She’s being stupid. She really likes Obama, and she doesn’t want to confront the reality of what Obama is.

But Paglia is talking about the genre as a whole, which includes Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity — all giants in the field, all shrill, hateful, and more than anything else tedious.

Josh, for hateful, see Obama’s wife. Or pastor. Or his terrorist buddy.

Savage is a moron who doesn’t grasp economics. And, by the way, he is pretty much agnostic on McCain v Obama.

Rush and Sean? I don’t see hateful there. Over the top, sure, and rough sometimes, sure, but not really hateful.

Bill doesn’t seem hateful to me either, but I haven’t listened to him on radio. Bill also tends to get quite a few things wrong.

Looks accurate to me. His policies are essentially Marxist, all of his associates seem to hate America, he doesn’t seem to be able to talk without a teleprompter, he knows little and he’s done essentially nothing, and his wife hates America and may well be racist.

I do think he’s bright, however, probably at a comparable level to G. W. Bush, Gore, or Kerry, all of whom seem to be in the mid 120s of the IQ range.

Paglina isn’t a typical leftist, she actually shows signs of original thought, although when it all comes down to it she ends up voting for the leftist sh*tbag. Clinton, Gore, now Obama. If the above quote represents the best of her argument, she’s no longer an independent thinker, she’s just another moron Democrat.

Of course, if I take Josh’s point correctly, it is kind of puzzling as to why Paglia would only now discover that she doesn’t like rightwing radio.  Much less why she would think that “Talk radio will lose its broad audience if it continues on this nakedly partisan path.”  If it wasn’t for that “partisan path” there would be no talk radio to speak of, and frankly it is exactly these sorts of rah-rah cheerleading programs that get big ratings.

Looks can be deceiving. In reality I’m humorless, insensitive and…friendly.

But in seriousness, some might say that suggesting an entire industry listened to by tens of millions of people is characterized by a tedium of shrill hatred, is a tad more abrasive a sentiment than my observing that a single individual is seriously uninformed and profoundly biased.

>>>an underhanded (and yes, overwrought) attack on both traditional feminism AND conservatism.

Only in the sense that any cultural or social commentary in a democratic society is inevitably political. That is to say, in the broadest and least particular possible sense. As a disproof of the charge of being a hack/non-hack, it would only be contextually relevant if she had been regurgitating or challenging the partisan pap of a political party in the early 1990s. She never got anywhere near that in the book, as it was concerned with very different matters. Thus your use of it to support a defense of yourself from behind Camille’s skirt –”She said it first!”– is ill-considered on multiple counts.

>>But Paglia is talking about the genre as a whole, which includes Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity

With the exception of Savage –who is more a cryptofascist than a conservative if anything– and short of the odd context-divorced quote (the Democrats do assiduous work in compiling these) none of those men could be accurately described as hateful. Unless you think their political views themselves embody hatred (as Democrats do). Discussing their philosophy as applied to current events is after all the bulk of what gets done on these programs. But to indulge in such a view would only confirm my allegation that your sentiment is ideologically driven.

>>I daresay you’ve not read, oh, I’ll go with a single thing I’ve ever written.

Really, is this the first time we’ve spoken about your views? If your defense is that you’re that immensely forgetful, how can we have any confidence that you even recall these ugly events you’ve supposedly heard on talk radio.

>>The other writers here can disagree with me on many issues and remain civil

Ha. Am I perhaps shrill, tedious and hateful? One detects a pattern.

The reason you think that is probably because you have a narrow definition of civility. You’ll find no profanity or personal attacks in my criticism that could qualify as uncivil. It’s merely forcefully argued and tends to cut to the marrow of things. I make no apologies for that, nor should anyone.

You’re funny, and really sensitive for someone so abrasive.

Sexual Personae‘s theme (I’m curious to read criticism, so I actually read it for funsies) struck me more as an underhanded (and yes, overwrought) attack on both traditional feminism AND conservatism. She wasn’t entirely successful, but the idea of breaking down both opposing orthodoxies was fascinating — and, yes, informs her current views of politics, which are left-of-center, but certainly not dogmatic.

The little I’ve heard of Hewitt is less than even — he can be called shrill accurately, but probably not hateful. But Paglia is talking about the genre as a whole, which includes Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity — all giants in the field, all shrill, hateful, and more than anything else tedious. One possible exception does not break a rule, especially as she was speaking generally.

And now I’m carrying the Democrat talking points? I daresay you’ve not read, oh, I’ll go with a single thing I’ve ever written. Please — stop. You’re not helping yourself. The other writers here can disagree with me on many issues and remain civil; why so much vitriol?

I’m never on board with the propagation of incorrect, excessively generalized and uninformed rubbish in the name of equal opportunity. Indeed I point a wagging finger at that very idea itself, to identify much of what is rotten in contemporary political debate and what is presently rotten in this post.

And yes, your assessment is worthy of such a description for its scope. “Shrill, tedious, and hateful” is a fair characterization of someone like Michael Savage, but a ridiculous one if you wish it to apply in general to such people as Hugh Hewitt. It is wholly without merit as a characterization of a very wide industry.

>>Camille Paglia can hardly be called a mouthpiece of Democrat talking points

Always looking for a proxy to fight your battles Josh. Those are your specific words that I took exception to. You have to defend them. You. Not other people not present who you agree with, or who might agree with you. A second is not an argument, if you can’t defend it, don’t make it.

>>Her analysis of political entertainment is from a pop art history perspective; two of her books, Sexual Personae and Break, Burn, Blow help illustrate this, along with her years of writing at Salon.com

In point of fact Sexual Personae as nonpolitical media and literary criticism, demonstrates nothing either for or against a charge of hackery (not that I even leveled one). It was assigned reading for me at UNL in 1997. If you read it without needing the course credit, you have my sympathy for the masochism in your reading habits. Alas, at least you don’t appear to have understood what it was concerned with, so it all turned out well in the end I guess.

Nope, nope and nope. When did we start recapitulating vapid, ridiculously generalized and flat out incorrect Democratic talking points on this blog? We’re doing a bang-up job of it with bologna like this. A ludicrous ideologically-driven assessment of a large and highly diverse industry and audience, totally lacking in any informative value whatsoever.