From: jon@lindy.Stanford.EDU (Jon Corelis)
Subject: Re: She's baaaaack.....Camille Paglia
Organization: Jon's Cafe Americain
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 22:39:20 GMT

In article <28SEP92.15394478@vax.clarku.edu> hhenderson@vax.clarku.edu writes:
>
>Jon, can you give me some evidence that indicates Paglia is: 1) a poser,
>2) a humbug, 3) a fool, 4) suffering from a "narcissistic disorder" and/
>or an "atrophied ethical sense"? 
>


   Those are not my accusations, but ones which are explicit or implicit
in the review I quoted.  I mostly agree with them though.

   I think I may have more experience to base my opinions of Paglia on
than many people who talk about her.  For instance, the article which
catapulted her into celebrity when it appeared in the New York Times
Book Review and subsequently was reprinted elsewhere actually consisted
of brief excerpts from a much longer article which appeared in the
scholarly journal Arion and which was a review of two books on the
history of sexuality.  I'm probably one of the few people around who read
not only that original long article but also the two books of which it
was a review.  Being familiar with the books and to some extent with the
field, it was immediately apparent to me that Paglia's review was a
piece of character assassination based on scholarly ignorance or, more
often, deliberate distortion -- a hatchet job which was not only
mean-spirited but hypocritical, since the authors of the books in
question (one of whom had died of AIDS shortly before Paglia's article
was written and was thus beyond responding to her slurs) both had
career-long records of vigorous political activism in the cause of
antidiscrimination, whereas for all her pseudopopulist bluster Paglia's
own real-world political credentials are, to the best of my knowledge,
null.

   While it was clear enough to me when I read the original article what
was going on, I was very puzzled as to why, until the recycling of that
article for the NYTBR and Paglia's subsequent frantic self-promotion
campaign in the media made it clear enough what the hustle was, and I
viewed the ensuing circus with a mixture of disgust and grudging
admiration -- yes, and I must admit, envy -- that someone had actually
found a way to make money out of having her midlife crisis in public.

   As for finding evidence of the rank personal qualities attributed to
Paglia in the above quoted text, I'd suggest looking at any page of her
original Arion article, her MIT lecture transcript, or the interview
with her which was published in last Sunday's San Francisco Examiner:
if you don't find at least one of those qualities exemplified in the
first sentence you look at, you'll probably find it in the second.
Rather than go through the all too ample evidence of her character as
found in her writings, I'd like in fairness rather to quote what is
perhaps the one statement of hers I know of which I find frank,
straightforward, and accurate.  It appears in the transcript of her MIT
lecture (which is reprinted in her just-released new book,) and solidly
confirms my surmise that her intellectual credo is actually drawn,
unsurprisingly, from P. T. Barnum.  She says, "For the first time in my
adult life I'm out of debt as of three months ago."
-- 


Jon Corelis               jon@lindy.stanford.edu
Stanford University       BITNET:  BR.JGC@RLG.STANFORD.EDU