[lbo-talk] Fun game on a slow newsday

Chuck Grimes cagrimes42 at gmail.com
Wed Dec 12 11:25:32 PST 2012


Funny.

On blogs.

I only follow a very few blogs and none of the comment sections. Some of them are Doug's, Louis Proycet, Juan Cole, Matt Tabbi, sometimes Chris Hedges and some of the writers for Counterpunch. The latter qualify as blogs, since the essays are sort, with few facts, and mostly attitude, which I usually like. Although once you get to know them, they tend to be repetitious

Brooks? I confess I watch Shields and Brooks, not for content but state of the beltway mind set which can only be sampled in less than 15mins once a week. So all characters I won't listen to, I can hear a summary about without seeing them.

Krauthammer? He is evil as in Doctor Stranglove's younger brother. A nostaglia set piece from out of the neoconservative-nazis fog.

Ivy concrete floor. Well that seems to be the core, but don't forget the Uni of Chicago wing. If you really want a study in darkness, try the letters between Leo Strauss and Karl Schmitt. The essential thing to know is not that Schmitt wrote the early Nazis anti-Jewish laws, but that he wrote a work on Hobbes, that Strauss critiqued as a fellow traveler in race theories to help Schmitt clean up his philosophy.

Africa. I once started a year long Anthro class on Africa. The text was a vast survey of geography, regions, peoples, histories. It was a monster that was taking up all of my study time, so I dropped it. I would have been lucky to get a C minus.

We used to call the professor, The Count. I've forgotten his real name. His knowledge was staggering. He had been to a lot of the places he lectured on. He gave great parties and commanded his large living room from a giant rattan throne, usually dressed in a white suit and wore a wide brim straw hat. A complete character. He was originally from some Caribbean country. Books, records, tapes, artifacts. Just a knock out experience after a few rums and weed. He had been kicked out of UCLA for having an affair with a male grad student or at least that was the story.

So maybe I am missing something of that experience. He was about the only Afro-Caribbean intellectual I ever met. I don't expect that to ever be seen again, but I know the class exists as regional scholars, journalists, writers, teachers, etc. So I was thinking about him and wondering why AJE journalists didn't go digging around for that class.

How to go about that? I'd start by tracking down whatever institute Leaky founded and then wonder around university language, anthro, geography departments in different countries. It would be a kind of anthro project...

Fun musing.

CG



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