Salon.com publishes a monthly column by author and “dissident feminist” Camille Paglia. Paglia’s one of those cultural intellectuals whose name I’ve heard all my life, but whose work – what I’ve seen of it – just leaves me feeling like the kid at the end of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think she’s full of it. She’s always struck me as one of those recovering 60’s liberals who thinks self-flagellation is the same thing as introspection.
Let me give you an example. Paglia has an ongoing fascination with Sarah Palin, repeatedly praising what she sees as Palin’s rugged authenticity in the face of over-educated east coast pretention. In today’s column, in response to a letter about unfair criticism of Palin’s education, Paglia wrote:
“…I too have been repulsed by the elitist insults flung at Sarah Palin in the massive, coordinated media effort to destroy her. Hence I have been thoroughly enjoying the way that Palin, despite all the dirt thrown at her by liberal journalists and bloggers, keeps bouncing back as if unscathed. No sooner did the gloating harpies of the Northeastern media think they had torn her to shreds than she exploded into number one on Amazon.com with a memoir that hadn't even been printed yet! With each one of these amusing triumphs, Palin is solidifying her status as a bona fide American cultural heroine.
Yes, the snobbery about Palin's five colleges is especially distasteful, given the Democratic party's supposed allegiance to populism. Judging by the increasingly limited cultural and factual knowledge of graduates of elite schools whom one encounters working in the media, blue-chip sheepskins aren't worth the parchment they're printed on these days. Young people forced through the ruthlessly competitive college admissions rat race have the independence and creativity pinched right out of them. Proof? Where are the major young American artists, writers, critics or movie-makers of the past 20 years? The most adventurous and enterprising minds have gone into high tech. We're in a horrendous cultural vacuum because our status-besotted education industry is geared toward producing not original thinkers but docile creatures of the system.”
For what it’s worth: Palin attended four colleges, graduating from the University of Idaho with a degree in journalism. I myself attended six different colleges, graduating from Salem College with a degree in communication. Paglia went to Harpur College (now Binghamton University), where she read and wrote about “sexual ambiguity and aggression in literature," and then got a Ph.D. at Yale.
Maybe Paglia’s still hung up on professors or classmates who dissed her at Yale or something, or maybe she thinks it’s intellectually dishonest to hold a popular opinion. By her own admission, her knowledge of Americans that don’t live in the Northeast comes almost entirely from listening to right-wing talk-radio, so maybe that’s why she thinks we’re so exotic. But, as one of those rural naifs who so captivate Paglia, I can assure you that my opinion of Sarah Palin has nothing to do with her educational background – which, after all, is my background as well. But why let the facts get in the way of a good straw man?
And, I’m sorry, I call complete BS on a New England-born Ivy Leaguer with a lifelong career in academia who these days earns her paycheck by bashing “Northeast elites” and academics. The professors and students at the colleges where I’ve worked couldn’t be further from “docile creatures of the system.” Camille, honey, you need to get out more.
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