'The French fog machine'

 You can say what you like about Facebook – and many of my acquaintance won't go near it, indeed flinch at the very name – but I find that it does throw up some unexpected gems from time to time. Here's one that popped up today –  

'Enough already of Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault poured like ketchup over everything. Lacan: the French fog machine; a grey-flannel worry-bone for toothless academic pups; a twerpy, cape-twirling Dracula dragging his flocking stooges to the crypt. Lacan is a Freud T-shirt shrunk down to the teeny-weeny Saussure torso. The entire school of Saussure, including Levi-Strauss, write the muffled prose of people with cotton wool wrapped around their heads; they're like walking Q-tips. Derrida: a Gloomy Gus one-trick pony, stuck on a rhetorical trope already available in the varied armory of New Criticism. Derrida's method: masturbating without pleasure. It's a birdbrain game for birdseed stakes. Neo-Foucauldian New Historicism: a high-wax bowling alley where you score points just by knocking down the pins.'

That's Camille Paglia in full flow, giving us what oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed. 
I first became aware of Paglia when I heard her deliver a lecture on Radio 3, an audience event chaired by Bea Campbell. It was strong stuff, in the course of which Paglia, among much else, declared that feminism had been unfair to men, intimidating 'sad, pallid and puny' boys and making them desperate to satisfy female sexual demands, and that girls develop eating disorders because motherhood is no longer their primary goal and they grow up in ambitious, demanding and overprotective families. There were gasps, laughs and cheers at various points, and the lecture ended well enough, followed by some questions from Bea Campbell. But then came questions from the floor, and Paglia became increasingly impatient with their banality, until finally, emitting a furious hissing growl, she walked out, striding from the stage and leaving Campbell to wrap things up as best she could. It was terrific radio, and I've admired Camille Paglia ever since. Of course I don't agree with everything she says – could anyone? – but I love her outspokenness, vigour and take-no-prisoners directness. As in the above.