Paglia On Clinton: Dianne Feinstein Should Have Been the First Woman President

Quote of the Day:

"I do not feel that gender is sufficient to explain all of human life. This gender myopia, this gender monomania, has become a disease. It's become a substitute for religion. It is impossible that the feminist agenda can ever be the total explanation of human life.”

–Camille Paglia in an interview with Reason’s Nick Gillespie

In the interview, Paglia, the author of Sexual Personae and Break Blow Burn, talks about growing up as “a gender nonconforming entity” during the Eisenhower administration. Fortunately for those who love Ms. Paglia’s iconoclasm and rapier wit, this experience did not make her into a boring conformist who wants to go on about gender oppression and the bogus 77-cent wage gap.

She is instead a feminist who dares to confront what passes for feminism today. And the advent (re-advent?) of Hillary Clinton, who has always been a favorite Paglia target, as a presidential candidate, while not necessarily good for the country, means we are in for some delightful musings on HRC by CP.

“Hillary Clinton is a disaster. Dianne Feinstein is presidential,” she tells Gillespie. Paglia recalls that, when she watched a young Dianne Feinstein break the news that San Francisco Mayor Moscone and Superviser Harvey Milk had been murdered in 1978 (there is a clip of this moment), she said to herself, “That’s the first female president.” By contrast, Paglia claims that Hillary has “ridden his coattails” and has had a career built on her husband’s.

She calls Mrs. Clinton “a mess,” but she doesn’t stop there. “Are we going to award the presidency to a woman who enabled the depredations of women by that corn pone husband of hers?” She says that “anyone who believes in sexual guidelines” should hesitate to put the couple back in the White House.  Vintage Paglia. I found a link to a delicious interview Paglia gave the IWF's old The Women's Quarterly in 1999.  Both interviews are wide-ranging and not just about Hillary–though Ms. Clinton does seem to have been born to provide an outlet for Ms. Paglia's perceptive wit.