shag carpet bomb wrote:
>
> alan rudy wrote:
>
>
>
> also, one of the things that chapped my ass about his book was at the
> end.
>
> he says that things like whether you eat velveeta or brie is, sure,
> probably a marker of "class". there are tastes associated with various
> social strata.
>
> and he can't be painful, he says, to be made fun of for liking brie or
> country music or what have you.
>
I can't construe the syntax of that last sentence. And what sense does "he can't be painful" make?
I think if you are going to go beyond disagreeing with an author to attacking him personally, a certain precision & formality of style is called for.
There has been too much muddle in this whole thread -- his ideas and his (alleged) personality have made it difficult even to know what the subject of the discussion is.
Only the interview is available to the whole list, not his book _or_ (incidentally) his behavior to grad students at Berkeley. If we only considered the ideas of the morally and politically impeccable our theoretical and political discourse would become pretty fucking thin. Moreover, even if it was a thoroughly bad and contemptible book does not rsolve the question of the validity or non-validity of his arguments in the interview. And I would presume it is those arguments that have to be the basis of any political discussion.
Carrol
P.S. Joanna's whole (first) post was as irrelevant and as distracting from any useful discussion as was that idiotic last sentence in Doug's post that I just flamed.