Phoning It In

Camille Paglia, academic on-the-go, needs to slow down, take more time, and perhaps employ a fact-checker too. And stop taking Talk Radio as seriously as she does. Few others do; why does she?

In 2006, I got turned off to Paglia due to her sweeping criticisms of Madonna.

No nuance. Once again, taking things too fast:

This Camille Paglia column is one of the most rambling incoherent pieces I’ve ever read (for a professional writer). It’s hard to even know where to start.

The most obvious problem – the rambling hordes of lost adverbs in mile-long sentences – isn’t even what most bothers me. What most bothers me is the repeated factual inaccuracies – Salon should demand better than this.

To begin, to the extent the column has a structure, it goes something like this: First, there’s an extended rant against Democrats that is Hannity-esque in sophistication and accuracy, and that’s mostly about health care. Then there’s a dream sequence of some kind. Then there’s a much smaller rant against Republicans. Then, at the end, she suddenly explains why we should get out of Afghanistan. I felt some sympathy for the Salon editor who had to come up with a title for all this.

But the larger problem is that the piece is filled with glaring factual inaccuracies....