Camille Paglia on Hillary Clinton... and... Hillary Clinton's Weiner

So... folks... you're a sophisticated bunch; surely you're all familiar with Camille Paglia.

Tracy Clark-Flory recently interviewed Ms. Paglia for Salon.

Here are the highlights:

TCP: Any hopes, fears or predictions for the presidential elections in 2016?

CP: As a registered Democrat, I am praying for a credible presidential candidate to emerge from the younger tier of politicians in their late 40s.

A governor with executive experience would be ideal.

It’s time to put my baby-boom generation out to pasture! We’ve had our day and managed to muck up a hell of a lot.

It remains baffling how anyone would think that Hillary Clinton (born the same year as me) is our party’s best chance. She has more sooty baggage than a 90-car freight train. And what exactly has she ever accomplished — beyond bullishly covering for her philandering husband?

She’s certainly busy, busy and ever on the move — with the tunnel-vision workaholism of someone trying to blot out uncomfortable private thoughts.

I for one think it was a very big deal that our ambassador was murdered in Benghazi.

In saying “I take responsibility” for it as secretary of state, Hillary should have resigned immediately.

The weak response by the Obama administration to that tragedy has given a huge opening to Republicans in the next presidential election. The impression has been amply given that Benghazi was treated as a public relations matter to massage rather than as the major and outrageous attack on the U.S. that it was. Throughout history, ambassadors have always been symbolic incarnations of the sovereignty of their nations and the dignity of their leaders. It’s even a key motif in “King Lear.” As far as I’m concerned, Hillary disqualified herself for the presidency in that fist-pounding moment at a congressional hearing when she said, “What difference does it make what we knew and when we knew it, Senator?”

Democrats have got to shake off the Clinton albatross and find new blood. The escalating instability not just in Egypt but throughout the Mideast is very ominous. There is a clash of cultures brewing in the world that may take a century or more to resolve — and there is no guarantee that the secular West will win.

TCP: Two words: Anthony Weiner. Your thoughts?

CP: Two words: pathetic dork.

How sickeningly debased our politics have become that this jabbering cartoon weasel could be taken seriously for a second as a candidate for mayor of New York.

I assumed at first that Huma Abedin stayed married to Weiner out of noble concern for her unborn child, who deserved a father. But her subsequent behavior as Weiner’s defender and enabler has made me lose respect for her.

The Weiners should be permanently bundled off to the luxe Elba of Oscar de la Renta’s villa in the Dominican Republic. I’m sure that Hillary (Huma’s capo) can arrange that.