If you read just one bit of journalism to illuminate what’s going on during the current season of political campaigning in the United States, make it this one. Jill Lepore, writing for The New Yorker, incisively traces the birth and history of the political consulting industry to reveal its dramatic (and dreadful) impact on American…
Tag: anti-intellectualism
My fellow barbarians: The dumbing of Americans and their campaign speeches
Two days ago, the August 31 edition of the PBS program Need to Know concluded with a brief video retrospective of American political convention speeches from the last century: From William Jennings Bryan to FDR to Adlai Stevenson to Barack Obama, anchor Jeff Greenfield takes a look at the convention speeches that propelled some politicians…
Hemingway, media culture, and the impoverishment of modern English
It’s been awhile since a conversation at the Shocklines message boards elicited a response from me that I wanted to preserve here at The Teeming Brain, but just yesterday it happened again and resulted in my writing an article-length piece that briefly traced my personal, lifelong evolution and growth as a reader. The inimitable Des…
Joan Collins says tabloid culture has dumbed us all down
Who would have thought it? None other than Joan Collins, one of the living symbols of a former era in mass entertainment culture, deplores the catastrophic collapse of taste, intelligence, and attention span that’s been spawned by the current tabloid-ized version of that very world. Just check out this excerpt from a recent interview in…
Education vs. student anti-intellectualism
My recent post about Anna Nicole Smith continues to draw lots of traffic. A couple of days ago it finally drew what I had been expecting: a criticism. A commenter to my blog chose to remain anonymous and wrote in place of a user name, “You’re a pitiful teacher.” Then he/she left a very critical…
Anna Nicole Smith Is the Fourth Horseman
The only daily newspaper that originates from my part of the world is The News-Leader, which is located in Springfield, Missouri. It blankets southwest Missouri and part of Arkansas. Last Tuesday, February 13th, editorial page editor Tony Messenger posted a brief observation at his blog, “Ozarks Messenger,” titled “A sign of the apocalypse…” It read…
More on anti-intellectualism
I hope you all had a good week. As for me, I’m safely back from a brief doctor-oriented jaunt to Texas — specifically, to Austin and San Antonio — and can report that yes, it’s hot down there. And humid, at least in the two cities where my wife and I went. Imagine Dante’s Inferno…
High tide for anti-intellectualism
This post is in response to a query somebody made at the Shocklines forum. In various conversations at that board, people have recently been mentioning a supposed surge of anti-intellectualism in America today. One person responded with the following: I’ve been hearing a lot about this ‘wave of anti-intellectualism’. I’m curious about it. All artistic…