Interview with Patricia Pearson at MND

Men's News Daily has an interesting interview on women and aggression with one of my favorite writers, Patricia Pearson, who wrote When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence (Thanks Bob H. for pointing the interview out). My favorite part of the interview was where Pearson described Camille Paglia calling her a bitch:

The chemistry between us was intolerable, but I couldn’t end the meeting because I was on assignment, so she ended it by storming off, calling me “ a stupid b*tch” on her way across the Four Season’s creamy lobby carpet. Whereupon, a lady in a CARMEN MIRANDA HAT, which is to say a hat sporting fruit, who had been sitting across from us in the lobby, introduced herself as a family court judge (I am not making this up) and said that she “couldn’t help but overhear your conversation with Camille Paglia.”
“Do you know what just happened?” she asked me, amused.
“No,” I wailed, still feeling like I’d just been b*tch-slapped.
The secret issue that had set us asunder, said the fruit-headed judge, was the fact that I had been chewing gum. “Are you aware that you were chewing gum? As a judge, I can tell you that body language is absolutely paramount in these kinds of conflicts, and chewing gum signals defiance.” Hilarious. I happened to have been quitting smoking at the time, and used gum like a critical limb, and had forgotten about it entirely.

What do I think of Paglia as a social thinker? I can’t get past the fact that she’s an abusive maniac who can’t tolerate insolence, no matter how inadvertent.

Come to think of it, Ann Althouse also had a run-in with Paglia and was uninvited to a dinner for her because Professor Althouse dared to write a blog post that Paglia didn't like and she was angry and hurt. Sounds like the lady could use some anger management tips.

Anyway, the interview with Pearson is good, take a look.