(Hey! What did I say? Stop looking at me like that!)

Her latest bitchfest in Salon is incredible. On Hillary Clinton:

Hillary seems to have acolytes rather than friends -- hardly a reassuring trait for a potential president whose paranoia has already been called Nixonian. Isolated monarchs never hear the bad news until the people riot and the lynch mob is at the door.

And on the paucity of good female candidates for President:

I have repeatedly said that Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California should have been the first woman president. With all due respect to Salon's perspicacious Glenn Greenwald, whose hard-hitting columns on Feinstein as a Beltway politician have been must-reads, Feinstein's statewide and national popularity are mainly due to her unflappable performances on television as a shrewd, steady, articulate public servant, deeply informed about military matters. She handles and deflects media queries with silky ease. Exuding both authority and compassion, she has true gravitas -- a rare quality in women. Dianne Feinstein, not Hillary Clinton, has already created the paradigm for a female commander in chief.

Well, except for that whole "I want to ban guns that look scary" campaign. And the "here, Mr. Serial Killer! We know what your tennis shoes look like, so you might want to dump them in the Bay!" escapade. And, of course, that awkward moment during the Milk murder. Other than those itty bitty problems, Feinstein is just terrific. I would definitely nominate her for Gun-Grabber in Chief, or Investigation Botcher in Chief, if we had such titles.

As far as I'm concerned, the archtypal female CiC remains Condi Rice. Hillary might have been fine in terms of her presentation skills (which, of course, is a big stumbling block for Paglia), but my problem is that ever since she got her face botoxed Hillary can't really show emotion (except by popping her eyes out), and I want someone in the Oval Office who's going to scare the shit out of our enemies. (Yup. We have 'em. Sorry to break it to you.) I don't care so much whether it's a man, or a woman, or . . . what was that other sex? I'm getting very absent-minded in my old age.

We've had some bitchin' female heads of state throughout history. It's simply an accident that we haven't had one in this particular country quite yet. But there's no rush, for it will certainly happen at some point.

And here's Camille on the environment:

This facile attribution of climate change to human agency is an act of hubris. Good stewardship of the environment is an ethical imperative for every nation. But breast-beating hysteria merely betrays impious tunnel vision. Thousands of factors, minute and grand, are at work in cyclic climate change, whose long-term outcomes we cannot possibly predict. Nature should inspire us with awe, not pity.

I probably don't read Paglia enough, because 1) her blindness about the War on Terror is irritating, given that this is the primary challenge we face today, and 2) I have an old-fashioned feminist streak in me that once in a while gets hit crosswise with her swashbuckling PI rhetoric.

But the important thing about Paglia is this: she writes what she thinks, notwithstanding how her homies are going to feel about it. Truth trumps diplomacy, every time.

It's an enchanting quality, and a rare one. It's the same reason I adore Christopher Hitchens, with whom I agree on very little.

Read Paglia's whole essay, though: as a special bonus, she wrote silly apologetics about the morally/intellectually bankrupt Norman Mailer, and they made me giggle.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:49 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
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