WOMEN: IT'S ALL WOMEN'S FAULT

Well, not women per se -- just anti-feminist right-wing apparatchik Laura Schlessinger and phony-feminist Camille Paglia.

Here's Schlessinger, being interviewed about the Spitzer scandal:

"Are you saying the women should feel guilty, like they somehow drove the man to cheat?" a visibly aghast Meredith Vieira of "Today" asked Dr. Laura Schlessinger, a radio host.

Dr. Schlessinger replied, "Yes, I hold women accountable for tossing out perfectly good men by not treating them with the love and kindness and respect and attention they need."

And here's Paglia in Salon:

Why was Hillary flying around the world to those 80 countries anyhow -- building her resume while leaving her randy hubby unleashed?

What?! Expecting personal responsibility from men? But that's absurd!

Lately I've had serious disagreements with some of the godmothers of modern feminism, but even so, they're a damn sight better than alternatives like Schlessinger and Paglia.

*****

Oh, and this is the loopiest moment in Paglia's current column:

And that [Clinton] scare ad was produced with amazing ineptitude. If it's 3 a.m., why is the male-seeming mother fully dressed as she comes in to check on her sleeping children? Is she a bar crawler or insomniac? An obsessive-compulsive housecleaner, like Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest"?

"The male-seeming mother"? Here's the ad -- you really think so, Camille? Er, I don't see it. Maybe my tran-dar is a bit rusty.

As for the rest -- "a bar crawler or insomniac"? Hunh? Yeah, the ad doesn't really make sense. The phone isn't ringing in the woman's house. The kids don't look like siblings. But it doesn't have to make sense. It's just supposed to play on your reptile brain. And in Texas, apparently, it worked, though it gives me no joy to say that. So the ad isn't inept. Besides, Camille, it's not as if all your beloved French nouvelle vague films make perfect linear sense, either.