One thing does bug me tho: No black people. It’s not just that the subjects of the essays are all white: He doesn’t have to admire anyone non-white if he doesn’t want to (tho it might be nice; he does at least manage to shoehorn in Ellen Willis and Martha Nussbaum) but he doesn’t even mention anyone black except with curt dismissals. bell hooks is unreadable, Toni Morrison should never have won a Nobel, etc. (And there isn’t even much etc.) As far as I can tell, race as a factor in American politics and and culture just doesn’t figure at all, except (again very briefly, and in passing) as something that shouldn’t influence the curriculum or that working class whites might have legitimate grievances over.

Which again, doesn’t change the fact that Scialabba’s style and sensibility are hugely praiseworthy. But it is a little puzzling. Maybe there just weren’t any African-Americans in the New York intellectual world where his roots are. (Weren’t there?) But it does seem unfortunate that insofar as race actually is an important part of American history, Scialabba is no help in thinking about it.

The first chapter of What Are Intellectuals Good For?, and especially the first eight or ten pages, address this question, more or less. The overall argument is that, for the most part, intellectuals weren’t important enough to be coopted until the advent of mass production, which necessitated mass literacy, which in turn necessitated the manufacture of consent. The response of the ruling class was public relations, advertising, and business/government funding and monitoring of the university.

The Non-Partisan League in North Dakota, in 1918 America’s nearest approach to an actual soc*al*st party and an influence on the Progressive Party in Canada, was formally Republican.

If soc*al*sm gives you an erection lasting more than four hours, get an additional girl friend or see your doctor.

And this didn’t used to be the case, even one century ago!

(We can blame A. Mitchell Palmer and J. Edgar Hoover for the divergence.)

You are a more generous person than I: I would not call the sign-wielding protesters, such as these fine folks, intellectuals.

(I am fond of the sign that says IF CONGRESS LIKES OBAMACARE SO MUCH WHY DON’T THEY TEST DRIVE IT 1^ST and would like to send the protester a response sign that says BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO TEST IT ON OLD AND POOR PEOPLE / WHAT DID YOU THINK MEDICARE-MEDICAID WAS / WAKE UP SHEEPLE.)

In fact, I’m pretty sure most American intellectuals are completely in sympathy with you. Thomas More had something to say about us staying indoors during a rainstorm?

I think this is in part what the netroots people are on about when they deny being leftwing

Isn’t this just to avoid marginalization? In my non-pseudonymous life I spend copious amounts of time expressing my un-left-wingness, my mainstreamularity, my centerosity. It’s a standard means for shifting the population in your political direction, especially the mushy-middle folks who don’t pay much attention to politics and can’t understand people who do, who vote with whoever makes ‘em feel kinda good and can’t understand people who don’t.

The netroots proclaiming themselves not-left-wing is standard gut-realignment: “Hey, I’m not all that different from you, and so-and-so is a good person.”

Eh, but you know that. Guess I just want to throw in my thought that, when netroots folks call themselves not-left-wing, they are not first evaluating their own opinions relative to some world-wide scale of left/right and checking to see where they lie.

We can adopt the policies of ANY one of the 35 best counties in the world and we will be ahead. Oh, no. The intellectuals’ can’t even conceive of simply copying a system that works better. Foreign, not made here, yup, you got more parochialism than I can stand.