Anne Heche-Ellen DeGeneres Bobbsey Twins too. Amazing Grace, pagan diva!
Camille Paglia's column now appears on Wednesdays.
Got a starlet you'd like to take out? Ask Camille.
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