Oh brother, what a piece of work that article (and the book it describes) are. "Pragmatism," yeah, right.
"Pragmatism" only applies if it is the postmodern, left-wing variety that Richard Rorty specialized in, a rather thin and not very satisfactory gruel, as it is infused with all sorts of reflexive postmodern gestures, whereby it consistently denies the validity of its own authority, even as it asserts that authority forcefully and disparages the "know-nothings" that reject such a supposedly urbane approach.
I write this as someone who considers myself sort of an Emersonian-Jamesian pragmatist, and who sees nothing but hardcore leftist ideology in Obama.
Condescending? Au contraire. When one is brighter, better educated,more enlightened, a better thinker, etc. than the cave dwelling troglodytes, one is simply stating facts
From the NYT link, our knowledgeable professor explains to us: “Adams and Jefferson were the only anti-colonialists whom Obama has been affected by,” he told the audience in New York. “He has a profound love of America.”
From Dreams From My Father, page 100: To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk- rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy.
So Franz Fanon was not a prominent theoretician of anticolonialism? That professor is either an blithering ignoramus or a deceitful liar.
Dreams From My Father has no reference to Thomas Jefferson, nor to John Adams. There is a page with a reference to a Jefferson, where Obama discusses the Kansas side of his family. Here is a passage where Obama discusses his family from Kansas:
That was the world in which my grandparents had been raised, the dab-smack, landlocked center of the country, a place where decency and endurance and the pioneer spirit were joined at the hip with conformity and suspicion and the and the potential for unblinking cruelty.
Yup, Obama has “a profound love of America,” according to the professor. According to Obama, America is a country of “conformity and suspicion and the potential for unblinking cruelty.”
That professor is either an blithering ignoramus or a deceitful liar.
8 comments:
Oh brother, what a piece of work that article (and the book it describes) are. "Pragmatism," yeah, right.
"Pragmatism" only applies if it is the postmodern, left-wing variety that Richard Rorty specialized in, a rather thin and not very satisfactory gruel, as it is infused with all sorts of reflexive postmodern gestures, whereby it consistently denies the validity of its own authority, even as it asserts that authority forcefully and disparages the "know-nothings" that reject such a supposedly urbane approach.
I write this as someone who considers myself sort of an Emersonian-Jamesian pragmatist, and who sees nothing but hardcore leftist ideology in Obama.
Condescending? Au contraire. When one is brighter, better educated,more enlightened, a better thinker, etc. than the cave dwelling troglodytes, one is simply stating facts
Kloppenberg probably has that Chris Matthews "tingle" goin' on...
Kloppenberg probably has that Chris Matthews "tingle" goin' on...
I am unfit and unclean and must abase myself before his grandeur...Mr. Kloppenberg tells me so.
I couldn't get past the words "true intellectual".
From the NYT link, our knowledgeable professor explains to us:
“Adams and Jefferson were the only anti-colonialists whom Obama has been affected by,” he told the audience in New York. “He has a profound love of America.”
From Dreams From My Father, page 100:
To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk- rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy.
So Franz Fanon was not a prominent theoretician of anticolonialism? That professor is either an blithering ignoramus or a deceitful liar.
Dreams From My Father has no reference to Thomas Jefferson, nor to John Adams. There is a page with a reference to a Jefferson, where Obama discusses the Kansas side of his family. Here is a passage where Obama discusses his family from Kansas:
That was the world in which my grandparents had been raised, the dab-smack, landlocked center of the country, a place where decency and endurance and the pioneer spirit were joined at the hip with conformity and suspicion and the and the potential for unblinking cruelty.
Yup, Obama has “a profound love of America,” according to the professor. According to Obama, America is a country of “conformity and suspicion and the potential for unblinking cruelty.”
That professor is either an blithering ignoramus or a deceitful liar.
Gringo, I vote for deceitful liar.
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