Camille defends

ok, so the problem today is how to commend Camille Paglia to readers without coming across as one who is indifferent to the fact that she is a feminist atheist lesbian? Solution?

I’m waiting. . . .

so, you don’t know either, eh?

Well, in that case, I’ll simply commend her to you. Paglia is one of the more interesting thinkers of our day (feminism/atheism/lesbianism notwithstanding). She refuses to be pigeonholed, especially by her radical friends, and is usually willing to ridicule hypocrisy (even when it is found among her friends) and respect that which is truly respectable . . . including evangelical Christians. . . . including evangelical Christians like . . . Sarah Palin. Her boldness to say things that liberals and others on the wacky left would beat themselves heartily about the head and shoulders if they even dared to think them, is just wonderful.

Here are some quotes from her most recent column defending Sarah from the outrageous accusations of the left:

“Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views.

How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don’t know their asses from their elbows. . .

Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology — contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.

I like Sarah Palin, and I’ve heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is — and quite frankly, I think the people who don’t see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. . . .

As for the Democrats who sneered and howled that Palin was unprepared to be a vice-presidential nominee — what navel-gazing hypocrisy! What protests were raised in the party or mainstream media when John Edwards, with vastly less political experience than Palin, got John Kerry’s nod for veep four years ago? And Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, for whom I lobbied to be Obama’s pick and who was on everyone’s short list for months, has a record indistinguishable from Palin’s. Whatever knowledge deficit Palin has about the federal bureaucracy or international affairs (outside the normal purview of governors) will hopefully be remedied during the next eight years of the Obama presidencies.”

Calling all Republicans: THIS is how you defend one of your people. Eat some Wheaties and follow Camille’s example.