"Steinem’s polished humanitarian mask had slipped, revealing the mummified fascist within."

Camille Paglia is weighing in on the recent feminism cataclysm.

I’m sure that my delight was shared by other dissident feminists everywhere....

Indeed!

As for Madeleine Albright, who said "There’s a special place in Hell for women who don’t help other women," Paglia says: "Waspishly policing the earth was evidently insufficient for the feminist politburo, who are now barging into the salvation and damnation game."

Oh, that reminds me of something a commenter — tshanks78 said — yesterday as I noted the way we don't see Bernie Sanders making equivalent "first Jewish President" arguments: "Is there a special place in hell for Jews that don't support Bernie Sanders?"

Back to Paglia:

Yes, [Hillary's] been handed job after job, but primarily due to her very unfeminist association with a man. As a senator, she initiated nothing of substance, and as Secretary of State, she stumbled into one disastrous fiasco after another, escalating the destabilization of North Africa and the Mideast.

And she was handed an unopposed path to the Democratic Party nomination. Why?! She lost to Obama. She never proved she had what it takes to be a dominating campaigner. Everyone just cleared out of her way. But some old man had the nerve to step into the path and prove the inanity of the everyone else's deference to the ex-President's wife.

Hillary Clinton, in contrast, is a time-server and trimmer who cynically panders to every audience and who shuffles through policy positions like playing cards.

A trimmer.  That's a rather British word, meaning someone who "inclines to each of two opposite sides as interest dictates," according to the OED, which attributes this usage "to Lord Halifax and those associated with him (1680–90), but by him accepted in the sense ‘one who keeps even the ship of state’; hence ‘one who changes sides to balance parties’ (Johnson)." Example from 1682: "A Trimmer, one neither Whigg nor Tory, is a Hater of Anti-christ, an Abominator of Enthusiasm."

Paglia wonders how Hillary ever got to be thought of as "a feminist icon." As for Gloria Steinem:

It was precisely because of the borderline lunacy of so many of those women [feminists, circa 1970] that I became a fan of Gloria Steinem from the moment she appeared on the national scene.

With her chic aviator shades, hip-huggers, and flowing, streaked-blonde hair, the telegenic Steinem normalized the public image of feminism and made it palatable to a vast mainstream. She projected steadiness and cordiality and presented feminist goals as utterly reasonable....

Former fandom renders Paglia, in her own eyes, an apt critic. Steinem resorted to "male-bashing." She alienated women who stayed home with their children and those who maintained a moral objection to abortion. She "and the leaders of the National Organization for Women... became backstage secret agents for the Democratic party," notably giving "Bill Clinton a free pass for his gross violation of fundamental sexual harassment principle." And Steinem denounced Paglia's magnum opus "Sexual Personae," comparing it to "Mein Kampf."

For nearly 25 years, Hillary Clinton, with her simmering subtext of contemptuous bitterness about men, has been pushed along and protected by a host of powerful women journalists in print and TV, Steinem chums or sympathizers who have a lot to answer for.