Memo to Ms. Paglia

Camille Paglia on Mrs. Bill Clinton:

Hillary's stonewalling evasions and mercurial, soulless self-positionings have been going on since her first run for the U.S. Senate from New York, a state she had never lived in and knew virtually nothing about. The liberal Northeastern media were criminally complicit in enabling her queenlike, content-free "listening tour," where she took no hard questions and where her staff and security people (including her government-supplied Secret Service detail) staged events stocked with vetted sympathizers, and where they ensured that no protesters would ever come within camera range.

That compulsive micromanagement, ultimately emanating from Hillary herself, has come back to haunt her in her dismaying inability to field complex unscripted questions in a public forum. The presidential sweepstakes are too harsh an arena for tenderfoot novices. Hillary's much-vaunted "experience" has evidently not extended to the dynamic give-and-take of authentic debate. The mild challenges she has faced would be pitiful indeed by British standards, which favor a caustic style of witty put-downs that draw applause and gales of laughter in the House of Commons. Women had better toughen up if they aspire to be commander in chief.

Whether John Edwards or Barack Obama (toward whom I'm currently leaning) has conclusively demonstrated his superiority for the top of the ticket remains to be seen. They may unfortunately split the anti-Hillary vote (a majority of registered Democrats) so that she slips through. If Hillary is the Democratic nominee, I will certainly vote for her. But I continue to find it hard to believe that my party truly craves that long nightmare of déjà vu -- with scandal after scandal disgorged and an endless train of abused women returning from Bill Clinton's sordid, anti-feminist past.

Ms. Paglia the only thing the Democrat Party or the Clinton campaign needs to hear is the sentence that I have highlighted and enlarged above. If Hillary is the nominee you will vote for her no matter what she has done or said or will do or will say.

If you tell your party that you will support them no matter how wretched and detestable their candidate is, no matter how little they deserve to hold the office for which they are running the message they get is that they need do nothing to reform the party or correct mistakes.

Ms. Paglia you have revealed yourself to be someone who is not to be taken seriously. Your attitude means that you can be swept to the sidelines and ignored. A reliable Democrat vote come hell or high water.

We should note for the record that feminist Paglia endorsed and voted for Bill Clinton, you know the man who has left the trail of abused women in his "sordid and anti-feminist past, twice.