Iconic and iconoclastic feminist Camille Paglia regularly infuriates her liberal colleagues by exposing the self-contradictions and double standards of the progressive left. On Sean Hannity’s radio show on Tuesday, Paglia did it again, this time passionately asserting what conservatives have been saying for a while now: Democrats have made a mockery of journalism.
Hannity led into the discussion by citing Paglia’s recent discussion of the Democrats’ self-defeating “nationwide orgy of rage and spite.” Paglia, who voted for Bernie Sanders, launched into a unflinchingly brutal critique of her own party, particularly as it has influenced journalism. The ceaseless hysterics from the Democrats she said, is “obscene” and “outrageous,” and their “fantasy and hallucination” have not only hurt their own party, but journalism in America.
“It shows that the Democrats are nothing now but words and fantasy and hallucination and Hollywood,” she said. “There’s no journalism left. What’s happened to The New York Times? What’s happened to the major networks? It’s an outrage.”
She continued: “I’m a professor of media studies, in addition to a professor of humanities, OK? And I think it’s absolutely grotesque the way my party has destroyed journalism. Right now, it is going to take decades to recover from this atrocity that’s going on where the news media have turned themselves over to the most childish fraternity, kind of buffoonish behavior.”
In a wide-ranging interview with The Weekly Standard last week, Paglia blasted the Democratic party’s “orgy of rage and spite,” which she argued is driving a wedge between the party and American voters.
“In an abject failure of leadership that may be one of the most disgraceful episodes in the history of the modern Democratic party, Chuck Schumer, who had risen to become the Senate Democratic leader after the retirement of Harry Reid, asserted absolutely no moral authority as the party spun out of control in a nationwide orgy of rage and spite,” Paglia told The Weekly Standard. “Nor were there statesmanlike words of caution and restraint from two seasoned politicians whom I have admired for decades and believe should have run for president long ago — Senator Dianne Feinstein and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.”
Paglia’s condemnation of Pelosi played out perfectly in the Democrats’ devastating loss in Georgia on Tuesday, the Republicans having used Pelosi as part of the campaign against Jon Ossoff.
“How do Democrats imagine they can ever expand their electoral support if they go on and on in this self-destructive way, impugning half the nation as vile racists and homophobes?” said Paglia, a point repeatedly made by conservatives, adding, “Many highly educated, upper-middle-class Democrats regard themselves as exemplars of ‘compassion’ (which they have elevated into a supreme political principle) and yet they routinely assail Trump voters as ignorant, callous hate-mongers.”
As The Daily Wire highlighted last week, Paglia recently took on the progressive left’s transgender narrative, stating, “The cold biological truth is that sex changes are impossible,” and unequivocally condemning the use of puberty blockers for children. “I regard this practice as a criminal violation of human rights,” she said. “It is certainly ironic how liberals who posture as defenders of science when it comes to global warming (a sentimental myth unsupported by evidence) flee all reference to biology when it comes to gender.”
H/T Washington Times