Troll The Ancient Fooltide Carol1
Stanley Fish,2 New York Times ‘Opinionator’ blog:
Sarah Palin Is Coming to TownWhen I walked into the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan last week, I headed straight for the bright young thing who wore an “Ask Me” button, and asked her to point me to the section of the store where I might find Sarah Palin’s memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.” She looked at me as if I had requested a copy of “Mein Kampf” signed in blood by the author, and directed me to the nearest Barnes and Noble, where, presumably, readers of dubious taste and sensibility could find what they wanted.
This is funny, because when I walked into Balducci’s last week, I headed straight for the bright young Miss Thing who was wearing a “C’est Cheese”3 button on his plum and silver torreador jacket and giving out samples of acai flavored Pont-l’Évêque, and asked where it might be that I should find a candy shotgun to blast rock candy through the roof of my mouth and all up into my head, where it would blow pink candy brains as well as candy hair tufts through my top hat like a candy death toot-toot whistle, and also I hate cheese so fuck you. And this is the funny part, because he looked at me as if I was Stanley Fish, and then Stanley Fish came in, all rowdy-dow and heighdy-ho, advancing with a meaty paw extended and a shifty smile working one way and then the next as though clearing brush from his path, all pink-eared and soapy of collar like a Corn Belt tack wholesaler — oleoresinous of eye, exuding cheap 1970s tenure — and he walked up just like that and asked the guy whether he had any Fromunda Cheese.
A few days later, I attended a seminar on political and legal theory where a distinguished scholar observed that every group has its official list of angels and devils. As an example, he offered the fact (of which he was supremely confident) that few, if any, in the room were likely to be Sarah Palin fans. By that time I had begun reading Palin’s book, and while I wouldn’t count myself a fan in the sense of being a supporter, I found it compelling and very well done.
While we wouldn’t count ourselves as fans of Sarah Palin in the sense of liking things about her, we’d find it compelling to hang around before one of her book appearances wearing T-shirts that say ‘Jack-Out-Of-the-Box eSolutions, Inc., IP In the Front and RAM Sticks In the Rear,’ and warning people about the snew on the wang-4, and advising that they updock. “Muggle says ‘what?'” we’d mumble in salutation, and then after a time of that, we’d go back and write up a big thing for The Times about walking into a Cracker Barrel and asking how come there’s no Barrel for African-Americans or Hispanics, and then being like, Aah, whatever. Say, we have a peanut allergy and a tree nut allergy, so I guess you can say we’ve had to scratch all kinds of nuts, heh-heh, so look, is the food here handled by anyone who’s into Balzac, or who blows sax? I mean, if someone tosses my salad, what if I order the aspic and he forgets to hold the pickle?
Whee! Ha ha! But there was work to do as well, for we sought to establish to the Times readership, with a great shared archedness of brow, that we were in a place of business that was unlikely to be able to meet the reasonable and easily-anticipated requests for bourgeois amenities that readers of The Times are accustomed to making. “Oh, never mind the peas-and-trees, nutwise,” we said. “Could we just get us some of that ol’ Foie Gras Brûlée with Roasted Strawberries like they do it over at Nougatine?4
Not, that is, that we would count ourselves as fans of Jean-Georges Vongerichten, unless by ‘fans’ you mean having helped at one time or another to throng crap restaurants like Spice Market in a self-worried ecstasy of Ewige Spießer arrogance-cum-suckerhood. Those Spießbürgers don’t just eat themselves. But you ought to have seen the faces of the low-income retail employees at the Cracker Barrel when we sneezed back and forth like “Aah-ah-ah Vongerichten!” and asked if there were any ordinary Vongerichten! Americans there, and if so, why did their man at The Times, that David Vongerichten! Brooks of theirs, split up with uh, what’s-his-name, Dunn? And also, did they like Stanley brand fishsticks — did they like as much as we do at The Times to put a Stanley fishstick in their Vongerichten! mouths?
“Ainsi,” we replied in remembered French-club French — with ‘remembered’ in the more literal sense than usual of the arms and legs having been stuck back on — “Il nous semblerions que vous soyez un poisson qui pêche de l’autre rive.” And we laughed, oh yes, we laughed when the retail employee who wore a ‘Smiles Are Free’ button said we ought to try the Barnes & Noble, “Because you folks act like you grew up in barns, and that’s no bull.” He looked at me as if I had requested a copy of Dreams From My Father signed in Adolf Vongerichten! Hitler’s blood by the author, William Charles Ayers. “Smiles are free, eh?” I said to him. “Well, free dumbness isn’t…smiley.” And I scowled like the smoke from a tar truck as we walked out, not just from a weighty heart, but because of all those fish puns left untouched. “That’s a moray,” offered my partner. “Abalone!” I explained.
2 Cf. Fish.
3 This needs to be available by mail from a Nazareth, Pennsylvania specialty foods retailer called Cheeses of Nazareth, just as it is necessary that there be a Suffern, New York delicatessen called Suffern Katz’s whose catalog boasts of ‘our famous local succotash.’
4 An unfinished joke of long standing has someone funnily referring to Chez Panisse, the demesne of chef Alice Waters, as “Cheese Penis.” The speaker may or may not be a restauranteur named Al Swatters, who may or may not be opening porn versions of restaurants. (London’s The Fat Duck represents low-hanging meat, as it were, while New York’s Momofuku Ssäm Bar might as well be a gay leather-porn version of a pan-Asian bistro as its name currently stands, needing only a menu full of Rad Prik, Tung Sum Gai, and Gang Phuk to circle, double-underline, and star-with-smiley-face the point in order to attract the out-of-town conventioner and/or the ecclesiastical trade. Also, a Swatters version of the now-closed Lespinasse would be called Not As Much Dick.) The joke may also, or may also not, have something to do with Waters’s second and smaller redoubt, Café Fanny. Something about its tight quarters serving a more select group of patrons — it’s all pretty vague still.
Another long-unfinished one concerns a historical schism between boatswains and bo’s’uns, with the resulting foundings of the countries of Botswana and Bosnia. Maybe one country is governed from a forecastle right up in front, while the other is run from a hole in the ground such as a fox might dig, i.e. a fo’c’sle. Ah, but then what? Anyway, these are the kinds of problems we solve here, and now you see how it is.
Man! What a perfect match of irrelevant and irritating: Fish writing about Palin (and I’m talking about them both). Fish and his useless wife have leached a living off of the humanities for too long. If the media wants “academic-celebrities,” how come they picked such a mediocre thinker? Fish’s biggest skill is his highly predictable contrarianism. He is the Broder of culture wars in his predictability.
Are you sure you didn’t mean Scheißebürgers? I ate one a while back and Stanley leaves a similar taste in my mouth.
Man, Camille Paglia has really let herself … Ooops. My bad.
Ha ha ha! Glad to see you’ve haven’t lost the old fire, Gav.
And Tim Conway called, he wants his photo back.
Sorry, please change “you’ve” to “you”
and viz:
http://www.kepplerspeakers.com/literature/conway-i.jpg
Sorry, last one: for those of you not in NY or who don’t know the Strand, it is overwhelmingly a USED bookstore that also does a big business in review/advance copies. So it’s highly unlikely that they would have any copies of Palin’s book on hand, at least until a few million copies are remaindered. So there’s an even funnier level of stoopid on display, if you know anything about NY.
I greatly look forward to hearing what Dash’s first words are.
Connectin’ the dots…
Palin and minorities.
Still uncomfortable. Also.
No doubt there is a Botswanan saying about atheists in forecastles, or something.
Getting rolled would mean trouble for a toreador.
And has no one told him that the book was ghostwritten?
Mayhaps you snuttering twitterers should attempt to read Palin’s memoir before baselessly dismissing it. Anyone with an ounce of blood running through his veins would thrill at the harrowing tale of how she and Todd trekked through the dread land of Mordor, stalked by the vile creature McCain, also.
And as to allegations that she did not write the book herself? Balderdash!
So Stanley walked into a dry cleaners and says “How do I get the starbursts out of my pants?”. The proprietor laughs and says “Silly boy, Fish don’t wear pants!”
Occasionally Stanley Fish wants to get his prole on, and this is as close as he gets.
I think it is a blessed event that our hallowed dead would emerge from their tombs, so outraged are the immortal spirits at the unprecedented suffering, the unmitigated cruelty, the unyielding torture we cruel heartless liberals have visited upon the innocent, brave, daring, nearly one term governor of Alaska.
for those of you not in NY or who don’t know the Strand, it is overwhelmingly a USED bookstore that also does a big business in review/advance copies. So it’s highly unlikely that they would have any copies of Palin’s book on hand, at least until a few million copies are remaindered. So there’s an even funnier level of stoopid on display, if you know anything about NY.
I have no doubt that Fish knew that, and walked into a bookstore he KNEW was unlikely would have the book, just so he could get his daily dose of manufactured outrage. I guess trying to find the book in The Mysterious Bookshop would have been too obvious.
The proprietor laughs and says “Silly boy, Fish don’t wear pants!”
You might be surprised at the apparel fish will don.
~
It’s evident that Stanley gets a woody when he goes slumming.
As for his contention that lying in autobiography matters not I can only conclude that he is a species of nihilfish.
I walked into this elite, snobby cafe called “McDonalds,” as though we’re all some sort of rich Irish ya-dee-das, and I asked for a copy of Sarah Palin’s book and they looked at me like I was crazy, and asked me if I wanted an order of French fries.
America, why has thou forsaken her?
Stanley Fish,2 New York Times ‘Opinionator’ blog:
Sarah Palin Is Coming to Town
TRANSLATION
“Fapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfap…omgwhere’sthekleenex???”
at least until a few million copies are remaindered
With which, along with a couple of supertankers of teabaggers’ saliva and some financing from the The Alaska Fund Trust, they’ll build a papier-mache ice castle up there on the tundra fit for a Moose Queen and her grifter spawn.
She looked at me as if I had requested a copy of “Mein Kampf” signed in blood by the author, and directed me to the nearest Barnes and Noble, where, presumably, readers of dubious taste and sensibility could find what they wanted.
MEMORANDUM
TO: Stanfish
FROM: Reality
According to reports issued by the publisher and confirmed by the bookstores themselves, NYC bookstores bought limited supplies of Sarah Palin’s “auto”biography because they try to limit the number of books they would have to remainder.
In some instances, bookstores bought a half dozen copies, which is still barely fewer than Glenn Beck sold tickets to his egregious infotainment.
It is likely that the Strand sold out and the bright young thing was being helpful to a customer. You know, providing customer service despite the fact that you are clearly a pedophilic old troll who tried to peek down her turtleneck?
Resentment Conservatism marches on. Sarah Palin is Very Important because New Yorkers Don’t Like Her. The End. That’s enough to qualify her for the Presidency.
“That’s a moray,” offered my partner. “Abalone!” I explained.
Gavin, why the hake are you starting us on fish puns again? You may take this as a shark retort, if you pike, I don’t care. And when you sneezed in the Cracker’s Barrel, did you remember to cnidaria? You know, to make sure you coated the entire thing?
it is overwhelmingly a USED bookstore
Yes, they specialize in hard-to-find, obscure books.
This is why they likely would have had the few remaining copies of Going Rogue to be found in NYC.
But they do buy some new books.
Stanley leaves a similar taste in my mouth.
Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, N__B? Is there something you need to tell the group?
Poor conservatives and the elite anti-elitists who would love them; they love to hate New York and everything about it, yet they have to pretend to give a shit about the New Yorkers killed on 9/11/2001 so that they can praise the most glorious war on terrur evar.
How do you peek down a turtleneck without getting your nose nipped by a leathery beak?
N__B? Is there something you need to tell the group?
Yes. I often omit words – e.g. “writing” – when posting on limited sleep.
In other news, Star Trek robot puppet villain NPR common tater Balock has reportedly not been ordered to report to an ACORN FEMA death panel for appearing so often as the FOXNOOZ NPR “liberal” there to insult liberals and democrats, so says NPR’s Ombudsman.
(An “Ombudsman” is a person employed by a media agency whose job is to assure readers and listeners that nobody doing anything favored by the right wing has ever done anything, anything wrong, and that anyone doing anything the right wing doesn’t ought to be investigated or transferred.)
How do you peek down a turtleneck without getting your nose nipped by a leathery beak?
Buy it a drink, first.
Misinformation on the inner-tubes? No kidding.
Wheels within wheels. The state-run liberal media is keeping Palin in the news so we pink-cocktail elitists can titter knowingly at her electoral walloping in 2012 and the subsequent demoralizing of real Americans.
As the old saying goes, “A Fish Rots From the Head Down.”
origin1674 publication, “An Account of the Voyage to New England.”
http://www.bookofjoe.com/2009/03/a-fish-rots-from-the-head-down-fact-or-fiction.html
also,
“My son’s armpits smell strongly of fish”
http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/ate/childrenshealth/200572.html
“Fishing in the other river? Is that a real idiom for a Mr. Homosexual Man?
It’s times like this when adolescents realize that if God exists, he’s really a fucking prick.
I’ll sue! So help me, I’ll sue!
1 A.k.a. ‘Troll Bridge to Nowhere,’ a.k.a. ‘Stanley Steamer.’
Y’know, I really hate when a clever idea pops into my head with regards to a joke on topic, and I scan the page for a hook to hang it from, when suddenly I’m brought up short by the fact that the gag was nothing more than a subliminal suggestion planted by a footnote from a more highly evolved sense of humour.
TRANSLATION:
Get the FUCK out of my head, Gavin!!!!!!!
Is that a real idiom for a Mr. Homosexual Man?
BUDWEISER PRESENTS: Real Men Of Genius
Here’s to you, Mr. Closeted Homosexual!
I love the fact that Stanley claims the book is built around one moment:
And of course right out of the gate that’s a lie – sorry, sister, Geraldine Ferraro got there before you.
Read it fucking twice just for fun. Brilliant.
Now what were the issues?
It was that good.
I was taught this shitbag’s “criticism” when I was at university.
To this day I have no idea why.
To me, Stanley Fish is the Tiger Woods of intellectualism minus the spatial accuracy.
Having done nothing of any consequence each has been anointed messiah of their respective disciplines
Stan Fish: Jesus Of Literature. Tiger Woods: Jesus Of Sport.
Bullshit called on both counts.
Here’s what Stanley Fish does: he hits tiny balls of intellect with a tiny stick of intellect into tiny holes of intellect. Poorly.
Not much utility in that.
Here’s what Tiger Woods does: he hits tiny balls of an advanced polymer with a tiny stick of some incredibly physically advanced metal-carbon hybrid into a tiny hole in the ground. Accurately.
Despite the scientific adjectives, there’s not much utility in that either.
They are both consumers of the work of other much less fortunate, much less discerning persons.
And they both suck giant moosecock.
Stick your head into a genuine literary debate where you haven’t been selected the arbiter by fiat and expect to have it ripped off.
Stick your head into a contested ruck moving at pace against your side and expect the same thing.
Stan Fish and Tiger Woods do the same thing: feed off the douchebaggery of idiots.
Pac-Man The Douche had more dignity than these assholes.
Okay, why does this immediately make me picture Mr. Magoo talking to a potted plant?
just as it is necessary that there be a Suffern, New York delicatessen called Suffern Katz’s whose catalog boasts of ‘our famous succotash.’
Sorry, Gavin….it’s been done
By the way, Suffern Succotash existed long before Sylvester The Cat
Stanley Fish should try walking into a bookstore in Wasilla and asking if they have any of his books.
Very, very memorable wingnut post…
Shorter Ace:
For fuck sake, if you’re going to be racist or homophobic, at least be civil.
Books? What’re those?
Edmund was right: You do smell of Fish.
PHOOEY!!!!
Sarah Palin is Very Important because New Yorkers Don’t Like Her. The End. That’s enough to qualify her for the Presidency.
Wingnut love for New York didn’t exist before September 11, 2001 and died soon thereafter.
“Wingnut love for New York didn’t exist before September 11, 2001 and died soon thereafter.”
It’s not unlike their professed “love” for children: They only care about them before they’re born and after they die. It’s just the years in between that don’t matter.
As for Fish: Does this dribbling hack (I’d never heard of him before) really write for the New York Times? Holy shit. Even in today’s media, that’s just sad.
Does this dribbling hack (I’d never heard of him before) really write for the New York Times?
Not the print edition. He’s just a blogger in The Opinionator section.
If u r a ritewingr an u loose PAGLIA, u r doin it rong.
From the article:
I can’t be bargained with. I can’t be reasoned with. I don’t feel pity or remorse or fear. And I absolutely will not stop, ever, until those gosh-darn liberal elites are dead.
OT random thought:
3K+ died on 9/11/01
Since then we’ve spent $1.5 Trillion avenging their deathsfighting the War on Terra.
That’s about $500Million per. Couldn’t we have sent a card?
FYWP with a very inexpensive wire brush.
The message is clear. America can’t be stopped. I can’t be stopped. I’ve stumbled and fallen, but I always get up and run again.
I can’t be bargained with. I can’t be reasoned with. I don’t feel pity or remorse or fear. And I absolutely will not stop, ever, until those gosh-darn liberal elites are dead.
I can be bribed, however.
As for Fish: Does this dribbling hack (I’d never heard of him before) really write for the New York Times?
Yes, and he also teaches young, impressionable minds.
That was a great post, Gavin. I’m not exactly sure what it was about, but it was great, nevertheless.
That’s a hilarious quote, Actor. I guess poor, stupid old Fish doesn’t have the street cred of Camille Paglia, eh?
Oh, man. Paglia attacking other people over hypocrisy is a little like Jabba the Hut wearing a t-shirt that says, “No fat chicks!” And criticizing someone for daring to lecture the proles from an elite position like being a university professor? Looked in the mirror recently, Camille?
Not that she isn’t right about her fellow opportunist, Mr. Fish, from the looks of it…but then, a stopped clock is right twice a day, no?
a stopped clock is right twice a day, no?
I’ve always preferred “Even a blind squirrel can find a nut” because I picture Paglia digging in the dirt.
Excuse me John D., Camille shops at Walmart, she intimately knows the common man.
Camille shops at Walmart, she intimately knows the common man.
Like these folks.
The reason Strand doesn’t have the book on the shelves is because it is out of stock, i.e., sold out. It is still available in Large Print or audio books — I’d suggest either for Mr. Fish, whose eyes and ears apparently don’t work well. Hey, they match his brain!
But Mr. Fish’s imagined nasty look from the Strand employee — who did help him, by the way — sure makes for a snappy opening paragraph. Perhaps this explains his interesting theory that there are no lies in an autiobiography.
Camille would enthusiastically praise Mr Fish if he only had nicer tits. The ball is in your court Stanley.
Mr Limpet should have included a little vignette about the taxi ride over to The Strand–and what the incredibly gruff but wise, just a regular guy dontcha know, cabbie said to him about race relations and the coming socialist nightmare. Etc. Etc.
I think Fish was cadging for a review copy because he’s too cheap to spring for one at retail price, Palin love be damned.
In any case, walking into the Strand and asking for Palin’s book is like walking into Tavern on the Green and ordering a grilled-cheese sandwich.
“exuding cheap 1970s tenure”
That may be the cleverest phrase I’ve heard all year. Ah for the days when any blithering moron with a PhD would find a cozy sinecure despite publishing hardly anything at all, and publishing nothing but dreck. And yes, the faculty tenured in those paradisical times do radiate a certain je ne sais quoi.
(Though to be fair, Stan “le” Poisson did do some worthwhile work back in the precambrian era. Or so my Milton scholar friends tell me.)
Had to read some of Fish’s stuff as an undergrad. He’s a total jaggoff.
His tough-guy acadamian schtick is at various turns laughable and pathetic.
“Camille shops at Walmart, she intimately knows the common man.”
I stand corrected!
Ah for the days when any blithering moron with a PhD would find a cozy sinecure despite publishing hardly anything at all…
We wish. He’s been a pretty prolific post-modernist critic. Cause you know, that’s what the world needs: more deconstructionists.
I hate to have to say it, but it still amazes me that people talk about Camille Paglia as though she’s not dumb as piss.
I’m thinking that Paglia, Fish, and Palin could probably star in the most fucked-up production of No Exit ever. A suitable venue for this masterpiece would be a cargo container, locked and welded shut, then rolled down a hill into the sea. Tickets very limited, NRO staffers admitted for free.
exuding cheap 1970s tenure
Yes, oh yes! Out of an entire brilliant post, that little dig was my favourite.
pöplikid @ 16:34
Stan Fish: Jesus Of Literature. Tiger Woods: Jesus Of Sport.
Jesus: Tim Tebow of Religion.
http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Sugar_shotgun
I’m thinking that Paglia, Fish, and Palin could probably star in the most fucked-up production of No Exit ever.
FTW
Coming soon to a Real American Bookstore near you, Going Rogue II: Rogue Dawn Of A Million Little Starbursts, in which Sarah “Please Compare Me To Reagan And Not Goldwater” Palin breathlessly recounts how after she saved a box of kittens from being stolen by Vladimir Putin and then sold them on Ebay, the ghost of Saint Ronald The Reagan appeared to her in a vision and declared that she was his one and true and only heir, and then declared “Huckabee and Romney are a couple of homos”.
It’s not unlike their professed “love” for children: They only care about them before they’re born and after they die. It’s just the years in between that don’t matter.
Kind of like standard-issue American Evangelical Christianity. They love them some baby Jesus at Christmas, when he’s an adorable little baby, and Easter, when he’s a pitiful victim, writhing on the cross. The part in the middle, when he’s actually, y’know, saying stuff, not so much. Some of the stuff he was saying, about narrow-minded, ritual-obsessed, judgemental pharisees and greedy money changers, tends to muddy the pure waters of their idol worship.
autobiographers cannot lie because anything they say will truthfully serve their project, which, again, is not to portray the facts, but to portray themselves.
I missed this.
On the one hand, he has a point: no matter what an autobiography says, factual or not, it only serves the purpose of illuminating the author(ess).
Whether that illumination paints the photograph of a bald-faced liar or heroine is up to history’s assessment of events.
But soft: since when did Stanley Fish become subjectivist????
Loved the Joyce. An exception to the rule that brevity is the sole of wit.
Lawndart @ 18:20:
Feel the thrill up your leg as Palin crushes illegal immigration in: Going Rogue III: Going Rogue-o down in Acapulco.
Some of the stuff he was saying, about narrow-minded, ritual-obsessed, judgemental pharisees and greedy money changers, tends to muddy the pure waters of their idol worship.
Well, see, He was talking about…..them…you know, the Jews? Doesn’t apply to the Kool Kristian Kamp.
Some of the stuff he was saying, about narrow-minded, ritual-obsessed, judgemental pharisees and greedy money changers, tends to muddy the pure waters of their idol worship.
That’s why they’re fixing all that troublesome liberal bias in the bible.
Which could explain his fondness for Palin’s book. They both cast the obviously evil* character in a sympathetic light.
* Yes, I know the word “evil” gets thrown around too much these days. But come on. Don’t tell me you can’t see Palin suggesting crazy Cobra Commander type plots as president. “Those dang old liberals seem to think ‘greenhouse gases’ cause ‘global warming.’ And I say, you know why we’re so warm? The sun, you silly billy! So what I’m gonna do is, I’m gonna put their kooky left-wing fringe ideas to a test. I’m gonna block out that there sun up there, and we’ll see how warm it really gets.”
Such win! Brilliant!
Hoo boy – terrific stuff, Gavin! I’ve missed this.
La Palin is in my town today – Salt Lake City, and unfortunately at the Costco where I usually shop. I have to give at least a week for the stench to subside, I’d think, depending on how long herself stays there before sneaking out and outraging the people who I saw on the news waiting outside the venue in line in the 3 degree windy weather. Knuckleheads.
Big plus from her POV, though – there are very few non-white people here to scare her, and probably about zero at that Costco today.
Hello. I would like to buy a fish license, please.
A license for my pet fish, Stanley.
When the going gets tough and the stomach acids flow
The cold wind of conformity is nipping at your nose
Some trendy new atrocity has brought you to your knees
Come with us we’ll sail the seas of Cheese
Also.
[A physicist punks cultural studies]
“For some years I’ve been troubled by an apparent decline in the standards of intellectual rigor in certain precincts of the American academic humanities. But I’m a mere physicist: if I find myself unable to make head or tail of jouissance and différance, perhaps that just reflects my own inadequacy.”
“So, to test the prevailing intellectual standards, I decided to try a modest (though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment: Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies — whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross — publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions?”
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/lingua_franca_v4/lingua_franca_v4.html
[Stanley Fish responds in a NYT Op Ed.]
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/fish.html
“Alan Sokal put forward his own undertakings as reliable, and he took care, as he boasts, to surround his deception with all the marks of authenticity, including dozens of “real” footnotes and an introductory section that enlists a roster of the century’s greatest scientists in support of a line of argument he says he never believed in. He carefully packaged his deception so as not to be detected except by someone who began with a deep and corrosive attitude of suspicion that may now be in full flower in the offices of learned journals because of what he has done.
In a 1989 report published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, fraud is said to go “beyond error to erode the foundation of trust on which science is built.” That is Professor Sokal’s legacy, one likely to be longer lasting than the brief fame he now enjoys for having successfully pretended to be himself.”
I know I don’t know nothin’ ’bout nothin’, but I thought the ultimate point of Sokal’s hoax was that peer reviewers should actually be capable of understanding the articles they read.
N_B, one would think but apparently it was a cheap shot, kinda like Katie Couric’s gotcha question about what Sarah Palin reads.
N__B – I agree with you re: the point of Sokal’s hoax, but I think it was also meant to show that entire disciplines have gotten to the point where no one can understand the articles.
I agree with you re: the point of Sokal’s hoax, but I think it was also meant to show that entire disciplines have gotten to the point where no one can understand the articles.
Yeah. But Sokal’s hoax article was explicitly about physics – he was pretending to have had a breakthrough in physics along the lines of social construction of technology. Read literally, his article claimed that gravity was a social construct that only worked because everyone has been indoctrinated to believe it. If the journal’s editors had the common sense to send the article to a physicist for review, they would have been told it was gibberish. The fact that they were fooled by the trappings of their own field doesn’t excuse their apparent belief that there’s no difference in reviewing hard sciences and social sciences.
Except, of course, for Fish who obviously caught the hoax.
….after Sokal fessed up.
Xecky –
I just wrote a long response that FYWP! may show up later. Basically, the editors should have sent an article that claimed to be about physics to at least one physicist for review. That they did not is the cause of their pubic shaming.
See, right there is where you know that people like Fish only venture into bookstores in search of their daily martyrdom. I don’t know about you, but I have never once in my life walked into a bookstore and headed straight for the first employee I saw. That takes all the fun out of being in a bookstore. But perhaps Fish doesn’t take any pleasure in books anyway.
No, that’s not what she was thinking. As a former bookstore employee, I can attest that yours was probably the 700th stupid question she’d heard that day.
I know I don’t know nothin’ ’bout nothin’, but I thought the ultimate point of Sokal’s hoax was that peer reviewers should actually be capable of understanding the articles they read.
Welllll, yes and no. I think he is trying to make that point, but I also think he’s sticking his finger in the eye of pomo academics because he thinks post-modernism is bullshit. I also think Fish is actually right in his assertion that Sokal doesn’t understand post-modernism in the first place, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was somehow able to get through the peer review process while spouting bullshit.
Stupid libs and your so-called “global warming”….there’s an ICEBERG going to crash into Australia and probably sink it like the Titanic!
All this apart from the fact that a signed copy of Mein Kampf would be fairly valuable, and something any respectable second hand book dealer should be happy go get his hands on.
I don’t know about you, but I have never once in my life walked into a bookstore and headed straight for the first employee I saw.
If I have to go reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally bad, I do.
“In any case, walking into the Strand and asking for Palin’s book is like walking into Tavern on the Green and ordering a grilled-cheese sandwich.”
Bitter Scribe for the win here IMHO.
As several have noted, he picked the wrong place to buy the book (i.e., unless Taschen has a reprint of Palin’s book in picture form, he’s probably out of luck).
If he wanted a quick buy with cold indifference, he could have headed to the Barnes and Noble at Union Square. If derision from the staff was a key requirement, he could have tried St. Mark’s Bookshop (although they too likely wouldn’t have cared). Either choice would have allowed him the added benefit of being able to complain about the great unwashed/NYU students that he had to walk by.
T&U: Except that Social Text had no peer review process at the time of Sokal’s “experiment,” which made it an even easier target. Perhaps too easy. If you want an example of bullshit passing peer review, you’d be better served by the case of the Super Bogdanov Bros.
When I walked into the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan last week, I headed straight for the bright young thing who wore an “Ask Me” button, and asked her to point me to the section of the store where I might find Sarah Palin’s memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.
See, if it had been me? I would have explained that as primarily a seller of used books, the Strand mostly carries books that people have already had plenty of time to get sick of and sell off a couple of cents apiece, and that Sarah’s book has been out for less than a month. So … try back at the end of the week.
“Stupid libs and your so-called “global warming”….there’s an ICEBERG going to crash into Australia and probably sink it like the Titanic!”
Actor212 of little faith! the Ozzies will probably make it into a ski resort and make great money taking tourists out there to snowboard. That, or cut the thing up and replenish the outback. Or how about “Iceberg water direct from Oz.”
I don’t think that’s quite the case either: I think Sokal’s anti-nonsense, and if a post-modernist can produce sense, as he allows, and as they do, then he’s cool with that.
This graph will explain everything you need to know.
http://www.jir.com/graph_contest/index.html#OneGraph
T&U: Except that Social Text had no peer review process at the time of Sokal’s “experiment,” which made it an even easier target.
Ah ha. Then who gives a shit? It sounds like another hard science asshole with an axe to grind.
I had heard of the Bogdanov affair, and I think it not only highlights problems in the peer-review process, but also with academia as a whole, especially when it comes to requirements for publication. But I get boring librarian soap-boxy when I talk about that stuff, so I’ll stop.
Well, he was and is a hard science guy, but still, SocialText was a big deal, shouldn’t have been publishing bullshit, and the editors responded really really badly, and people piled on one side or another in large media outlets.
Sokal’s worry was that the academic left tolerated bullshit, and SocialText’s editors came out as champions of bullshit.
This passage didn’t set off bullshit alarms?
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html#357
“But all this is only a first step: the fundamental goal of any emancipatory movement must be to demystify and democratize the production of scientific knowledge, to break down the artificial barriers that separate “scientists” from “the public”. Realistically, this task must start with the younger generation, through a profound reform of the educational system.94 The teaching of science and mathematics must be purged of its authoritarian and elitist characteristics95, and the content of these subjects enriched by incorporating the insights of the feminist96, queer97, multiculturalist98 and ecological99 critiques.”
Sokal’s worry was that the academic left tolerated bullshit, and SocialText’s editors came out as champions of bullshit.
Yeah, that’s definitely legitimate. The irony is that the right has co-opted and distorted post-modernism for its own purposes, so I guess they should have listened to Sokal.
Stanley Fish is a professor of law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and Duke University.
Sounds like he has trouble holding down a job.
Boy have I missed your old-timey ruminations, Gav. Great stuff.
“The irony is that the right has co-opted and distorted post-modernism for its own purposes, so I guess they should have listened to Sokal.”
Why? Bullshit has found a comfortable home on the right.
…and you guys are all too smart for me. WTH are you going on aboot?
This passage didn’t set off bullshit alarms?
Well, if you really, truly believe that objectivity is an illusion, then applying a multicultural perspective to physics might make sense.
Might also point out a few holes in the application of your theory, but hey…
where it might be that I should find a candy shotgun to blast rock candy through the roof of my mouth and all up into my head, where it would blow pink candy brains as well as candy hair tufts through my top hat like a candy death toot-toot whistle
Stolen from Bester’s The Demolished Man without attribution. I demand a Bloggers Ethics session.
Actor212 of little faith!
ICEBERGS SINK SHIPS! THIS IS CENTRAL TO MY POINT! ALSO GLOBAL WARMING HASN’T MELTED IT BEFORE IT REACHED OZZTRAYLYA!
The headline of this post was delightful. I will chuckle everytime I hear an xmas carol now.
“She looked at me as if I had requested a copy of “Mein Kampf”
No, that’s not what she was thinking. As a former bookstore employee, I can attest that yours was probably the 700th stupid question she’d heard that day.”
Or rather, she was thinking: “I know you! You’re that insufferable gasbag Stanley Fish”.
Without Wikipedia, I would never have known that Ödön von Horváth’s* second novel was translated into English as “The Age of the Fish”.
* Killed by a falling tree branch, June 1 1938.
Nono, it was not stolen! Wasn’t it an ice or gelatin bullet in the Bester story?
[just running through, btw — back in a bit, once things settle down here this eve…]
A gelatine capsule used as a bullet (so as to leave no trace apart from what appears to be candy) which is near enough for me.
I demand to see the hacked e-mails.
Who could possibly have predicted that in Paglia-world, having a better academic position than hers would be enough to make one a ‘totalitarian’?
So. Much. Win.
Put all these things together in a single Bhagavad-Gavin & you might just give Myles na Gopaleen a run for his money.
Now I’m going to spoil it all by clicking on the link …
Oh fuck.
Autobiographers can’t lie? WTF?
Perhaps neurologists need to study whether Ph.D.’s lead to irreversible brain-damage.
The questions to ask then are (1) Does Palin succeed in conveying to her readers the kind of person she is? and (2) Does she do it in a satisfying and artful way? In short, is the book a good autobiographical read? I would answer “yes” to both.
Yes, & you would be full of shit on both counts: Palin’s fetish for blatant lies, her craven pursuit of maximum payola for minimum output & her downright pathological ruthlessness toward anyone not willing to join Team Sarah are characteristics of her personality proven beyond doubt at this point – & I’ll wager none of them takes up major space in her fairytale “autobiography” … & the few excerpts I’ve read were utter drivel, adjective-poisoned prose so purple it’d make a Harlequin Romance look like Proust.
Do I believe any of this? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she does, and that her readers feel they are hearing an authentic voice.
I truly BELIEVE that the (very authentic-sounding) voices in my head told me the TimeCube guy is a wise prophet who humanity must follow if we’re to survive the coming apocolypse, so that should be good enough for you!
In the end, perseverance, the ability to absorb defeat without falling into defeatism, is the key to Palin’s character.
Nothing says “perseverance” quite like quitting your job to cash in on your accidental fame (& to dodge impending prosecution for your numerous, er, “peccadillos” while in office).
If his lectures are this “deconstructionist” I hope he at least provides his students with an accompanying laugh-track – surely the poor buggers deserve SOME sort of consolation prize.
Bhagavad-Gavin
I am not worthy!
At the sight of this, your Shape stupendous,
Full of mouths and eyes, feet, thighs and bellies,
Terrible with fangs, O master,
All the worlds are fear-struck, even just as I am.
When I see you, GaVishnu, omnipresent,
Shouldering the sky, in hues of rainbow,
With your mouths agape and flame-eyes staring-
All my peace is gone; my heart is troubled.
GaVishnu?
God bless you.
God, I miss L’Espinasse. They had a short rib entree you could die happy eating… and they were also excellent fish cooks. Quenelles de Stanley would probably taste horrible, though.
I’ve seen guys on message boards argue at great length that in Star Wars the Empire were the good guys and the rebels were a horrible bunch of dicks disrupting galactic peace.
And now here’s Fish making the exact same argument in the New York Times.
Do you think he ever feels bad, that he chooses his positions because they are indefensible and thus will anger anybody with a semblance of rationality? Or does he sleep soundly at night, knowing he made the world just a tiny bit worse then it was before?
Also, I am so fucking tired of people pretending Sarah Palin isn’t a complete clown.
Fuck yeah, Gavin’s back.
Shorter Stanley Fish:
blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah.
Long-time listener, first-time caller . . .
:only blog I read for the writing first.
Yeah, way late–Mr. Bogdanov affair, you shouldn’t have linked to the Wiki article because it provides everything we need to know: “In 2001 and 2002 the brothers published five papers in peer-reviewed physics journals, including Annals of Physics and Classical and Quantum Gravity.[13][14] The controversy over the Bogdanovs’ work began on October 22, 2002, with an email sent by University of Tours physicist Max Niedermaier to University of Pittsburgh physicist Ted Newman.[15] Niedermayer suggested that the Bogdanovs’ Ph.D theses and papers were “spoof[s],” created by throwing together string theory and theoretical physics jargon: “The abstracts are delightfully meaningless combinations of buzzwords … which apparently have been taken seriously.””
So a physicist spotted the article as nonsense or deliberate spoof… Once again, physicists caught one of their own, on their own. (There was a research phys at Princeton who was caught faking data about ten years back as well. He was caught when other labs failed to replicate the results.)
Nobody in the pomo world OPENLY challenged the Sokal paper until AFTER he revealed the hoax. Of course, afterwards they said they had private concerns. This is nonsense… Physics Today, for example, prints journalistic articles on topics only tangential to physics, and readers are not shy about pointing out any perceived errors promptly. There was a raging controversy, for example, over the historical questions of Heisenberg’s affiliation with the Nazis and whether his claim that he purposely made mistakes in his nuclear fission calculations to slow down their war effort wasn’t just a self-serving lie, as well as whether or not Einstein’s first wife proofread his first, seminal papers (Einstein was infamously bad at arithmetic). But more to the point, someone had written this article that included some ridiculous claim (which I have seen elsewhere) that menstrual pain is a culturally-induced phenomenon, and quoted a historical fiction novel written by a man as evidence for this claim. The firestorm was immediate. Physicists are very much interested in the support for claims and their practical significance, and they don’t accept the claims of other disciplines uncritically. The idea that the editors of Social Text knew that the paper was wrong but just accepted it to make hard science people feel good is absurd. Had they any inklings of the issues but still wanted to put a hand out they could have coupled it with a critical paper in a sort of point/counterpoint, as is often done in the academic humanities. Instead they published without comment and then scrambled to excuse themselves when their masks were exposed.
PS: Pomo profs tend to trot this paper out early on to aggressively defend themselves and their discipline. In doing so, they ignore the larger problem with pomo in the US and the political/social movement it was part of, which was a descent into and apology for arrant nonsense under the banner of cultural relativism and an individualistic approach towards truth. The explosion of “alternative” medicine (quackery) among the highly educated today is partially derived from this movement. (The higher the educational attainment, the more likely the use of nonsense or even harmful quack therapies.) What they did was throw out everything that was known about ways of knowing and replaced them with a Cartesian pull-it-out-of-your-ass attitude. In the field of humanities itself, tortured readings of texts was encouraged. (Now, sometimes, this can be a good thing… but I digress.) Truth and beauty were relegated to right-wing critics because they are relative. (Ironically, behavioral scientists were moving in the opposite direction, trying to discover a biological basis for perception of beauty, with mixed results.)
Pomo’s idiocy was to mask a political ideology (and an insane one at that, one with no regard for reality, practicality, or utility) as literary criticism, and then declare that everything was fair game. They would descend on science articles and perform race/class/sex analysis. In certain contexts this might have been useful (anthropology, for example?) but that would require understanding the subject matter (and criticism of anthropology with any weight has come from … wait for it … wait for it … within the field). The reason for Sokal’s foray is that pomo was attacking, with seemingly no sense of irony, the TRUTH claims of physics itself, on the basis on how the language struck them within a certain culturo-political context. (Ie, they thought the use of the word/concept Nature was sexist). The result was to undermine physics within the public sphere. Of course, physical models of the universe get down to the nuts and bolts of the workings of the world we live in. Not only that, but they’re very very accurate. The implications for public policy and our social world of abandoning reality and embracing a self-pleasing fantasy are profound and frightening. A small example is the resurgence of measles in countries where MMR vaccination rates dropped. A terrible human toll is paid for such lunacy.
Sokal had a political aim. Sitting there and claiming that pomo is nothing more than an academic discipline when it had clear political aims (hell, I was there, I saw it with my own eyes) is disingenuous at best.
I realize the thread is probably dead by now, but I will still throw in my 2 cents re Sokal:
I think Sokal’s hoax rightly pointed out that the editors of Social Text and similar thinkers were pushing things too far. There has been an unfortunate side effect of the Sokal hoax in that a few folks have taken it much further than Sokal intended and have tried to use it as a way to discredit any study of science in its historical/social/cultural context.
Of course Morris Zapp, I mean Stanley Fish, is trolling.
Watt’s course for Ragusa’s a course for Uganda.