the New Sincerity

[W. Kiernan]

Nathan Newman wrote:
>
> Peter Kilander quoted Marshall Sella:
>
> > Jedediah Purdy wrote:
> >
> > > ..."I did not think people should drink beer. I was a bundle of
> > > prudish little tics."...
> >
> > ... And not surprisingly, his teachers at Exeter loved him. One
> > wrote reports praising the boy's "maturity, fairness, dependability
> > and judgment." Another gushed, "I feel like I have met a young
> > William Buckley." ...
> 
> ... Once when we were in heated debate, he waved his hand and
> proclaimed at me, "Back, back to the margins of politics from whence
> you came."  And yes, Jed being the nice guy he is, actually came up
> to me later to assure me he meant nothing mean by the comment.

You mean he said it before the audience, yet later on in private he
admitted he didn't mean it literally?!  How ironic.

Suppose we drop back a generation or so before the infamously ironic
"Generation-X".   Malcolm X was almost never ironic.  I can't remember
one word of irony coming out of Martin L. King's mouth.  What little
remains of Fred Hampton's public statements is nearly perfectly free of
irony.  So maybe one can interpret Mr. Purdy's tract as: "Stand up
straight, you youths, quit slouching.  So we can get a better shot at
you."

Well, Mr. Purdy got his seventy-five grand.

Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net