>
> Watched my undergrad hero, Harold Bloom, on C-SPAN's
> Booknotes last night. Bloom defended the canon, denounced
> PCness, and self-identified several times as a "socialist."
> A weird, cranky, but compelling performance - filled with
> denunciations of the New York Times.
Yeah, I watched (and enjoyed) that too. The part I didn't get, though, was his referring to the NYT as 'counter-cultural'. Is this a term of art, or Bloom-specific jargon I'm not familiar with? I've never heard the Times called that before and I can't envision any common meaning of the term that would apply to The Paper of EmpireH^H^H^H^H^H Record.
On a somewhat related note, I saw a panel discussion about book reviewing either that same weekend or the one previous. The panel included the incredibly slimy and arrogant Charles McGrath who edits what passes as the book review in our ruling class's paper. He was justifying handing off for review Conanson and Lyon's book _The Hunting of the President...._ (about the shitty reporting of Whitewater) to a NYT Washington bureau reporter. He actually claimed, more than once, that the NYT had so many of "the world's most knowledgeable people" on staff (on many, many issues), that frequently there was no choice but to give a review to an NYT employee!
Nobody else on the planet could possibly competently review that book (which, of course, was critical of the Times) except an NYT reporter. Sure. I bet they are running ads in the section about a bridge for sale too.
--
Joseph Noonan Houston, TX jfn1 at msc.com