Max wrote:
I don't mind the self-promotion as much as the fact that it's all
unidirectional. When I was blogging my policy was
to try and foster mutual support, but the big shots (sic) were
usually not interested. I would get these emails
from The Nation, Z, etc. inviting me to publicize them, but when I
sent notes saying how about supporting me too,
the silence was deafening. One reason I soured on blogging.
The only reason I blog is that I like to get my ideas out even if
nobody reads them. And to be honest, I write because I am my favorite
writer. If Alexander Cockburn or Christian Parenti were writing the
things I write, I wouldn't bother. My problem with lots of blogs is
the torrent of comments that thankfully never appear on mine.
Anything more than 4 or 5 a day would start to irritate me, although
I would never turn off commenting since I am so grateful for the gems
that do turn up:
---
This was an excellent rundown, reflecting my basic lifelong antipathy
to the vapidity of liberal moralism in American higher ed - but that
points to the questions I would put (not in public) to anyone who
gets a paycheck from the enterprise. After Bollinger's performance,
who could have gone to work the next day at Columbia? What does
Robert Pollin say when he sits down next to his fine confreres? How
can anyone think the trillions of dollars and millions of
ass-in-chair hours devoted to American post-Cold War higher ed can be
justified when it has staffed our boardrooms, Pentagon bureaucracies,
and McMansions? I understand people need to find work to eat, but how
much self-aggrandizement in one institution can a person bear? It all
seems so fatuous - but who tells Botstein that he's a horse's ass?
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