Jane Smiley Isn't Smiling
Jane Smiley isn't smiling today. The novelist cum political commentator is frothing on Slate in a diatribe against Republicans and the people who vote for them that has to be read to be believed. Slate, of course, is always a pretty good barometer of where the Left is at mentally... not quite as rabidly out there as Salon or The Nation or, God forbid, democracyunderground. If I can cut through the rhetoric -- is she really considered a good writer? -- her thesis is that people who vote for Republicans are stupid. Indeed, she subtitles her screed "The Unteachable Ignorance of the Red States."
This has been a left-wing meme for generations, of course: law school dropout Adlai Stevenson was brilliant, while Dwight Eisenhower, who only led 10 million men to victory in Europe, was a dolt; Jimmy Carter was a nuclear scientist, while Ronald Reagan was an actor -- both true as far as they go, but then why does the left now consider actors like Sean Penn and Tim Robbins and Danny Glover, etc., to be so brilliant as political thinkers?; and then Al Gore, who couldn't help flunking out of Divinity School for crying out loud, and John Kerry, who suspiciously never released his college or law school grades or SAT scores, but who also suspiciously went to Boston College rather than Harvard,were both oh so much smarter than George Bush, who only went to Yale and Harvard MBA school.
This is not necessarily a brief for the relative intelligence of Eisenhower, Reagan or Bush at all. I hold no such brief. It is only to note that you would think grown-ups would stop thinking that all people who disagree with them are necessarily stupid or, worse, evil. Or that grown-ups would bump up against the fact that a majority disagrees with them and maybe re-examine the evidence supporting their own positions. In fact, isn't that what the liberals all want to teach our kids in Freshman Comp? Openness to different ideas? Unteachable, indeed! Can you imagine the grades Jane Smiley gives to anyone who has the temerity to believe something different than what she's selling in her English classes? Or who wears a cross to her class?
Ah, well. As Elvis Costellos sang, Let them talk, let them talk, let them all talk. It's Morning in America!
UPDATE: I didn't know it at the time I wrote this, but apparently Jane Smiley went to the toniest prep school in my hometown of St. Louis, the John Burroughs School. Normally I would conclude that she is an elitist snob with her disdain of people like me who had the misfortune to attend public high school -- Lindbergh, as it happens (Go Flyers!). But I had a couple of college buddies at Princeton who went to John Burroughs too, and they were good rowdy know-nothings just like me. So maybe you shouldn't draw conclusions about things like where someone lives or goes to church or where someone went to school when you're evaluating their character or intelligence. But, then, that was my whole point.
This has been a left-wing meme for generations, of course: law school dropout Adlai Stevenson was brilliant, while Dwight Eisenhower, who only led 10 million men to victory in Europe, was a dolt; Jimmy Carter was a nuclear scientist, while Ronald Reagan was an actor -- both true as far as they go, but then why does the left now consider actors like Sean Penn and Tim Robbins and Danny Glover, etc., to be so brilliant as political thinkers?; and then Al Gore, who couldn't help flunking out of Divinity School for crying out loud, and John Kerry, who suspiciously never released his college or law school grades or SAT scores, but who also suspiciously went to Boston College rather than Harvard,were both oh so much smarter than George Bush, who only went to Yale and Harvard MBA school.
This is not necessarily a brief for the relative intelligence of Eisenhower, Reagan or Bush at all. I hold no such brief. It is only to note that you would think grown-ups would stop thinking that all people who disagree with them are necessarily stupid or, worse, evil. Or that grown-ups would bump up against the fact that a majority disagrees with them and maybe re-examine the evidence supporting their own positions. In fact, isn't that what the liberals all want to teach our kids in Freshman Comp? Openness to different ideas? Unteachable, indeed! Can you imagine the grades Jane Smiley gives to anyone who has the temerity to believe something different than what she's selling in her English classes? Or who wears a cross to her class?
Ah, well. As Elvis Costellos sang, Let them talk, let them talk, let them all talk. It's Morning in America!
UPDATE: I didn't know it at the time I wrote this, but apparently Jane Smiley went to the toniest prep school in my hometown of St. Louis, the John Burroughs School. Normally I would conclude that she is an elitist snob with her disdain of people like me who had the misfortune to attend public high school -- Lindbergh, as it happens (Go Flyers!). But I had a couple of college buddies at Princeton who went to John Burroughs too, and they were good rowdy know-nothings just like me. So maybe you shouldn't draw conclusions about things like where someone lives or goes to church or where someone went to school when you're evaluating their character or intelligence. But, then, that was my whole point.
posted by PDB at 2:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home