Mike Palij wrote:
can they ever get it right?
Whatever one's position on conservatism and authoritarianism, the real
howler is characterizing Adorno as a "neo-Freudian." He was a
Frankfurt-school Marxist sociologist. Of course there was some
"Freudishness" in the mix (as there was in a great deal of mid-century
European intellectual culture), but calling him a "neo-Freudian" would
put him in the same category as people like Melanie Klein and Erich
Fromm (who did write about authoritarianism from an explicitly
neo-Freudian perspective). You'd think that "Marxist" would have all the
negative connotations that this author needs (for his audience), but
apparently he feels calling Adorno "neo-Freudian" has some special umph
to it. Probably the "neo-" part. :-)
See the article/review below.
Outside of the immediately obvious "hindsight bias" (aka
"I knew all along bias") what other errors of commission
and ommission are made?
Mike, you seem to have mistaken this peice for an attempt to convey
information. It is not. It is, instead, a character-smear piece of the
kind raised to high art by American talk-radio and then perfected by
Karl Rove for election campaigns. Its function is to supply like-minded
folks with a couple of nasty (truth notwithstanding) personal cracks in
their pocket should an actual discussion of, in this case, Dean's book,
come up in everyday conversation. These serve to simultaneously
undermine the credibility of the individual whose work is being
discussed AND change the topic of conversation (forcing the person who
wishes to offer any kind of defense to appear awkward or even "obsessed"
by having to explicitly change the topic *back* to what is now a
previous one). One sees the technique used regularly on "Fox News" and
by CNN's more obnoxious personalities (Tucker Carlson -- who was dumped
soon after Jon Stewart nailed him on a similar misdirective rhetorical
technique, Lou Dobbs, etc.)
http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_07_17/print/reviewprint.html
Regards,
--
Christopher D. Green
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
Canada
416-736-5115 ex. 66164
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.yorku.ca/christo
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