<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 9/13/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Doug Henwood</b> <<a href="mailto:dhenwood@panix.com">dhenwood@panix.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> <br>On Sep 13, 2006, at 3:17 PM, Colin Brace quoted Tony Judt:<br><br>> Thus Paul Berman, </blockquote><div><br> </div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Back in the 80s, that little fucker was an apologist for the contras,<br>and has always done PR for Israel. The only recycling involved was<br>stuffing the same old crap into some new bottles.<br><br>Doug<br>___________________________________ </blockquote><div><br>Poor Citizen Berman.  <br><br>Paul was always a model of a kind of cynicism that plays off of "radical" credentials (and a passable knowledge of left history) to promote himself.  He uses the autobiographical accident that he was at Columbia in 1968, and a member of SDS, to develop a grand world view about left romanticism of violence.   His writing product is slick but meagre and neither interesting nor original, and yet somehow he has been amply rewarded with Macarthur "genius" grant, along with other awards.  Except that he was on the editorial board of "Dissent" I have never understood what of genius he ever produced.  Still he would make a good character in a novel, if only the left had a Saul Bellow, to write a version of Humboldt's Gift....  Nervous, shaky, edgy, hopping, bobbing, weaving, a hidden sense of paranoia, a directionless intellectuality, a patina of the old "Partisan Review" style, used to hide his contentless insults against the likes of Chomsky, Zinn, Elsberg, etc.  He once told me that he is a great admirer of Max Schachtman.  No surprise there.  <br><br>Jerry<br></div><br></div><br>