Victory to the elitists!
Of course one reason I was so pleased about the recent election is that it’s such a nice victory for elitism. About time.
Barack Obama’s election is a milestone in more than his pigmentation. The second most remarkable thing about his election is that American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual.
Damn straight. A blatant, unashamed, undisguised, unapologetic intellectual, who doesn’t pretend to be thicker than he is in order to reassure the envious or the threatened or the hostile. Staggering, isn’t it?
Compare the ineffable Charles Murray, asked what he thinks of Sarah Palin:
I’m in love. Truly and deeply in love…The last thing we need are more pointy-headed intellectuals running the government.
So the more unthinking and incurious and ill-informed the better? Why, exactly?
Ah but that’s the kind of question that pointy-headed intellectuals ask.
Oh that Charles Murray, he makes it all sound so simple.
But clever Nicholas Kristof said in his piece (the first link) (about Obama):
“(Intellectuals are for real. In contrast, a pedant is a supercilious show-off who drops references to Sophocles and masks his shallowness by using words like “fulgent” and “supercilious.”)”
And they use words like “. . it is a distillation of things I’ve been thinking since “The Bell Curve.”
And make references to “. . .kids who are well in the lower half of the ability distribution.”
And congratulate themselves for avoiding any contact at all with students of any age at any point in the ability distribution “. . .it’s the think tanks in the last 15 years that have been producing the stuff that has had the most effect on the debate, as opposed to colleges.”
Nothing like a supercilious show-off to make one’s day. He and Ms Palin will be a fabulous couple.
“Damn straight. A blatant, unashamed, undisguised, unapologetic intellectual, who doesn’t pretend to be thicker than he is in order to reassure the envious or the threatened or the hostile. “
Come off it, he pretended to find Jesus, didn’t he? Or was his simultaneous discovery of a deep inner faith and a deep inner desire for high office pure coincidence?
And some of his policy positions to date have been populists balderdash. Whether he adopted them for cynical populist reasons or because he believed in them, we will soon see.
I am glad he is going to be President, mostly for the symbolic value of having a black man in office and because he is a nice fluent, gravity-free talker, but I think the old scepticism should kick in again now. He is only a politician with all the bad and good that that entails.
Leading conservative intellectual Charles Murray accusing others of being “pointy-headed” intellectuals?
I’d say this was a case of pot kettle black, but knowing Murray, he’d take offense at being called black.
The Bell Curve is still an interesting book though…
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neuroskeptic.blogspot.com
Anyone else find it interesting the way that the Mr. Murray progressed from “things you could make a sensible argument for” to “complete drivelling idiocy” in such a short interview?
Bizarre.
John Meredith, he’s not ‘only a politician’ actually; like many politicians he’s also several other things. Automatic disdain for generic ‘politicians’ is so banal and so vacuous; some politicians are hacks and some are not. And as for being a ‘nice fluent talker’ – do you seriously think that skill has no connection to his being an intellectual? If so I beg to differ.
Andy, in fairness, the abruptness of the progress in that interview is probably mostly due to Solomon: she’s a ruthless simplifier and quite remarkably silly.
“I’m in love. Truly and deeply in love”
And Obama is responsible for it all.
Yes, it is none other than Samantha Powe, who is presently in Co kerry with her newly wedded husband, Cass R. Sunstein.
abovethelaw.com/samantha_power/ –
OB,
Fair enough. (I have no idea who the woman is, and am happy to accept that she is silly). There’s also going to have been editing involved, etc, obviously…
BUT
He does clearly demonstrate his ability to be rational, sensible, etc…
Then decides to leave all that down the alley, just behind the dumpster.
He’s not *consistently* daft. Which is, perhaps, even more annoying in the long run than obvious irrationalists…?
Andy, yeh.
I was just explaining, really, because I’ve read some Solomon interviews before.
“John Meredith, he’s not ‘only a politician’ actually; like many politicians he’s also several other things. “
I meant ‘only a politician’ in much the same sense as ‘only a man’. The ‘only’ isn’t meany entirely negatively, the fact that leaders in free countries re not considered prphets or ‘Great Leaders’ or ‘Fathers of the People’ is a thoroughly good thing. But if we lose sight of the fact that he is a career politician with all the opportunism, cynicism and vanity that is required to succeed in that job, we are going to be sorely disappointed. Beyond the important symbolic value he embodies as a black man, best not ask him to be anything more than decisive, honest, a good judge of character and a minimally competent manager. That is all the role allows, and it is all that grown ups should really want from their leaders in free countries, I think.
He is a fine talker but that has nothing to do with being an intellectual any more than being well dressed (which he also is). There is nothing intellectual in the content of his speeches as far as I have seen. They are full of well crafted rhetoric but there are no substantial ideas. And, as I have said, he has already shown that he is willing to ardently profess beliefs that it is very unlikely that he holds in order to advance himeself professionally. That isn’t a good look for an intellectual.
Change has come to America, but not as much as some seem to want to believe.
Obama is a distant cousin of Vice President Dick Cheney, George Bush and Harry Truman.
Fidel Castro made a commment about a ‘black’ man going to the ‘White House’, but he did not say he was going to a house where all belonging to him hung out.
I read that Obama spent some time as a wee child in Seattle, with his mother, who, during her youth studied in Seattle University. There must be something special in the water there – as very brainy people seem to hang out there.
Hope I am not giving you a swelled head, OB! :-)!
And another thing.
“I am glad he is going to be President, mostly for the symbolic value of having a black man in office”
That’s ridiculous. There is no ‘symbolic value’ in having ‘a black man in office’ just as there is no symbolic value in having a woman in office; in both cases the value is zero or even minus something if the black man or the woman is not a good candidate. Replace Obama with Sharpton and we would be in deficit territory. That was the point of my thought experiment in ‘No ordinary moment’ – Sarah Palin would not be any better as a candidate if she were black.
“That’s ridiculous. There is no ‘symbolic value’ in having ‘a black man in office’ just as there is no symbolic value in having a woman in office; in both cases the value is zero or even minus something if the black man or the woman is not a good candidate.”
But we don’t know what kind of resident Obama is going to be, he may be a complete and abject failure, worse than Sharpton or Palin. If he is an intellectual and I have missed his contributions to the world of ideas (I have read his books and he they are not in there), please point out where to go to find them.
I think it is fair to guess that you are white, OB, if you think there is no important symbolic value in the mere fact that Obama is black. I think you will struggle to find a black person who agrees with you. If he stinks as a president (and most do) it hardly matters. The US will forever be a contry where race no longer appears to debarr you from the highest office, and that matters if you are black (should matter if you ar ite too, obviously). Does it matter, in symbolic terms, what we thing of Condoleeza Rice as a politician? I don’t think so, she has shown that black women can reach the highest levels iof government and stay there.
As to “your tone of superior wisdom and information is out of place”, back atcha.
If he stinks as a president it hardly matters…
Right, because a US president who stinks makes nothing bad happen and has no effect on the world. Sure.
“he may be a complete and abject failure, worse than Sharpton or Palin.”
Right, and there’s no reason to think otherwise – no record, no probability, no anything. He may be worse than Hitler or Stalin, worse than Caligula or Genghis Khan; we simply have no idea, no clue, nothing to go on at all. When we vote we should do it purely on the basis of symbolism, and if there is no symbolism, we should just toss a coin, or stay home.
What a bunch of nonsense.
Fidel Castro still have some good legacies despite his not so good repuation.;.`
Fidel Castro still have some good legacies despite his not so good repuation.~::