The New York Times Op-Ed page has been an intellectual dark web for a long time. Few corners of the Internet can lay claim to both Thomas Friedman and David Brooks, two of the most widely ridiculed, mocked, and parodied ‘thought leaders’ ever to have deigned to grace us swine with their pearls of wisdom;Continue reading “The New York Times’ Op-Ed Page Is An Intellectual Dark Web”
Tag Archives: public intellectuals
Tony Judt On A Pair Of Intellectual Sins
In The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and The French Twentieth Century (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998, p. 121), Tony Judt writes of Albert Camus: One of the things that he had to come to dislike the most about Parisian intellectuals was their conviction that they had something to say about everything, and that everythingContinue reading “Tony Judt On A Pair Of Intellectual Sins”
Derrida And Beauvoir On The ‘Powerless,’ ‘Not Bothersome’ Intellectual
In ‘The Ends of Man,’ (from After Philosophy: End or Transformation?, eds. Kenneth Baynes, James Bohman, and Thomas McCarthy, MIT Press, 1987, pp. 129), Jacques Derrida writes: It would be illusory to believe that political innocence has been restored and evil complicities undone when opposition to them can be expressed in the country itself, notContinue reading “Derrida And Beauvoir On The ‘Powerless,’ ‘Not Bothersome’ Intellectual”
Contra Damon Linker, ‘Leftist Intellectuals’ Are Not ‘Disconnected From Reality’
Over at The Week, Damon Linker accuses ‘the Left’ of being disconnected from reality, basing this charge on his reading of two recent pieces by Corey Robin and Jedediah Purdy. (It begins with a charge that is all too frequently leveled at the Bernie Sanders campaign: that its political plans are political fantasies.) What getsContinue reading “Contra Damon Linker, ‘Leftist Intellectuals’ Are Not ‘Disconnected From Reality’”
Ta-Nehisi Coates Attacks One Privilege, Defends Another
Last week, Ta-Nehisi Coates rightly took Dylan Byers to task after the latter’s snarky response to Coates’ anointment of Melissa Harris-Perry as ‘America’s foremost public intellectual’: What sets Byers apart is the idea that considering Harris-Perry an intellectual is somehow evidence of inferior thinking. I came up in a time when white intellectuals were forever makingContinue reading “Ta-Nehisi Coates Attacks One Privilege, Defends Another”
Samir Chopra 