> --One more thing: as Carrol has pointed out repeatedly, there's no way to
> read and critique everything. Sometimes the best response to a text is
> to--leave it aside and read something more interesting.
>
> And, sometimes, when people who's intelligence and insights you respect and
see as e-friends and political colleagues are defending an offensive and
deeply flawed text (no matter your agreement with the text's meta-argument),
and continue to do so by means of one-line non-engagements with your
arguments - including forwarding your note to someone else you respect (who
then labels you an enemy, which is reported without comment), a reasonable
response is to engage it - at the least to find out if you were wrong.
This isn't an academic exercise for us... furthermore, since I've been teaching family, sex/gender/sexuality and race/ethnicity in my intro classes - and want to jolt my students out of their lethargy - this engaging this stuff is professionally immediate and pedagogically useful.
I'm sure, without the interview, most all of us would have ignored Michaels.
Alan