Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Camille's Time Of The Month

It's the second Wednesday of the month, so it's time for a few excerpts from Camille Paglia's excellent column on Salon:

Trivialities and missteps clog the political news: is Mrs. Rudy Giuliani a vampy, trampy film-noir gold digger? Did Mrs. John Edwards, playing phone tag, put her foot in her mouth by single-handedly rehabilitating Ann Coulter's reputation for seat-of-the-pants, high-testosterone counterpunching? Why was Clinton campaign advisor Ann Lewis (sister of Barney Frank) so addled and strangely superheated by the Washington Post's whimsical meditation on the saggy Hillary cleavage that she instantly turned it into a crass cash come-on?

. . .

On the culture front, fabled film directors Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni dying on the same day was certainly a cold douche for my narcissistic generation of the 1960s. We who revered those great artists, we who sat stunned and spellbound before their masterpieces -- what have we achieved?

. . .

My pagan brand of atheism is predicated on worship of both nature and art. I want the great world religions taught in every school. Secular humanism has reached a dead end -- and any liberals who don't recognize that are simply enabling the worldwide conservative reaction of fundamentalism in both Christianity and Islam. The human quest for meaning is innate and ineradicable. When the gods are toppled, new ones will soon be invented.

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