Ta-Nehisi Coates writes at The Atlantic:
On Saturday, [MSNBC talking head] Melissa Harris-Perry apologized on air for segment that made light of the Romney clan's adoption of a young black boy. ...
[Large amounts of verbiage snipped]
When not attempting to shame their enemies on trumped-up charges of racism, the conservative movement busies itself appealing to actual racists. ...
[Large amounts of verbiage snipped]
Mitt Romney is not immune to this trend—he embodies it. On July of 2012, then-candidate Romney spoke to the NAACP (allegedly planting his own supporters). Later that day, he went before a crowd of conservatives and pitched his speech as follows:
I had the privilege of speaking today at the NAACP convention in Houston and I gave them the same speech I am giving you. I don't give different speeches to different audiences alright. I gave them the same speech. When I mentioned I am going to get rid of Obamacare they weren't happy, I didn't get the same response. That's OK, I want people to know what I stand for and if I don't stand for what they want, go vote for someone else, that's just fine. But I hope people understand this, your friends who like Obamacare, you remind them of this, if they want more stuff from government tell them to go vote for the other guy-more free stuff. But don't forget nothing is really free.
[Large amounts of verbiage snipped]
... But there is no one more worthy, and more capable, of holding that conversation than America's most foremost public intellectual—Melissa Harris-Perry.
[Large amounts of verbiage snipped]
Have you ever noticed how Ta-Nehisi Coates is the black Glenn Beck, in the sense that both are autodidacts (which is a good thing) who are constantly recounting for their rapt audiences mind-blowing excerpts from old books they are halfway finished reading?
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Coates is more like the black Spike Lee -- disappointed with everyone else for not living up to his expectations of them, but also confused about the world at a fundamental level. If he says you're the "foremost public intellectual" it's meant as a term of general admonishment, not really as a compliment of a certain person's body of work.
"America's most foremost public intellectual"
Most foremost! It's like ghetto hoodlums calling themselves mafiosi after having watched the Godfather or one of its derivatives. They're as much in the mafia as that newsreader chick is an intellectual, but the direction of their aspirations is touching. No matter how militant, their wildest boasts involve envy.
Coates is clearly not very bright. He's painful to read. What I wonder about is if he's not bright enough to realize that he's not that bright, that other people can tell he's not that bright, etc. It's hard to tell. He may be dumb enough to not realize this, or he may realize it but realizes nobody is going to call him out on it and prevent him from having a career and get paid for being not very bright.
a young black boy
This Coates fellow sounds rather ... racist. Thou Shalt Not Utter The Phrase "black boy".
I'm pretty sure he has a career because his name is ta-nehisi.
Coates is also constantly going on about his efforts to learn French, and his ongoing struggle with that language. Reading him is like reading an extended high school "what I did on my summer vacation" essay, from a guy pushing 40. I do give him credit for admitting when he is ignorant about a subject (which is often) - I wish more pundits would do that.
OT steve: what do you think about box lacrosse?
I love the comparison with Beck, and for exactly the reasons you mention. He falls short of even this though.
Beck may be a fool, but he is a master of his medium. I think he’s lost a step, but he has an intuitive poetic manner, and his delivery was once a thrilling experience. The man was like Homer and Cicero wrapped up in one. Except he’s a crackpot. TNC’s work just reads like that of a lazy (grammatical mistakes everywhere) idiot.
Talent-wise, TNC is more like a Hannity.
What I wonder about is if he's not bright enough to realize that he's not that bright, that other people can tell he's not that bright, etc. It's hard to tell.
So true. This is about all he offers in the way of intellectual stimulation.
If you had asked him 2 weeks ago for the Foremost Public Intellectual he almost certainly wouldn't have named Harris-Perry off the top of his head. He does now because, by extension, it makes him seem more important for writing about her. This is modern American journalism for you. It is like a nonsensical moment-in-time ESPN chyron: "DARRELL REVIS: POTENTIAL GREATEST CB EVER?"
Beck has some unique emphasis in his disquisitions, whereas Hannity is a pure partisan, nothing unique at all, just the standard talking points. He's truly an introspective guy, ex-alcoholic who became a Mormon--that's a journey. Coates is Hannity, not Beck. I
I do give him credit for admitting when he is ignorant about a subject (which is often) - I wish more pundits would do that.
He has that luxury because nobody will ever call him out on his stupidity. Normal pundits don't admit ignorance because the moment they do, their enemies will attack them for being ignorant and use it to dismiss what they say.
>is T Coates the black Glenn Beck<
Does T Coates cover:
the fed reserve gold?
the German gold "held" by the fed reserve?
islamofascists?
lindsey graham, john mccain et al?
way stupid suggestion.
Nah T. Coates like a trained seal barks: race, race ...
Witty, Steve.
Come off it, you guys. "A lazy idiot?" Please. Coates is a strong writer. He's the best in the business at racially shaming upper-middle class whites, which is a pretty good business to be in these days.
Sure, he's a policy vacuum, but that's not what the Atlantic is paying him for.
I think he's a baleful influence -- somebody please give McWhorter an MSNBC show --but I'm not going to flatter myself by denying his obvious talent. The fundamental problem with his worldview is that it's afflicted by the myth of reverse causation: that if racism caused a lot of black problems existing today, then stamping out racism will undo those problems. But this obviously isn't true, as blacks have continued to stagnate as racism has dramatically declined over the past few decades.
Coates and Beck expect too much from history. To guy like Beck, who mistakes our civil religion for the genuine article, the key to fixing our current vetocracy or debt problems is to be found in, say, Forrest McDonald's work on the Constitution or some obscure letter by Jefferson. Coates, meanwhile, is wont to assume that we can't improve Detroit without fully digesting the harrowing second graph on page 84 of, say, Sugrue's Origins of the Urban Crisis.
But I've read Sugrue: as a guide to action he is almost completely useless. Most works of history are.
I'm not sure what is worse ... "Tennessee" Coates' writing, or the annoying fanboy commenters who are constantly talking about how brilliant he is.
He reminds me of someone who believes that adding a bunch of fancy words to a sentence makes you sound smart.
Interesting. When my niece graduated from Connecticut College in 2008 the commencement speaker was Tavis Smiley, who, when it came time to do his thing, got up on the platform and launched into a rambling, self-indulgent, semi-coherent rant about George Bush and the sorry state of America. I didn't understand what was happening until Tavis proudly mentioned that he had not bothered to write a commencement speech, but was simply winging it. Let me tell you, it showed.
Anyway, Tavis's good good friend Cornel West was sitting in the front row, and Tavis repeatedly -- and I mean repeatedly -- asserted that West was "America's foremost public intellectual." Those exact words. So maybe this is some sort of black trope?
He banned me from the whole Atlantic site for pointing out that 70% of Cali African Americans voted to ban gay marriage when he did a rant post about how hateful right-wingers are to all the approved victim groups, like gays. So any attempts to give some kind of balanced appraisal to this king of censorship is misplaced, I believe.
There is an enormous amount of material and ideas on the far right side of the political spectrum that never gets out of the blogosphere. It seems to me that Beck was the closest of any person on television to actually mining that, which I am sure is why he got his wings clipped. Beck is not Einstein but he was smart enough, brave enough, or foolish enough to begin to tap into what others would not. It is apt to compare Beck to Perry. MSNBC is basically the Nation Magazine on television. They did not need to reinvent the wheel either.
I'd rather the adopted kids weren't being used as status props.
O.T: Where is Turkey Going?
http://takimag.com/article/those_who_sacrifice_liberty_for_facebook_james_miller/print#axzz2pyDJNJT3
They say J. Edgar Hoover was a scumbag for eavesdropping on other people.
Freakin' A, he was an amateur... as Angela Merkel and people all over the world--even America's closest allies--found out.
So, let's release the MLK tapes.
Thou shalt not utter ...
A retired SF teacher recently told me that at predominantly black Wilson HS
in 1967 they had to remove "boys" from the restroom sign.
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2014/01/04/men-with-families-feel-more-trapped-than-ever-heres-how-to-fix-that/
I get that the Southern strategy's more recent, but the Democratic Party originally tolerating its Southern wing happened at a time when, you know, Jim Crow actually existed. Yet the GOP is irredeemably tainted as white supremacist because they went after voters who weren't even an ideological match for the modern Democratic Party in the first place, like they were actively seeking to reinstate Jim Crow or something as opposed to just, you know, being smart politicians. it's silly.
Beck did a Claudius on the media. He's a very clever man.
I think he only did it for fun and an addiction to risk-taking but still, very clever.
"the fed reserve gold?
the German gold "held" by the fed reserve?"
Quite.
I doubt Ta-Nehesi will get fired for criticising a Jewish billionaire...
"McGillicuddy said...
I love the comparison with Beck, and for exactly the reasons you mention. He falls short of even this though.
Beck may be a fool, but he is a master of his medium. I think he’s lost a step, but he has an intuitive poetic manner, and his delivery was once a thrilling experience. The man was like Homer and Cicero wrapped up in one. Except he’s a crackpot. "
I used to very much enjoy watching Beck's show, when I had Fox. It was pretty amazing watching him take on George Soros ("He undermined these countries! He's coming after us next!") or the Frankfurt School cultural Marxists, and digging his own grave. I think Cicero is an apt comparison - ok Cicero was one of the smartest men in world history, and possibly the greatest orator, but he eventually got himself killed by taking on the wrong targets, a lot like Beck.
Beck seemed to genuinely not understand the power distribution in the US. He also didn't seem to realise that the governments undermined by Soros' Open Society Initiative were CIA targets for refusing to be US clients, and that the Neocons also wanted them brought down, and that Fox is a Neocon TV network.
"...autodidacts (which is a good thing) who are constantly recounting for their rapt audiences mind-blowing excerpts from old books they are halfway finished reading?"
Project much, Steve?
"Witty, Steve.
Come off it, you guys. "A lazy idiot?" Please. Coates is a strong writer. He's the best in the business at racially shaming upper-middle class whites, which is a pretty good business to be in these days.
Sure, he's a policy vacuum, but that's not what the Atlantic is paying him for.
I think he's a baleful influence -- somebody please give McWhorter an MSNBC show --but I'm not going to flatter myself by denying his obvious talent. The fundamental problem with his worldview is that it's afflicted by the myth of reverse causation: that if racism caused a lot of black problems existing today, then stamping out racism will undo those problems. But this obviously isn't true, as blacks have continued to stagnate as racism has dramatically declined over the past few decades.
Coates and Beck expect too much from history. To guy like Beck, who mistakes our civil religion for the genuine article, the key to fixing our current vetocracy or debt problems is to be found in, say, Forrest McDonald's work on the Constitution or some obscure letter by Jefferson. Coates, meanwhile, is wont to assume that we can't improve Detroit without fully digesting the harrowing second graph on page 84 of, say, Sugrue's Origins of the Urban Crisis.
But I've read Sugrue: as a guide to action he is almost completely useless. Most works of history are."
This is an excellent comment. I was going to copy and paste it in the comment thread under Coates's post, but he's closed comments there. He did post a comment pushing back against his claim that MHP was America's leading public intellectual though.
Dylan Byers of Politico.com tweeted that Coates's nomination of Harris-Perry for the title of "America's foremost public intellectual" calls Coates's intellectual credibility into question. Byers was, naturally, denounced as a racist for this by Coates and others.
During the Richwine ousting, Coates interviewed population geneticist Neil Risch, undoubtedly expecting him to affirm the conventional wisdom that racial differences in intelligence are absolutely non-genetic. It must have shocked Coates when Risch said that it's an open problem, and that both genetic and environmental explanations are unsupported for now.
"Dylan Byers of Politico.com tweeted that Coates's nomination of Harris-Perry for the title of "America's foremost public intellectual" calls Coates's intellectual credibility into question. Byers was, naturally, denounced as a racist for this by Coates and others."
Some funny tweets in response to Byers, including this one.
His angry blog post lashing out at dylan bryers for being a bit sniffy on twitter about his MHP love is great. Coates gives long hard thought to the baffling question of why anyone would find it silly to regard Melissa Harris Perry as America's foremost public intellectual and concludes that it is because Byers doesn't 'grapple with everywhere' and the reason everywhere remains grappled is because of the machinery of racism that Byers passively supports by "sitting still". The blog post ends with a typical Coatesian poetic flourish which seems to say that denying Perry's greatness is basically the same as denying that mountains exist. The neo confederates are also neo flat earthers it would seem.
For whites not wanting to sit still and therefore abet the machinery of racism the only option seems to be fully immersing yourself in the complete works of any black person you might criticise. That means in order to criticise Coates non racistly I would have to, amongst other things, read his autobiography he wrote when he was twenty one or something. I know my ancestors raped and murdered their way across the world but it still doesn't seem fair.
I looked around twitter thinking that maybe Coates had been just a tad too stupid this time. Nope! It was yet another brilliant post from the brilliant Ta-nehisi Coates as far as his typical admirers are concerned
The brilliant Coates, capable of finding even the tiniest racial cog in the vastest machinery, the unblinking eye that stares forever into the heart of white racism, that has never worked out that his profile is almost entirely dependent on white liberals liking to be seen celebrating the very black man with the very black name.
Coate's complaint was that Byers dismissed the idea of MHP being the foremost public intellectual so quickly and offhandedly that it indicated he was more influenced by a racist disregard of black intellectuals than any serious appraisal of the situation.
He had a point...MHP qualifies as an intellectual by any reasonable standard and she is a pretty public figure. It's not a slam dunk case, but neither does it call one's credibility into question to float the idea.
Personally, I think it isn't true because MHP's doesn't host her show as an intellectual, but rather as any other TV host would. I imagine many of her fans didn't think of her as particularly intellectual. There is also the issue of black intellectuals, that they very frequently produce work that is only of interest to black people.
Have you ever noticed how Ta-Nehisi Coates is the black Glenn Beck, in the sense that both are autodidacts (which is a good thing) who are constantly recounting for their rapt audiences mind-blowing excerpts from old books they are halfway finished reading?
Howled.
and...
I'm not sure what is worse ... "Tennessee" Coates' writing, or the annoying fanboy commenters who are constantly talking about how brilliant he is.
Oh, it's such a close call, isn't it? And outsiders occasional give obeisance to the greatness that is Coates, and I'm like, what? Where? And then, in every comments section, some 300 "God, TNC, these brilliant, painfully evocative observations is why I read you 9000 times a day."
But then, he's a smug pain in the ass because he's never actually suffered. He just whines about it a lot.
I don't think he's as talented as some here say, but he wouldn't be half as annoying if people didn't take his crap seriously, and if he actually had to defend his ideas.
If the Romneys are raising an African American child it means they're doing the work that black men just won't do...
>He had a point<
No he didn't. MHP is an academic in a worthless discipline that does nothing but come up with different ways to call people racists. The more popular of her two books is 13,918 on Amazon. She hosts a little-watched weekend show for the lowest-rated cable news network in the country. She has zero recognition outside of the pundit community. Coates himself had never cited her in any of his posts before deciding she was the "most foremost public intellectual" in the country.
Dylan Byers of Politico.com tweeted that Coates's nomination of Harris-Perry for the title of "America's foremost public intellectual" calls Coates's intellectual credibility into question. Byers was, naturally, denounced as a racist for this by Coates and others.
Classic. This Byers person questioned Coates's claim but in doing so cleaned up his language: "most foremost" became "foremost". And what thanks does he get?
He had a point...MHP qualifies as an intellectual by any reasonable standard and she is a pretty public figure. It's not a slam dunk case, but neither does it call one's credibility into question to float the idea.
You've got to be kidding. I know nothing about her or her intellectuality, and that's the problem. She is not public. Probably 98% of Americans have no idea who she is.
Is Malcolm Gladwell an intellectual? You make the call, but at least I'd say he's public.
Coate's complaint was that Byers dismissed the idea of MHP being the foremost public intellectual so quickly and offhandedly that it indicated he was more influenced by a racist disregard of black intellectuals than any serious appraisal of the situation.
Coates based his argument on Byers's list of candidates for the title of "[most] foremost public intellectual", all of whom -- in Coates's appraisal -- are or were white. Never mind that five of the six are or were Jewish; never mind that one of them memorably said, "The white race is the cancer of human history."
Whites in general still take the heat. That's White privilege for you!
"...But there is no one more worthy, and more capable, of holding that conversation than America's most foremost public intellectual—Melissa Harris-Perry."
"most foremost"? Yes, Coates is a smart fellow indeed.
But seriously, surely America's most foremost public intellectual is Cornel West.
I listened to Glenn Beck yesterday as he spent an hour lauding "Lone Survivor" as the greatest war movie ever made. Of course he mentioned that he is a close personal friend of Marcus Luttrell and attended an advance screening with him and an audience of SEALs. Beck also said that he asked his security detail if the movie gave an accurate representation of combat and they assured him it did.
I saw "Lone Survivor" and I beg to differ with Beck's assessment. A well-done combat sequence but otherwise flat and unengaging, and the cinematography looked low budget, like one of those reenactments they make for the Discovery Channel.
My question for today is - How stupid can you be and still be considered an intellectual?
Albertosaurus
John Podhoretz responded to Byers's tweet:
obviously she is America's foremost intellectual. Welcome to Idiocracy, man.
Haha.
"Coates is a strong writer"
I think you mean he's our most strongest writer.
He doesn't deserve to be called a writer. He cannot write. You don't call someone who can't sail a boat a sailor. You don't call someone who can't herd sheep a shepherd. You don't call someone who can't make shirts a shirtmaker. This clown is not a writer.
When I think of a "public intellectual" I envision someone like Walter Lippmann, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., or John Kenneth Galbraith. Even if I disagree with them, I have to acknowledge the breadth and depth of their scholarship.
To put Melissa Harris-Perry in such company - well, to quote the line of one of her panelists, "One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just isn't the same..." - and that's not just or even significantly for the reason that she is a negress and the others are white men.
I think that the test of public intellectual really comes down to 2 main things - 1) does their mastery of a single field into a position where they are accepted as insightful commentators on a range of other issues, and 2) Does their coming out on one side of an issue help shift the terms of the debate among "opinion leaders" and educated people?
Tony Judt, for example, wrote widely on issues beyond his narrow field of 1960's intellectual history, and his positions helped shift the tone of debate on Israel after he switched from being a Zionist to advocating a one state solution. Similarly Gary Wills regularly writes on politics and religious issues beyond his specialty, and has created a role for himself as the loyal opposition among American Catholics.
Perry clearly fails both of these tests. At best she is the black studies version of Brian Caplan, an academic who is a good cheerleader for her cause among the faithful, but does not have any broader impact.
"Beck seemed to genuinely not understand the power distribution in the US".
Anything that even tangentially exposes Jewish power and influence will get you fired. That's why mainstream conservatives stop at Clower-Piven/ Alinski rather than go deeper into what the "long march though the institutions" is or describing critical theory. There are some potentially uncomfortable associations hidden in plain sight with a little more than a cursory investigation.
Beck did got out with a blaze of glory by hosting G. Edward Griffin in one oh his last shows. Griffin's someone who is not shy about connecting the dots, especially regarding the Fed, who established it and whom it benefits.
Who is Melissa Harris-Perry? Just looked her up on Wiki, she taught at Princeton and the U of Chicago and now she teaches at Tulane? I guess she couldn't cut it at the very best schools so now she is moving down to the next tier. Maybe they weren't willing to underwrite African-American Studies to the extent she wanted so she bolted to a lower level but still prestigious university willing to lavishly subsidize the department. Yeah, she's another Bertrand Russell all right ;)
Guys, steve is sort-of trolling with the ta-nahahaha = black glenn beck thing
it reads like a gawker headline, really
maybe ta-nahaha will read this article
and hopefully this comment
about how all his white-bashing is really just serving to make wealthy and powerful "white" people wealthier and more powerful
and how pathetic he is for thinking he's fighting against the man
Tennessee Coats has always been a one-trick pony:
The Black Man's perspective. Double underline.
If you told him to not mention race or bigotry in his writing, he would have nothing to say.
So who is America's most foremost public intellectual?
What if it's ---gasp--- Charles Murray?
"I have a love for the sister [MHP], but she is a liar, and I hate lying," says [Cornel] West ...
...[Princeton's] Center for African American Studies unanimously voted against her when she came up for promotion ... adding that her work was not scholarly enough.
"There's not a lot of academic stuff with her, just a lot of twittering," says West, who added that her book Sister Citizen, released last year, was "wild and out of control."
"She's become the momentary darling of liberals, but I pray for her because she's in over her head. She's a fake and fraud. I was so surprised how treacherous the sister was."
Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, 2/9/2012
Tony Judt, for example, wrote widely on issues beyond his narrow field of 1960's intellectual history, and his positions helped shift the tone of debate on Israel after he switched from being a Zionist to advocating a one state solution.
There has been no shift in tone.
Murray and Pinker come first to mind. Murray claims "Coming Apart" might be his last book due to age, but he's still close to the top of his game, while Pinker, who is still shy of 60, is at his peak.
Murray and Pinker come first to mind.
I was thinking of Pinker and Dawkins as candidates, but Murray is a good choice.
"especially regarding the Fed, who established it and whom it benefits."
Woodrow Wilson-Semitic conspiracy to prevent mini-depressions? omg
"She's become the momentary darling of liberals, but I pray for her because she's in over her head. She's a fake and fraud. I was so surprised how treacherous the sister was."
hot left-on-left action. Or maybe Cornel West is implicitly racist
I hate the guy, but Paul Krugman might be the best candidate for "America's Foremost Public Intellectual" (AFPI).
"Anonymous said...
"She's become the momentary darling of liberals, but I pray for her because she's in over her head. She's a fake and fraud. I was so surprised how treacherous the sister was.""
That's funny. The incoherently logorrheic Cornel West calling someone else a fraud.
I hate the guy, but Paul Krugman might be the best candidate for "America's Foremost Public Intellectual" (AFPI).
He's too specialized though. "Foremost public intellectuals" are broader and more general.
Murray's output is too low, no? Not just books but articles, appearances, speaking, etc.
The problem with Krugman for that distinction is that he's not terribly cultured. I'm sure he's an expert on the best Blue Oyster Cult album and the best Asimov Foundation novel, but that's about as far as Krugman goes.
When ant expert Edward O. Wilson came under attack by Stephen Jay Gould in the mid-1970s and realized he'd have to turn himself into a public intellectual to defend himself, he developed a whole new image for himself as a man of letters. You can argue about how real his new image was, but it was a pretty amazing bit of reinvention by a man entering middle age.
Now Krugman is very bright -- for example, when he became interested in evolutionary theory about 20 years ago -- he quickly brought himself up to speed and even issued a withering assessment of Stephen Jay Gould. So, he could have developed more broadly, but he never really needed to politically the way Wilson, a Southerner, felt he had to. So, Krugman remains kind of a Long Island metalhead after all these years, but almost nobody notices, much less criticizes him for it.
"Steve Sailer said...
Now Krugman is very bright"
But not really all that smart. And certainly not as smart as he thinks he is.
Melissa Harris-Perry - the Hostess with the most foremostess.
Despite Steve and others' objections, I would have to go with Krugman. He holds down a column at the country's most prestigious paper, which is arguably the most prominent venue for public engagement. And, he's won a Nobel in his field, which would certainly gets the "intellectual" ticket punched.
Thinking further, I'd have to go with Roissy.
The problem with Krugman for that distinction is that he's not terribly cultured. I'm sure he's an expert on the best Blue Oyster Cult album....
I'm on the Lamb, but I Ain't No Sheep. She's as Beautiful as a Foot. Haha. The song titles alone are enough to make it a classic!
"So who is America's most foremost public intellectual?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRBtlXuMnjE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8M5BQlf9Ec
MHP is not famous enough to be America's foremost anything, but she's at least somewhat intellectual. It was amusing watching her circa 2007 imply Gloria Steinem was a racist for suggesting that women of all colors should unite behind Hillary Clinton for president. MHP furiously responded that white women like Hillary had the white privilege to climb the white patriarchy and attach themselves to white men, so to truly be a feminist, you must vote Obama, and how dare Steinem deny black women the right to vote their race. Steinem (who is used to being worshipped, especially by liberal women) could not believe someone was talking to her like that and looked about to vomit. I highly recommend googling the debate they had.
P.S.
Steve, I strongly advise you to not make it so difficult for your readers to comment with all this prove you're not a robot crap.
"Darwin's Sh*tlist said...
Despite Steve and others' objections, I would have to go with Krugman. He holds down a column at the country's most prestigious paper, which is arguably the most prominent venue for public engagement. And, he's won a Nobel in his field, which would certainly gets the "intellectual" ticket punched.""
He won a fake Nobel. There is no Nobel Prize in economics.
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