Another Reason To Love Camille Paglia

A few gems from Ms. Paglia:

CP: I would say that many of these people are regular people. I started listening to Rush Limbaugh probably in the early ‘90s, we’re talking 15 years now. There are people who are twisted but there are a lot of mainstream Americans. . . .
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There is a kind of humanitarian do-gooder mentality abroad in the public schools these days, which is like, “We all get along. Here’s our quota. We are going to read the poem by the African American, the poem by the Native American. The poem by the Chicano.” Like that. There is no more quality. So we are not giving the kids anything to sustain them. Heaven forbid there should be anything about religion or sex. The far right keeps the sexual out—nudes from the history of painting. And the left keeps anything from religion out. The things that are the most substantive are not there.
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If I hear one more time that my ancestor Christopher Columbus is guilty of genocide. It is so boring.
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You listen to talk radio long enough and you are going to hear the voices of the people. I voted for Kerry but heard the way he was being discussed early on and all the flaws of the Boston-run campaign. Oh my God. It was a revelation, seeing things. That’s how I knew Kerry was going to lose. I saw it through the eyes of what the callers were saying.
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RB: I take it you agree with Thomas Frank’s [What’s the Matter With Kansas] notion of what he calls an “age of derangement,” that working people are voting against their interests?

CP: I totally reject that formulation.

RB: Really?

CP: The idea that working people are voting against their interests seems to me—I’m sorry, I find that to be one of the most condescending, twisted things that has now taken root. It’s now in the media everywhere. That is twisted.
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So what I am saying is, how dare Thomas Frank decide what is—the people who are voting Republican believe that capitalism, despite the misery of individual places, they still believe that capitalism provides the best chance for small entrepreneurs to have an idea, put it into motion and eventually make a killing. Even if you are not rich you see other people getting rich and you want a system that can produce rich people.
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The people vote. So the leftist claim that what they are doing is for the people but when the people show what’s on their mind, [in a scolding voice] “Oh no, you are so ignorant.” So all we have are armchair leftists. There is no real leftism.
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Most people who are secular humanists having the idea that they are doing fine. We are doing fine and our only enemy is the Bible-based far right. The reason why the real threat is the far right is that they have the Bible. And the Bible is a masterpiece. The Bible is one of the greatest works produced in the world. The people who all they have is the Bible actually are set up for life. Not only do they have a spiritual vision given to them but artistic fulfillment. They don’t even recognize just the pleasure of dealing with this epic poetry and drama. Everything is in the Bible. What does the left have? The left has a lot of attitude.
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People in the art world are full of sanctimonious sense of superiority to most of America. But they must address America, learn to address America. Yes, have your friends, have the people who support what you are doing in the art world, but you have to recover a sense of the general audience and the same thing I am saying to the far right, get over the sneering at art, the stereotyping—

RB: They started it.

CP: Wait a minute. The far right wouldn’t have any opinions about art if it weren’t for those big incidents in the late ‘80s to the ‘90s when some stupid work was committing sacrilege

Find much more here. (Hat tip to Bad Hair Blog via Barcepundit.)