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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Paglia returns to cast a withering eye on Clark ("what a phony!"), Kerry ("the hair!"), Madonna ("a monster"), bloggers -- and the "delusional narcissists" in the White House who led an out-of-his-depth president into a disastrous war.
Oct 29, 2003 | Camille Paglia retired her Salon column more than two years ago, and some readers still remain in deep denial, sending us letters -- "WHERE'S CAMILLE?" and "Bring back Paglia!" -- and clamoring for her singular blend of historical analysis and crackling street smarts.
The last time we spoke with Paglia, in February, at the onset of war, she spoke of "a terrible sense of foreboding" about what would come next. We pick up the conversation from there -- and cover other recent key cultural developments, from Gen. Wesley Clark ("What a phony!"), Sen. John Kerry ("the hair!"), and the tumultuous fall of Rush Limbaugh. She also cast a disapproving eye on the confused antics of Madonna, the comedic influence of David Letterman, and bloggers ("endless reams of bad prose!").
Paglia continues her work as a professor of humanities at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and is completing a book about poetry and a new collection of her essays. Salon spoke to her last week by phone.
You talked the last time about being "extremely upset about our rush to war." Has it played out as you would have predicted?
How to start! This Iraq adventure is a political, cultural and moral disaster for the United States. Every sign was there to read, but the Bush administration is run by blinkered people who are driven by ideology and who do not feel the largeness of the world and its multiplicity of religions, ethnicities and customs. Despite the multicultural ambitions of higher education in the last 25 years, there has been a massive failure in public education. Media negligence also played a huge role in this cataclysm.
Throughout all of last year, as the war drums were beating, the media did not do its job in informing the American people about the complexities of Mideastern history or of the assumptions of world Islam. For example, it should have laid out the dark saga of foolish decision making by the European powers as they cut up the Ottoman Empire after World War I and unleashed the territorial disputes and animosities that still plague us. With more historical perspective during the debate over Iraq, I don't think the polls would have been as high as they were.
I also blame the media for failing to inform the American people about the ancient history of Mesopotamia and of the vision of Saddam Hussein -- who was just a Podunk tyrant who was no threat to the continental U.S. -- to revive the greatness of Babylon. If that had been understood, maybe more people would have suspected that all that bluster about stockpiled weapons of mass destruction was hot air. Of course it was in Saddam's regional interest as a macho man to imply that he had this mountain of armaments, that he could strike the West at any moment. The Egyptian pharaohs were always pounding their chests and boasting in exactly the same way. U.S. intelligence was so naive to have fallen for that, hook, line and sinker!
Another sin by the media was their failure to publicize the immense archaeological and artistic past of Iraq, to show America that Iraq wasn't just this desert wasteland over a big puddle of oil. Few people realized that until the National Museum was looted after American troops seized Baghdad. Then came -- the utter hypocrisy! -- tear-stained, hand-wringing articles by those big blowhards at the New York Times: "Oh, the Bush administration are such awful vandals!" Well, where the hell were all of you last year? Why didn't you show the architecture and artifacts of ancient Mesopotamia or Islamic Baghdad under the caliphate? The American people were led to believe that Baghdad was just a bunch of Bedouin tents huddled in the middle of the desert. As I said the last time I spoke with Salon, I also blame the Democratic senators--
A "bunch of weasels," you called them at the time--
Yes, and that word "weasel" went out from that interview and caught fire. The New York Post used it by that weekend, and from there it was seized by the right wing, as in the bestselling "Deck of Weasels" playing cards. It's a great example of the power of Salon: We put "weasel" back into the American vocabulary!
The emptiness at the heart of the Democratic Party is absolutely clear in the current campaign for the 2004 presidential nomination. The Democratic senators never take a stand without consulting a pollster. They're all trimmers -- they put their finger in the wind and frantically trim their sails. They were so twisted up about political fallout before last fall's election that they gave Bush a rubber stamp for war. Sen. Robert Byrd was the only strong, eloquent voice denouncing this dangerous expansion of presidential power and misuse of our military.
I had a momentary hope, when Bush recently hung out that outrageous bill for $87 billion, that maybe Congress would stand up and refuse to pay for one more day of this. But no, they've all collapsed again like toothpick men. As I repeatedly prophesied over the years at Salon, we are in a period like the Roman Empire, where there is an arrogant, imperial executive branch and a misuse of the army for partisan or fantastically hallucinatory purposes.
My view -- which is an extreme position -- is that we should get the troops out of Iraq now. But even many liberals are saying, "We're gone too far. We cannot turn back now!" Oh, yes, we can! Get the United Nations in there, and get out! I don't think this thing is worth one more American life -- not with the pressing needs we have at home. We have catastrophically compromised our internal system of defense against terrorism because of this adventure overseas. Our National Guard and reservists are over there -- our first responders for emergencies in terrorist attacks here.
