Michael Smerconish, the kinder-and-gentler-but-still-shocking replacement for Don Imus had Camilla Paglia on his show to chat about the possible motives of the Virginia Tech assassin. Remember Camilla Paglia? I do, but don't ask me what would make her an expert on this particular topic. In any case, the conversation went like this:
SMERCONISH: You were quoted as saying, "Young women now seem to want to behave like men and have sex without commitment. The signals they are giving are very confusing, and rage and humiliation build up in boys who are spurned again and again."
It almost seems like, you know, this guy wasn't hooking up enough, and it allowed him to build up these frustrations that he might not otherwise have had.
PAGLIA: Well, I think this Cho was probably psychotic, and the signs of it were missed for a long time. But he seems to have been functional and to be able to get into college and so on. I'm of the pro-sex wing of feminism, whose patron saint is Madonna, all right, so I'm not coming from a conservative perspective here, but I do feel that this "hooking up" culture that's going on on campuses where girls just have sort of casual, random sex with guys and never see them again. I mean, I think that is kind of, over the long run, kind of degrading for women, OK? They're playing a male game, and I don't think they understand the psychological consequences.
SMERCONISH: Yeah, but none of them were hooking up with him. I mean, he wasn't partaking in any of that.
PAGLIA: No. Exactly. So you see all this going on around you. Not just in college, but in high school, it's going on. I mean, girls are servicing boys, and going either -- they're starting at age 10 and 11. And this is a kind of chaos that is going on right now in education. Also, our sex-permeated mass culture, popular culture makes it seem to a marginal and socially inept person like Cho as if everybody's getting it.
However hard I try I can't see any other point to this exchange than trying to implicate the "out-of-control" sexuality of young women in the heinous massacre. Disgusting.