But, true to Paglia's form, there's an incendiary call to arms inside "Break, Blow, Burn" (a phrase taken from John Donne's "Holy Sonnet XIV"). Her celebration of these poems -- each reprinted and electrically interpreted -- is paired with a blistering critique of what she sees as the cultural and academic forces that have conspired to undermine our enjoyment of poetry, lessening its importance in the process. She demands reform and believes it will be up to graduate students and poets themselves to lead the way. "In an era ruled by materialism and unstable geopolitics, art must be restored to the center of public education," she writes.

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On the eve of the election, she agreed to break her silence and talk to Salon about this political moment -- from the "devious and Machiavellian" Dick Cheney to the "unethical and grotesque" manipulation of his daughter by Democrats; from her respect for Jon Stewart and that "dynamo" Sean Hannity, to her pity for Bill O'Reilly, the "blowhard" with a bad case of "psychosexual paralysis." And she explains how, despite her concern over his "poorly managed" campaign and terrible TV skills, she believes Sen. John Kerry is the only viable option for president.

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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.

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Eminem is the enema for the stale, saccharine platitudes and pieties that kids are force-fed these days by their PC teachers and counselors.

It's clear from his huge popularity that Eminem has tapped into a rising tide of rebellion among middle-class white kids who are sick and tired of the canned, humanitarian schmaltz of their antiseptic, namby-pamby, culture-starved schools.

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In a report to company shareholders, Ford Chairman William C. Ford, the great-grandson of Henry Ford, said that the company recognized the environmental impact of SUVs, which account for one-fifth of the company's sales, and was seeking technological solutions to address it. But he said that the company would continue to build SUVs to keep up with the strong market demand.

Ford told reporters he did not want his company to end up in the court of public opinion being linked with tobacco companies, which continue to manufacture a product that causes serious health damage (and have suffered enormous financial judgments against them). He pointed out that Ford had voluntarily kept tailpipe pollution emission well below legally permitted levels, and had voluntarily put bars below the bumpers of its Ford Excursion -- which weighs twice as much as a Jeep Grand Cherokee and gets 10 miles to the gallon in the city -- in order to diminish harm to other cars in collisions, though safety laws did not require the bar.

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and

Propaganda
for dollars
BY DANIEL FORBES
(01/14/99)

In the words of Nell Carter, give me a break! I
have never seen such an egregious example of hopelessly naive reportage on the
salon.com Web site. To accuse the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) of "mind control" for working with
broadcast networks to include anti-drug messages in programming is
ludicrous. To be shocked by the implication that someone other than the creative
geniuses who came up with "Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place" have been
influenced by something outside their bubble worlds is absolutely hilarious.

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I don't think anything is at stake. I made a promise to myself a long time ago -- back during Vietnam -- not to be political. People act as if their candidate winning is a life and death matter. It's not. They think things will get better if their guy wins. It doesn't. I don't like stepping on people, don't like to be associated with that kind of distraught energy. I have broken my vow not to vote a few times -- McGovern, Carter, Hart. And though I've given money to Bradley I dont intend to vote this election. We're going to be so well off in the coming century, and it has nothing to do with politicians. The computer economy is what's driving the prosperity. It's the Yahoos, Apples and Microsofts that are creating a better life, not politicians.

The greatest problem we have in society is the widening gap between the rich and poor. If there's one thing the next president should try to do is to redistribute wealth a little more equitably. I don't have the vaguest idea how to do that. All I know is that here in Silicon Valley, the richest place on earth, there are people with families working seven days a week and they dont have enough to live on. That isn't right.

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Several times Camille Paglia refers to the "liberal media." She may be interested that FAIR (admittedly part of the "liberal media") published a paper in June 1998 in which the author found that "on select issues ... journalists are actually more conservative than the general public" and "journalists are mostly centrist in their political orientation." The paper agreed that among the minority of journalists who did not identify with the center, their economics views were right of center and their social views were left of center. I know the view of media as liberal is a popular stereotype but I wonder if Paglia has anything more than anecdotal evidence to back up her claims?

-- Justus Pendleton

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How does Larissa Phillips think that by not getting married her child (or children) will be protected from the trauma of losing a live-in parent?
Most parents, married or not, are intensely committed to their children
for the long term. But children need their parents to be committed to each
other in the same way. And marriage is nothing if not a long-term, intense
commitment.

Marriage is a tough gig. So is being a child in a family where adults
just can't seem to stay committed to their spouses.

-- Anne Lewis

Larissa Phillips concludes her rant against her boomer parents'
narcissism by blaming them for the rise in divorce. Actually, the rise in the
divorce rate in the United States occurred in the 1940s, not the 1970s. The World War II
generation, not the boomers, were the first to break their marriage vows on a
wide-scale basis. The boomers were just following their parents' example.

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Camille Paglia's column is both eloquent and razor sharp, yet I can't help wondering why there are so many victims left bleeding in her wake. With all the external homophobia in our culture, her stab-and-run approach appears to be adding to the body count with internalized homophobia as the bloody dagger.

Matthew Shepard is certainly not the "ideal image of the gay man to be
projected to the mass audience," any more than there is an ideal or perfect
image of any lesbian or gay man, or heterosexual person for that matter. My
sister was one of Ted Bundy's first victims, and while one could argue
endlessly about her internal goodness or human frailties, what is inarguable
is that she was savagely brutalized and murdered, as was Matthew Shepard.
That my mother or Judy Shepard could be "all-forgiving" is a testament to the
human spirit and its amazing ability to survive the unimaginable.

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Camille Paglia's column rages indignantly against the "Jewish collector and a Jewish museum director" who promoted "anti-Catholic art" in the Brooklyn Museum show "Sensation." In doing so, she has nakedly exposed the dialogue at its very essence: In an acutely Christianized America, does a Jew have the right to artistically critique, parody or satirize Christian symbolism? Of course, she thinks we Jews don't.

I want to remind Paglia that the "Jewish collector and Jewish museum director" did not create the art -- that it was created by a goy, like herself. Rather, Saatchi and Lehman defended her rights as a human being to critique or even recontextualize her own religion through art.

-- Alan Kaufman

Editor, Tattoo Jew

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Camille Paglia's belief that the conservative's hatred for Hillary Rodham Clinton is due to her cosseting by the mainstream media is off the mark. The conservative right's hatred for Clinton is largely due to her being a symbol for the cultural changes that have occurred since the 1940s and 1950s -- women moving back into the workplace, women campaigning for reproductive freedom and minority rights, and the toppling of Protestant Christianity's wink-wink nudge-nudge status as the unofficial state religion. Clinton is rightly seen not only as a symbol of the changes, but as someone who helped bring them about.

If Paglia would go back and carefully examine the sources of the right-wing anti-Clinton effluent, she would soon find herself surrounded by reactionaries who still firmly believe that women should be subordinate to men, and that a woman's role is still "barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen." Paglia needn't take my word for it; she can check the fundamentalist/evangelical Christian right's broadcasts and publications.

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I know Camille Paglia's thoughts on Waco are popular with a great many
Americans, but I've always wondered why. We have an individual who believes
he is some kind of deity on earth, who has in his possession automatic weapons
for which he has no legal authority. When ATF agents, bumblers or not, show up to
serve a warrant, Koresh and his followers shoot four of them -- and the uproar is over how the cult members were denied due process. If you know the Feds are coming en masse and you shoot them, then it seems as though due process has gone out the window. I cannot say that the FBI, ATF and whatever other agencies had their finest moment but are we
going to blame the "liberal" press again? Government authority was bungled at Waco, not
misused.

-- Rich McIntosh

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Even if he doesn't sue his tormentors at Time-Warner, as now appears to be
the case, Horowitz himself exemplifies the problems of a political culture where debate has grown increasingly nasty and personal. And whether or not he is a "real live bigot," as the headline over that Time column described him, he is most assuredly a skillful publicist, whose self-serving response to this incident shouldn't stand unanswered.

The facts of the matter, as well as the views of Horowitz, his friends and his supporters, are only a click or two away and need not be rehearsed again here in full. The short version is that an African-American writer named Jack E. White, after reading a typically hyperbolic Horowitz column about blacks and guns, was sufficiently offended to accuse its author of racism in his own Time column.

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(The following is a copy of a letter Camille Paglia sent to the editors of Time magazine.)

That the ever-platitudinous Jack E. White has called David Horowitz a "bigot"
is, of course, stupid and unprofessional but hardly surprising to the weary
Time readers who, like hikers confronted with a bog, must rapidly skirt
White's flatulent prose whenever it appears.

But that Time's editors allowed the sophomoric libel to pass raises questions
about the magazine's process of internal review: Was this simply a
late-summer slip-up (in which case Time will promptly admit it), or is there a
double standard for PC propagandists like White?

I respect the astute and rigorously unsentimental David Horowitz as one of
America's most original and courageous political analysts. He has the true
1960s spirit -- audacious and irreverent, yet passionately engaged and committed
to social change.

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Seen in this light, his oeuvre constitutes a blast at gentility. So
does the work of Camille Paglia, whose love of Hitchcock informed her
controversial book "Sexual Personae" and prompted her to write a study of
"The Birds" for the British Film Institute. On the occasion of Hitchcock's
centennial, I asked Paglia about
the daring art and astounding influence of the man once known simply as the
Master of Suspense.

I wonder if you agree that Hitchcock is the only director who is as great an
inspiration to the avant-garde as to the mainstream?

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Camille Paglia seems to be one of the few female academics who
will call it like they see it, rather than orienting their opinions
within the framework of some movement or interest group. Nevertheless,
Paglia's opinions on the death of JFK Jr. and on the history of his
storied family reveal once more that the academy's (or, at least, the
public intellectual's) fascination with pop culture is the product of a
subversive desire for the cult of celebrity that has become so widespread in America. How can Paglia so sternly disapprove of Kennedy's yen for high-risk activities only minutes before breathlessly elaborating her own school-girlish fascination with his athleticism and physical charisma?

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CP: I was traveling and heard a newsflash early on Saturday morning. I was stunned for many reasons. First because I think John Kennedy was a phenomenally personable individual on the cultural landscape, and this cutting down of a promising man who had not reached the peak of his maturity is one of Mother Nature's cruel jokes. Secondly, I was stunned because the heat-related weather problems that appear to have contributed to the accident were a huge part of my life the night before, when I had been touring Staten Island with family friends, who were constantly harping on the haze. This went on with every view that we had from Staten Island -- of Manhattan, Coney Island, the Verrazano Bridge, the Statue of Liberty and then of the increasingly foggy New Jersey coastline that we were contemplating from a wharf-side restaurant while we were eating dinner -- precisely when the Kennedy plane was taking off.

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The cultural implications are tantalizing. It's not just about
equity for little girls, who can now dream of a career in professional sports, just like their brothers. It's about a new Amazonian vision of womanhood that includes sweat and strength, competitiveness and even ferocity. Individual female athletes, such as
tennis players or runners, have been accepted and popular for some time.
But team sports, and especially contact sports, are much more of a metaphor
for warfare. There's a unique thrill in watching women collide in a dive
for the soccer ball or battle for a rebound under the basket, get smashed
up and go on despite the pain and exuberantly celebrate a successful play.

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Your article on Earl Woods should have been titled "Is
Earl Woods a Bigot?" By definition Earl Woods can't be a racist. These days, racism is most commonly defined by
folks who work in the movement to fight racism as race prejudice combined with the application of power. By that definition, no black
person, including Earl Woods, can be a racist. That said, Earl Woods could be a bigot. He could have prejudices about various people, including
Scots -- he wouldn't be the first -- but I agree with the author in that I don't think his quips about Scottish weather are bigotry.

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