On Jul 6, 2008, at 1:51 PM, shag wrote:
> well, i'm trying to understand. you say anti intellectualism is
> about valorizing labor, right? why do intellectuals valorize manual
> labor? you don't have to get his point to answer me.
I've seen it here, I've seen it at WBAI and the Brecht Forum and places like that. It usually involves a ritual self-flagellation about how out-of-touch mental workers are, and how the truly authentic are the toilers. It's mainly a silly thing of not much consequence, far less socially toxic than the sense among elite intellectuals that the masses are a bunch of idiots. But it is annoying.
Of course, there's also the ancient American anti-intellectual impulse that Hofstadter wrote about too.
Doug