The peevish porcupine beats the shrill rooster

By Camille Paglia

Published December 7, 2000 8:00AM (EST)

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Camille Paglia is not an African-American, and she is not privy to our communities, yet she decides that she, as an enlightened white woman, knows what is best for us poor stupid African-Americans who blindly vote Democratic. Her paternalistic attitude toward African-Americans is a perfect example of all that is wrong with white liberals.

What Paglia does not know is that African-Americans debate these issues all the time, and have long known that neither party represents our interests, so it is a matter of voting for the candidate that is likely to do the least amount of harm to minorities.

While Bush may appoint Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the Republican Party is replete with racist, white males, who are the power and backbone of the party (Trent Lott, Bob Barr, Orrin Hatch, Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Arlen Specter). While Bush may himself be a moderate, it is no secret that he is not running the show. In white corporate America, African-Americans are suffering; they are being denied opportunities, despite their talents. And in the meantime, as governor, Bush supported an end to affirmative action, as did his brother in Florida.

While Paglia lives in her glass bubble, we African-Americans have to live in the real world, where we are perfectly capable of weighing the issues and deciding that the Democratic Party, at this point, offers the best option for us.

-- Rhonda Stuart

The media blew everything in Florida out of proportion because it made for good theater, not because of an inherently leftist bent, as Camille Paglia asserts in her column. The more fruitful path of investigation when thinking about media tendencies is to analyze what "good theater" really means: sensationalized news that brings audiences and advertisers a little closer, and makes the pockets of media corporations a little deeper.

-- Sam Handlin

After reading Camille Paglia's latest column, in which she repeats the fallacy of a liberal-controlled press, I am left wondering if she was observing the same media the rest of us were.

Did she not notice how so much about George W. Bush's past was left all but unmentioned, and certainly unexplored? Did she fail to see how the media simply repeated every misstatement by the Bush camp regarding things Al Gore allegedly said?

I never thought I'd see the day when Paglia, in a single column, both attacked the media for liberal bias and defended not only Rush Limbaugh's right to be on the air (which I agree he does have), but also claims he is a legitimate source of reliable information to counter the liberal media. Things are indeed getting curiouser and curiouser.

-- Todd Sanders


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