Paglia's Latest

How'd I miss this Camille Paglia column from March 14th. My favorite parts hightlighted below:

Barack and Rudy:

The blatant manipulations of the mainstream media are betrayed by the way that mercurial polling data has been relentlessly promoted about the candidates of both parties for more than a year. That material simply assesses name recognition in an ephemeral beauty contest. Thus we've had endless reports about Hillary and John McCain as front-runners, despite rampant dissatisfactions with them among embers of their own parties. Now we're onto the challenger-with-momentum drama starring Obama and Rudy Giuliani, which may be equally short-lived.

Hillary Clinton:

Hillary didn't help herself with her over-the-top sermon at the First Baptist Church in Selma, Alabama, two weeks ago. Her aping of a black Southern accent from the pulpit was so inept and patronizing that it should get a Razzie Award for Worst Performance of the Year. At times, it approached the Southern Gothic burlesque of Bette Davis chewing up the scenery in "Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte."

Fox News:

What is this morbid obsession that liberals have with Fox? It's as if Democrats, pampered and spoiled by so many decades of the mainstream media trumpeting the liberal agenda, are so shaky in their convictions that they cannot risk an encounter with opposing views. Democrats have ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, the New York Times, Newsweek, Time and 98 percent of American humanities professors to do their bidding. But no, that's not enough -- every spark of dissent has to be extinguished with buckets of bile.

But Fox is certainly disingenuous with its absurd "fair and balanced" motto. Oh, come on, give it up! Why can't Fox honestly admit its conservative agenda, as do major radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and simply argue that it represents a culturally necessary antidote to the omnipresent liberal line? Yet for Democratic presidential candidates, who will be assessed by voters for their ability to stand up to China, North Korea or al-Qaida, to run squealing from a Fox moderator as if he or she were a boogeyman with blood-dripping fangs makes the whole pack of them look like simpering wusses.