Camille Paglia Defends Madonna Op-ed

Lesbian social critic and feminist Camille Paglia revisits her classic op-ed that declared Madonna “the future of feminism” on the 20th anniversary of its publication in The New York Times.

In a video interview Paglia stands by her assessment of the pop icon in 1990 during the era of the controversial and sexually charged “Justify My Love” video. She calls the op-ed “prophetic” and warns that feminists today dismiss Sarah Palin, whom Paglia considers a harbinger of a new kind of feminism, at their peril.

“All those tyrants, all those Puritans, all those prudes that I was attacking in that piece — indeed, they, like, wither away like the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz,” shouts Paglia. “They're completely gone and I'm still here, and so are all the other pro-sex feminists."

Watch Paglia defend the piece.