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The soi disant set

NYT litbomb thrower Michuo Kakutani snuggles up with Silicon Valley aristo Andrew Keen’s recent book – “The Cult of the Amateur” – to find much common cause with his underlying thesis: The rest of us are too dumb to know what’s good for us, and it’d be best to let our betters tell us what to do

This book, which grew out of a controversial essay published last year by The Weekly Standard, is a shrewdly argued jeremiad against the digerati effort to dethrone cultural and political gatekeepers and replace experts with the

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4 comments to The soi disant set

  • AW1 Tim

    Lex,

    It’s always funny to me how those who argue the strongest for “Choice” seem to be also in the forefront to deny it to those who disagree with their views.

    In other words, what they are arguing in support of is allowing THEM to make our CHOICES for us. Sort of like the way PBS and the other old media “inform” os of the news….. What THEY feel is important. Gag.

    Respects,

  • Casca

    WFB – “I would rather be governed by the first two-thousand names in the Boston
    telephone directory than by the faculty of Harvard.”

    Nice pithy close there Lex.

  • CPT J

    Geez, what will the Times’ nomenklatura do for work as they are inevitably displaced by bloggers like Yon and Roggio?

    Hold signs that say “Will Whine for Latte”?

  • P-3W

    This arrogance Lex points out is far from just in the media of newspapers, television, books, or movies. This arrogance is rooted deeply in our education systems now, so much so that very little American history is taught as fact, just the “mean, old, bad white males did bad things” meme is deriguer there.

    It is the arrogance of elitism. Where it was by blood in the past with royalty and peerage, now it’s with anti-Americanism and education. The higher your education and the more anti-American you are, the more arrogant.

    We’re infested with people who haven’t a clue about life in general who insist that their world view is the correct and only one. “How dare you disagree with my superiority, you lowly ignorant paeon? Don’t you know who I am?”

    I like it when someone tries to pull this non-arguement with me, because I have the chops to be their equal when they think I’m a back-country hick who’s never traveled or seen “the world.” I’ve seen more and done more than they’ve read about. Of course, what I’ve done is beneath them, but I know whereof I speak and they know I can challenge them with authority. They hate that and resort to namecalling.

    Most people around here are fairly civil in discussion; we’re rural enough that the truly obnoxious wouldn’t dream of even thinking about us.

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