Paglia on Birther movement: Predictable but how meaningful?

by Susan Marie Kovalinsky | September 18, 2009 at 09:00 am
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Camille Paglia - On her breakup, Heather Has Two Mommies and Obama

I was a big fan of Camile Paglia in the 1990s.  I found it refreshing that,  although she is a liberal,  she often sided with conservative and right wing views on certain issues ( for example,  date rape hype,  feminist hype of all kinds,  and political correctness).   She is lesbian,  but took a daring and unusual stance on the P-FLAG movement on college campuses,  and her critique of NARTH and gay marriage was original and thought provoking.   I myself am kin to her is certain aspects:  liberal on many issues,  but radically conservative on some of the new-fangled liberal causes. 

 Now she is siding with the birther movement,  which she finds legitimate.  Factually,  I admit her points are extremely well-taken by me.  I have always believed,  though, that even on the small chance that there is a legitimate question as to Obama's place of birth   -  and I am not sure that there is a legitimate question at all  -  the Constitution could be amended to accommodate him.    This is my intuitive sense of how things would pan out.   I am also unabashedly pro-Obama;  perhaps even irrationally so.  I cannot be sure just why it is that I have the uncanny sense that he is "ordained".  I think it is far less a mystical sense than an historical and political one:  He fulfils nearly all of the predictions of Howe and Strauss for a "fourth turning President".    And the will of the people in a free election in which the majority chose him,  would super-cede the constitution,  from the Democrat liberal stance ( not from that of the Birthers,  I  admit).   In any case:  

Camille Paglia, the lone Salon.com columnist who can count on her ramblings getting regular links from The Drudge Report, appeared on NPR’s “On Point” yesterday and made a spirited defense of the “birther” movement. The exchange came about 36 minutes in, after one caller to the show recounted his experiences at the 9/12 march on Washington. Paglia snapped back at him:


First of all, I reject the idea that the “birther” campaign is motivated by racism. There may be racism among it, but there are legitimate questions about the documentation of Obama’s birth certificate. I’m sorry, I’ve been following this closely from the start. To assume that all those signs about the birth controversy were motivated by racism, that is simply wrong.

Paglia has been on this beat before, writing in April that “there were ambiguities about Obama’s birth certificate that have never been satisfactorily resolved.” But this particular interview is compelling, especially for Paglia’s convoluted explanation that she despises victim politics. . .

And this was a headline in today's New York Village Voice:

Camille Paglia Provides Much-Needed Intellectual Cred for Birthers

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