There's a reason why Camille Paglia is the one left-leaning columnist I consider a must-read. She is unfailingly honest. Though she supported Obama in '08 (and continues to support him now), she is not above criticizing him or his administration. She is one of the few Liberals to listen to rather than simply demonize blather radio (I don't know how she does it - I can't take more than about 20 minutes of that crap before I want to blow my brains out, especially if the blatherer in question is that gasbag pretentious phony Rush Limbaugh, who's nothing more than a cheerleader for Team Elephant).
Her latest column is further proof of her honesty. I can't do it justice with excerpts - please read it, you'll be glad you did. There are two paragraphs I will excerpt just to whet your appetite (I read them and said to myself, "I wish I'd written that!").
Throughout this fractious summer, I was dismayed not just at the self-defeating silence of Democrats at the gaping holes or evasions in the healthcare bills but also at the fogginess or insipidity of articles and Op-Eds about the controversy emanating from liberal mainstream media and Web sources. By a proportion of something like 10-to-1, negative articles by conservatives were vastly more detailed, specific and practical about the proposals than were supportive articles by Democrats, which often made gestures rather than arguments and brimmed with emotion and sneers. There was a glaring inability in most Democratic commentary to think ahead and forecast what would or could be the actual snarled consequences -- in terms of delays, denial of services, errors, miscommunications and gross invasions of privacy -- of a massive single-payer overhaul of the healthcare system in a nation as large and populous as ours. It was as if Democrats live in a utopian dream world, divorced from the daily demands and realities of organization and management.Those of you on the political Right are applauding and hooting in appreciation right now. Hang on - she's got something for you as well.
Having said all that about the failures of my own party, I am not about to let Republicans off the hook. What a backbiting mess the GOP is! It lacks even one credible voice of traditional moral values on the national stage and is addicted to sonorous pieties of pharisaical emptiness. Republican politicians sermonize about the sanctity of marriage while racking up divorces and sexual escapades by the truckload. They assail government overreach and yet support interference in women's control of their own bodies. Advanced whack-a-mole is clearly needed for that yammering smarty-pants Newt Gingrich, who is always so very, very pleased with himself but has yet to produce a single enduring thought. The still inexplicably revered George W. Bush ballooned our national deficits like a drunken sailor and clumsily exacerbated the illegal immigration debate. And bizarrely, the hallucinatory Dick Cheney, a fake-testosterone addict who spooked Bush into a pointless war, continues to be lauded as presidential material.Like I said - I wish I had written that! May both parties go the way of the Whigs, the Federalists, the Tories, and the Bull Moose parties.
Read Paglia and grok an honest assessment of the current political climate.
