Palin Explosion...

Camille Paglia is a prominent feminist, Democrat, and liberal, most well-known, probably, for her slightly unorthodox views. Nothing that would make you call her a conservative, mind you – but not a cookie-cutter chardonnay liberal, either. I've always thought her to be one of the more interesting characters on the feminist left, and one with some of the most intriguing ideas. But I never imagined I'd here her say something like this:

I had heard vaguely about Palin but had never heard her speak. I nearly fell out of my chair. It was like watching a boxing match or a quarter of hard-hitting football -- or one of the great light-saber duels in "Star Wars." (Here are the two Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn, going at it with Darth Maul in "The Phantom Menace.") This woman turned out to be a tough, scrappy fighter with a mischievous sense of humor.

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

The whole article is over at Salon, and well worth a few minutes of your time.

Palin is shaking things up more than I'd ever have expected...