Word: paglia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Doge's Palace in Venice, down the little canal from the Bridge of Sighs, the Ponte de Paglia groans under the weight of Japanese, Germans, Americans, Frenchmen, Scots, English, Indians, Spaniards, Scandinavians--the whole world milling about in T shirts, polyglotting. It takes five minutes for a pedestrian to push across the bridge, a distance of 30 yds. Venice vanished centuries ago into its tourist shop-museum self, forfeit to the ever flattening demographics of mass tourism...
...commonly only extended to deities--the right to make a statement unsupported by any sort of evidence or argument. In short, a heavenly pronouncement. What could be more arrogant and wrong-headed? It is this sort of pronouncement--unsupported by any pretense of argument--which speakers such as Camille Paglia and Harold Bloom make. It is this type of thoughtless statement which leaves thoughtful observers unwilling to take such people seriously...
Academics who refuse to toe the line, end up in the kind of purgatory to which iconoclasts such as Camille Paglia--who while not as brilliant as she believes herself to be, does have some interesting ideas--have been banished...
...Paglia sees a sexual wasteland populated by Sandra Dee girl-women who cry wolf at the first wolf whistle, and by clueless men emasculated by feminism's stern dictates. The longest new essay, ``No Law in the Arena,'' is a panorama of hot-button topics: rape, harassment, pornography, abortion. What makes Paglia infuriating and invaluable is her willingness to find, in these victimological issues, shades of male anxiety and female responsibility. There are also quieter pieces, notably a loving memoir of four homosexual friends who helped shape her sensibility. But it's silly to ask this brainy pipshriek to calm...
...question for Paglia now is where she should go from here. Print can hardly contain her, though she'd be fun as Anna Quindlen's successor on the New York Times op-ed page. TV typecasts her as a furious motormouth, though she could make the cool medium hot again as a talk-show host. Perhaps an answer can be found on the cover of Vamps & Tramps; there is Paglia in her Pussy Galore regalia, striking a doo-wop pose. So maybe it's time for her to hit Broadway and take over the Rizzo role in Grease. Wherever Paglia...