The oozing irony in this Kristof column today makes me want to vet it.
Here it is a column on how the respectability of brains/intellectualism/thought process is back with the Obama win.
Right?
Riiiiight. So let’s look at our first example. Kristoff’s column:
Almost half of young Americans said in a 2006 poll that it was not necessary to know the locations of countries where important news was made. That must be a relief to Sarah Palin, who, according to Fox News, didn’t realize that Africa was a continent rather than a country.
So – rather than actually look up a factoid which
1) was created anonymously and
2) has been refuted by actual named sources,
Mr. Kristof quotes this as fact according to “Fox News”. He expects that somehow, this will make you believe it because Fox is right leaning.
As an intellectual himself, shouldn’t he have at least looked for a 2nd source or some other backing on that “fact”??
Perhaps John Kennedy was the last president who was unapologetic about his intellect and about luring the best minds to his cabinet. More recently, we’ve had some smart and well-educated presidents who scrambled to hide it. Richard Nixon was a self-loathing intellectual, and Bill Clinton camouflaged a fulgent brain behind folksy Arkansas aphorisms about hogs.
Apparently intellectuals don’t us folksy talk about hogs. Who knew? This dude sounds like a “classist” who assumes that southern speaking equates to anti-intellectualism. Why else would Clinton “use” his regular way of speaking except to “act” like he wasn’t intellectual.
I had no idea that folksiness was the same as anti-intellectual.
Blah, blah, blah. Bush, blah, blah.
…………”intellectuals are deviants” blah, blah…….
Yet times may be changing. How else do we explain the election in 2008 of an Ivy League-educated law professor who has favorite philosophers and poets?
Uh maybe it’s because people want a socialist?
Maybe it’s because the economy tanked so they wanted a change?
Maybe because voters wanted a black man in office?
Maybe it’s because McCain wasn’t the right guy to win? Sheesh.
Is this what you call “intellectual research” here dude?
Granted, Mr. Obama may have been protected from accusations of excessive intelligence by his race.
Read that again. And join with me.
Huh!!!?????
I think it’s fair to accuse Mr. Kristof of racism here. Where does this sentence come from?? Why would anyone think Obama wasn’t excessively intelligent because of his race? Did anyone – anyone think that Obama wasn’t intellectual? And especially due to his race? hmmmm?
Let’s see how he looks at the other side.
(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.”)
So if you’re an intellectual and read Sophocles when no one is looking, and then make references to it because it’s now ingrained, oops – you’ve become a “pendant”. This guy is defining people and stereotypes all over the map. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Regarding Obama’s speaking Kristof notes:
Global Language Monitor, which follows linguistic issues, reports that in the final debate, Mr. Obama spoke at a ninth-grade reading level, while John McCain spoke at a seventh-grade level.
Yet, here this hopefully intellectual journalist fails to note that the exact same monitor determined that Sarah Palin spoke at a tenth-grade level during her debate.
Research much??
(yes – I like the 3rd grade myself)
He ends by noting that intellectualism doesn’t always mean a lot.
James Garfield could simultaneously write Greek with one hand and Latin with the other, Thomas Jefferson was a dazzling scholar and inventor, and John Adams typically carried a book of poetry. Yet all were outclassed by George Washington, who was among the least intellectual of our early presidents.
So what the hell was the point of this column??
Outclassed was a great word to use because Mr. Bush, who Kristof slams, not only is intellectual but, with that southern way of talking,…..he is full of class.
Mr. Obama can only hope to live up to such standards. Mr. Kristof certainly does not.
UPDATE: Let me take a stab at this. Intellectualism is an admirable trait. Elitism, not so much.
Intellectualism is where you are smart, learned, well-read and may or may not have any sense at all and all of this is who you are and you realize it’s just a reflection of you and not anyone else.
Elitism is where you are smart, learned, well-read, and look/dress like X along with all of your other smart, learned, well-read friends and you look at all the other people as being inferior and not smart, learned, well-read because if they were they would be like you.
Bush never had a war on brains. Elitist New York columnists have always had a war on “the other”.
Go Terri! Go Terri! Sheesh — what a stupid column — this is the kind of crap pseudo-intellectuals put out. And we’re probably in for a lot of it.
Plus, don’t they have someone like BIDEN to attack since he got elected as VP, maybe leave Sarah alone since she should be a “non-issue” to the Dems now, – or does she still scare them? hah.
The elitist illuminati have always had control, and it’s not going to stop for the next four years, at least.