Having grown up in Princeton, New Jersey, the Ivy League culture and the rules and pleasures of intellectual debate (no matter how pretentious) are like second nature to me. I’m guilty of enjoying the whole sad spectacle, but I also have a kind of Holden Caufield irreverence about the thing. I think it’s fun to debate, but I also think the intellectual scene, as it exists at the highest levels, is as phony as a three-dollar bill, and ultimately unimportant for determining how things move and shake in the more important world of power.
That’s why I can only laugh at Paul Rosenberg and people who people who write long essays to say nothing more than “that guy’s quote-of-the-day was anti-semitic.’ Yeah, maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t, but you bored me to death and no one cares.
