Catching Up With Camille

While I was out of the country quaffing ales in London pubs, I missed Camille Paglia's monthly column on Salon.com-- this month, she focuses on several feminist icons. See below for a few choice excerpts on Hillary Clinton and Ellen DeGeneres:


The mainstream media have been in a breathless tizzy about how Hillary Clinton . . . screwed up at the Democratic debate in Philadelphia . . . But Hillary's performance at prior debates was never as deft or "flawless" as the media claimed in the first place . . . Hillary's stonewalling evasions and mercurial, soulless self-positionings have been going on since her first run for the U.S. Senate . . . The liberal Northeastern media were criminally complicit in enabling her queenlike, content-free "listening tour," where she took no hard questions and where her staff and security people . . . staged events stocked with vetted sympathizers.

That compulsive micromanagement, ultimately emanating from Hillary herself, has come back to haunt her in her dismaying inability to field complex unscripted questions in a public forum. The presidential sweepstakes are too harsh an arena for tenderfoot novices. Hillary's much-vaunted "experience" has evidently not extended to the dynamic give-and-take of authentic debate. The mild challenges she has faced would be pitiful indeed by British standards, which favor a caustic style of witty put-downs that draw applause and gales of laughter in the House of Commons. Women had better toughen up if they aspire to be commander in chief.


. . .


Ellen DeGeneres' cringe-making on-air meltdown over a dog, leading to her overwrought cancellation of several days of her show, should get a Raspberry Award for worst performance by a lesbian icon. Following Rosie O'Donnell's professional collapse amid lunatic rants and operatic kvetching, this has been a terrible year for Hollywood lesbians' public image. It's as if when the butch mask drops, there's nothing inside but a boiling candy kettle of infantile rage and self-pity. And now Ellen, the professed liberal, is narcissistically flouting the Writers Guild strike. Great going, gals!