Paglia talks to the Toronto Star (not the other way around):
No opportunity to kick her foes, living or dead (e.g. philosophers Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Martha Nussbaum, and journalist Susan Faludi), can be allowed to pass.
The tangent on teaching leads inevitably to another of her bugbears: conventional pedagogic wisdom.
“The true multiculturalism is comparative religion,” she says. “Not teaching some victim-oriented, genocide-laden kinds of history – the way multiculturalism is ordinarily taught is through victims. (Voice dipping to a low whine) Oh, the Spanish came and committed genocide. Christopher Columbus was guilty of genocide. All of that.”
She doesn’t do debates anymore, an enormous shame however one feels about her views. Anyone who saw her vivisect Faludi in an iconic episode of The Phil Donahue Show 17 years ago knows exactly how enormous.
“Debate who? On what? Who would I debate?” Paglia cries, faux-appalled.
Arch-atheist and essayist Christopher Hitchens for a start. Nearly two weeks ago, Hitchens was the first speaker in this ROM-sponsored series. Maybe he can be recalled for a championship tilt with Paglia to close the show.
“Hitchens is a cynic and he knows nothing about religion,” Paglia starts out, slowly punctuating each word – a sure sign of danger. “It’s one thing to attack it from the basis of knowledge… I thought that book (Hitchens’ God Is Not Great) was awful. Awful book! That could have been a great book … He’s, like, lazy. He’s lazy! He just wants to sit around and have dinner parties and drink in Washington. The whole book is, like, chatted. (High, mocking tone) And then I was with a Muslim guy in a taxi with my wife … C’mon. What is that? It’s not even a magazine article … I think it’s a scandal.”
PS: note that the Toronto Star‘s sections include “Ontario”, “Canada”, “World” — and “Act of Kindness”.
Vomit.
