Clarence Thomas, Harlan Crow, right-wing PR, high-dollar lynching

It's not at all shocking, given what we already know about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to read that he is bought and paid and in the back pocket of Dallas right-wing real estate magnate Harlan Crow, who is also on the board of the American Enterprise Institute.

Adn Frederick Douglass would probably be turning over in his grave, were he to know that Thomas had a bible that had once been his.

It's not shocking, either, but just as disgusting, to read high-brow wingnuts, such as D Magazine publisher Wick Allison, attempt to defend Thomas by claiming, as Wick does, that "he's no Abe Fortas"!

To which I replied:

Oh, please, Wick. Clarence Thomas is far *beyond* Abe Fortas. With Fortas, it was only about personal greed. With Thomas, it's a mix of that and a political philosophy injurious to, even destructive to, a large chunk of America, all wrapped in a mantle of pious sneering that Fortas never projected.

I mean, to shove Thomas' words back down his own big mouth, this is a Supreme Court Justice giving much of American, including his nonconservative black nonbrethren, a high-dollar lynching.

Was Thomas Kuhn a relativist? A postmodernist?

Part 4 of Errol Morris' series of long columns about his intellectual relationship with the philosopher of science is the best yet.

He indicates Kuhn seems to be strongly influenced by the later Wittgenstein, but that he goes beyond even that:

Why stop at historical relativism? Why not imagine each and every person in a different island universe? And indeed, Kuhn at least in one instance seems to embrace that possibility. In one particularly bizarre passage in “The Road Since Structure,” he suggests that his critics are writing about two different Thomas Kuhns – Kuhn No. 1 and Kuhn No. 2. ...

To me Kuhn’s claim – that there are two Thomas Kuhns plus two books by the same name and author – suggests that there may be no coherent reading of Kuhn’s philosophy.

Weird indeed.

Given the ashtray incident and other things, I think we have to seriously look at treating Kuhn as a semi-guru, and a pre-postmodernist.

After all, when his "paradigm shift" idea went big in New Age circles, Kuhn had chances to object, and didn't.

And, along with this analysis, we have stop treating him so seriously in general.

Anyway, click the link up top, and read the three previous essays. They're great.