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James Graham's avatar

Again and again, DG goes where others fear to tread. If I had a paper (if only), I'd hire him with the sole instruction : skewer. He's a satirist. Those lines about his shrink - great stuff. / That said, liberalism is a loser's game. We'll never even agree to terms. Such as ? While I think his portrait of the academy is essentially correct, I can't bring myself to call the leading lights of Higher Ed anything but careerists, as in My Career Comes First. Feminists ? Hardly. What did they ever do for women ? Judith Butler, the Berkeley goddess, may have done more to retard women's rights than any single figure apart from Hapless Joe B., who couldn't bear to part with his dear old filibuster. I'll leave it there. I'd like to see DG on a panel making trouble.

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David Gottfried's avatar

Thanks for your comment.

I appreciate your wit, exemplified by your characterization of J Butler as the Berkeley goddess.

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James Graham's avatar

Thanks but fwiw, it fails as satire. It's too kind. You've got to turn the screw. I could have called her the Sybil of Berkeley : better. The gray sybil of sexless identity, whose pronouncements are impenetrable, which hasn't hurt sales or reputation. The question is how to do it in as few words as possible. Nevermind, I'm a ceaseless reviser; everything on my Substack page has gone through the mill. I harp on my own lute.

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Jul 5, 2022
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David Gottfried's avatar

I particularly liked this sentence in your comment:

"I can't save any particular race from their plight but I can befriend that one guy because he's also a nerd, the same as I."

Unfortunately, my fellow New Yorkers follow a very different moral compass:

When a man in tattered clothes and open sores is lying on the street, hordes of New Yorkers, as blue as the grandest saphire in Southebys. will pass him by believing they have discharged their duties to their fellow man by voting Democratic.

Which doesn't mean I vote Republican. Hell no. But one must do a whole lot more than vote democratic.

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