Camille Paglia is a Weasel

After a thankfully long absence from the public eye, Salon recently dusted off Camille Paglia for a pathetic boast-fest. [via Atrios, who refused to even read it. I should have followed his lead.] Paglia tried to take credit for injecting the word "weasel" into the arguments about the Bush administration's PR campaign for the Iraq war when she referred to Dems using that word.

A "bunch of weasels," you called them at the time-- Yes, and that word "weasel" went out from that interview and caught fire. The New York Post used it by that weekend, and from there it was seized by the right wing, as in the bestselling "Deck of Weasels" playing cards. It's a great example of the power of Salon: We put "weasel" back into the American vocabulary!

Sorry, Camille, but Scrappleface coined "axis of weasels" two weeks before your long-winded interview was published. His spoof site is so effective that plenty of people, including some in the media, really thought that Donald Rumsfeld had referred to France and Germany as the "Axis of Weasels." He put "weasel" back into the American vocabulary, not you. You're taking credit for another person's genius.

She also takes credit for being the first blog!

Now and then one sees the claim that Kausfiles was the first blog. I beg to differ: I happen to feel that my Salon column was the first true blog. My columns had punch and on-rushing velocity. They weren't this dreary meta-commentary, where there's a blizzard of fussy, detached sections nattering on obscurely about other bloggers or media moguls and Washington bureaucrats. I took hits at media excesses, but I directly commented on major issues and personalities in politics and pop culture.

Ha ha! She's envious of blogs, and she steals from them. I hope it's another two years or more before she resurfaces.