On 9/14/06, Carrol Cox <<a href="mailto:cbcox@ilstu.edu">cbcox@ilstu.edu</a>> wrote: > > > Jerry Monaco wrote: > > > > Gossip, gossip, gossip. > > It seems to me that this obsession a number on this list have with > various scalawag New York intellectuals (Berman, Hitchens) is a > manifestation of Manhattan parochialism. > > Carrol Gossip is politics; philosophy is gossip ---  Yes, yes, yes.  But at least I have the excuse that I used to work with these people in my long-gone twenties and I used to meet them all the time on the street and I remember when their apartments were burnt and the books were sold by the homeless guy on the corner or when some old man in a long trench coat came up to X on the street corner and shouted at him for betraying "old Max"....   Or when Irving Howe called Chomsky the "Ezra Pound crackpot of our time" and got a little giggle from ....  These are just personal memories for me   Well, gossip is what makes for philosophy.  Or to put it another way.  When housewives do it, it is called gossip; when "strong men" do it is called "politics"; and when intellectuals do it is called "philosophy."  The housewives are usually more interesting.  (Forgive me for the old fashion gender distinctions.  It is meant to revalue housewives not to devalue them.) Jerry