Monday May 15, 2006

GOING TO CULTURE WAR UNARMED. "I think that [John Kenneth] Galbraith, like Oliver Wendell Holmes, has benefitted excessively from having an excellent prose style." -- The Ole Perfesser.

Conservative contempt for aesthetics has officially found a new top to go over.

Maybe the Perfesser is trying to say that Galbraith's style is obfuscatory. This is unlikely, as the Perfesser clearly finds impenetrability a virtue -- he has been a tireless promoter of the windbag Steven Den Beste, whose ramblings make Tristram Shandy look like an instruction manual. Conversely, Galbraith was a genuinely skilled writer, pellucid in style and memorable in content -- two traits which surprisingly often go hand in hand.

More likely the Perfesser, like all his tribe, notices that many of his adversaries are talented and articulate, and this leads him to the conclusion that talent and articulateness are negative qualities. Well, that would explain a lot of the ass-paste that passes for sparkling prose in wingerland -- maybe it's deliberate!