Thursday, October 11, 2012

Stephen Colbert Gives it to Naomi Wolf

The Hausfrau Naomi, with the pornographic mind


The Colbert Show comes on a little too late for me to watch it regularly, but he had on Naomi Wolf last night (this morning) and it was too hard to resist. It ended up being a hilarious show.

Wolf's latest chef d'oeuvre is titled Vagina: A Biography. Wow! How brave! A book with the "v" word in its title. What nerve! What audacity! Way to go Naomi, grabbing that bull by its horns!

The overweight, housewifeish Wolf was accosted by the mischievous Colbert. At any given opportunity, and even when not given the opportunity, Colbert would shoot off a medley of "vagina" at Wolf. And the visibly agitated Wolf would convulse into nervous laughter, with a strange accompaniment of (ecstatic?) hand-clapping. Rather than take Colbert to task, and insist on the seriousness of her book, she simply collapsed into her own prudishness.

Because a prude is what she really is, despite this foray into her netherworld, as she sat there in her over-sized print dress trying to promote her "biography" on television.

The erratic cultural critic Camille Paglia has written a commentary on Wolf's new book. I found it linked at Drudge this morning. You can read the rambling interview at Salon.com, where the interviewer starts with, "I have to ask..."

Paglia is actually shocked by the book, despite her "I'm pro-sex, pro-porn" declaration. And she seems to agree with me about the camouflaged (by all this confessional porn?) prudishness of Wolf when she says in the interview:
"Even when Wolf tries to celebrate sex she remains prudishly anti-porn - which is a completely illogical position. But that illogic was repeatedly echoed by most of the prominent feminist journalists in New York who negatively reviewed the book: "We're pro-sex, but we're anti-porn."
Colbert's full interview is here.