SocraticGadfly: #MalcolmGladwell ... a suaver #StevePinker?

June 01, 2012

#MalcolmGladwell ... a suaver #StevePinker?

Meet the real Malcolm Gladwell ... and an apparently well-earned smackdown over his political credentials.

I had no idea he was so far right, at least at one time, as to have written for American Spectator. Now, of course, he may have changed politically. After all, David Brock also wrote for American Spectator.

But, if you look at his series of books, etc., he hasn't moved that far left. And David Brock never studied at the National Journalism Center, founded by Stanton Evans of Human Events. Beyond that, anybody who willingly shilled for Big Tobacco is in a special circle of hell.

At best, I think, as I told a Facebook friend, that you could call the Gladwell of today a Venn diagram intersection of the right wing of neoliberalism, Pop Evolutionary Psychology and Pop Evolutionary Sociology. Of course, you could probably say at least somewhat the same thing of Dear Leader's buddy, Cass Sunstein. And, you could probably call Pop Evolutionary Sociology behavioral psychology run amok.

1 comment:

Sheldon said...

Thanks for this, I look forward to reading it.

I have read only one Gladwell book, Outliers, and I suppose I took what I wanted from it thus validating my own leftist prejudices. Mainly that genuis and phenomoenal success is just as much the result of opportunity and favorable and advantageous cirucumstances as it is actual genius and hard work.