The headline of Camille Paglia’s latest article at Salon.com is “Pelosi’s victory for women,” but I found her discussion of other subjects much more compelling.
On Richard Dawkins:
On science, Dawkins was spot on — lively and nimble. But on religion, his voice went “Psycho” weird (yes, Alfred Hitchcock) — as if he was channeling some old woman with whom he was in love-hate combat. I have no idea what ancient private dramas bubble beneath the surface there.
On the death of Claude L?vi-Strauss:
Continuing on the theme of overrated male writers, I was appalled at the sentimental rubbish filling the air about Claude L?vi-Strauss after his death was announced last week. The New York Times, for example, first posted an alert calling him “the father of modern anthropology” (a claim demonstrating breathtaking obliviousness to the roots of anthropology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) and then published a lengthy, laudatory obituary that was a string of misleading, inaccurate or incomplete statements.
On college costs:
What mal-education goes on at killer prices at the elite schools! Skyrocketing tuition costs are legalized piracy. It’s a national scandal, which the mainstream media has shamefully neglected. A few weeks ago, I was bemused to discover the bill from my first semester (fall 1964) at Harpur College of the State University of New York at Binghamton. [snip] The grand total my parents owed for the semester was $413.50 — for which I received the superb education that is still the basis of my professional life as a teacher and writer.
