Fatale Abstraction

Tam posted a link to this brilliant Peter Hitchens article in the Mail. Nice to see that someone some rare soul in the media was willing to commit to print the folly of the Emperor's New Clothes.

I've always liked Camille Paglia--have always viewed her as objective in ways most liberals dare not be. She didn't check her brain at the door, even though she is a liberal democrat and proudly supports Barack Obama. She criticizes the media for not reporting and putting to rest the nagging inconsistencies and shadows in his C.V. I love what she said here in salon about Sarah

Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views.
How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the State University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don't know their asses from their elbows.
Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times
infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology -- contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.

Then again, Paglia is a commentator and not a journalist, in the same way Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer and not a journalist. There is something refreshing about someone not beholden to anyone, someone who can plainly state their allegiances and also criticize their own house for failing their objective. And it's nice to hear a respected feminist call the media on their petty Sarah-bashing.

To paraphrase one addle-witted Obama supporter, the media can suck it.

My recent conversation with someone smarter than I:

Me: The American media have been derelict in their duty.
Them: Sweetie, the American media have been treasonous.

Quite.