JPOD says: [1]
“In short, I am white, privileged, middle-aged and boring,” Stephen Metcalf in his rather startlingly vicious review [2] of the Why I Turned Right anthology Stanley has been blogging about. “But one thing I am not, and never will be, is a conservative.”
This is a very revealing remark, especially from someone who says the book he’s reviewing should be subtitled “The Experience That Closed My Mind Forever.” Never will be a conservative? Part of the hallmark of having any sort of critical intelligence is being able to see how a set of ideological prescriptions you do not support could appeal to you at a different time in your life. On the other hand, given the ad-hominem philistinism of Metcalf’s piece, maybe the term “critical intelligence” should be deployed at some remove from his name.
I am reminded of the line we heard so often from the late sixties; “never trust anyone over 30”. Both that phrase and Metcalf’s article seems to me to be both exercises in cell justification and self promotion.
Then again, what would you expect from the OP Ed pages of the New York Times?