“What a phony! What a bunch of crap this Clark boom is. Clark reminds me of Keir Dullea in “2001: A Space Odyssey” — a blank, vacant expression, detached and affectless. There’s something sexually neutered about Dullea in that film — a physical passivity necessitated by cramped space travel — that I also find in Clark. And the astronaut Dullea plays is sometimes indistinguishable from the crazed computer, HAL — which I find in Clark’s smug, computerized vocal delivery… Doesn’t anyone know how to “read” TV? The guy’s an android! He gives me the creeps. And don’t they realize how short he is? He’s a slick, boudoir, salon military type who rubbed plenty of colleagues the wrong way. Clark is not a natural man’s man. And he’s no Eisenhower, who was a genial, charismatic leader with a genius for collaboration and organization.” Her take on the war seems wrong to me – she seems more concerned about educating the public about the glories of Middle Eastern culture (not a bad idea in itself) than tackling the frightening rise of Islamism. And she doesn’t get Washington. She seems to think that State Department-Pentagon infighting is somehow Rumsfeld’s doing! But when she’s good, she’s great. This was how she felt about Rush Limbaugh’s woes:
For me, it was almost like when Diana had her accident or when Natalie Wood was found drowned off Santa Catalina. That’s the level of deep emotional upset that admirers of Rush had — not because his private life contradicted his public code but because of the revelation of the desperate, agonizing subterfuges to which he had been driven by his addiction.
Paglia is the only person on the planet who could go on to compare Rush Limbaugh with Judy Garland. For that alone, she deserves to be celebrated. Oh, and she’s dead right about the genius of Drudge. Incomparable.
The Dish 