Damnit, RM, you owe me another irony meter!!! Would you quit breaking mine???
Something of a hijack, but can a female politician be labelled as “effete”?
If not, is this a political advantage over male politicians?
(Sorry to post so much in this thread. I’m going to shut my big fat mouth after this and hope for some good replies.)
So sorry 
As for Condi Rice… good point… but she doesn’t seem like an intellectual nor speak like one… and in politics appearances are everything.
Acsenray, you’re the OP…feel free to use the labels; thinkers and doers if you so desire.
Rashak, is it safe to assume you’re referring to Bush’s bumbling speech patterns in your ‘is it an act’ query? I’m not insinuating anything about Bush, but there are quite a few intelligent (dare I say, intellectual) people who have a difficult time getting their verbal points across (especially in public). (DanBlather’s Wm F. Buckley example to name just one).
That’s not my argument. I don’t see why the meaning of the word should be changed to suit Bush. If he is indeed “anti-fact”, then don’t warp “anti-intellectual” just to fit him in. Hell, he himself has already ruined enough words and skewed their meanings. Like “freedom”, for example.
When used in the context of intellectuals and academia, “effete” doesn’t usually mean effeminate. It means decadent or self-indulgent.
Actually his bad speaking is quite secondary to me… its his tendency to put things in black and white, his repeating of the same “mantras” and ideas, and his excessive religious convictions. He thinks… and afterwards speaks like a simpleton IMO. He does have a good feeling for politics and getting people to trust him…
This is such an odd statement. Rice spent most of her adult life in academia. She started “doing stuff in the real world” when she was tapped by the first Bush administration. She returned to the academy afterwards, and was a professor and academic bureaucrat for eight years before returning to politics. One of the biggest criticisms of her selection for Secretary of State is that she had no experience whatsoever managing an institution the size of the State Department, and that her experience, aside from an advisory capacity, was extremely academic.
Her intellectualism, which I respect immensely despite personal disagreement, has been slickly repackaged by the administration.
I would also add soft, weak-willed, and irresolute in this context.
Substitute Iraq for global warming, stem cells, the economy, Gitmo, Valerie Plame…well, you get the idea…
Okay. Then I’ll retract my agreement until I can figure out what you’re saying.
I wasn’t warping, I was asking.
This is the kind of reply I was hoping against. I’m not really that interested in George Bush per se. I was asking in a more general sense. IMO, George Bush as POTUS isn’t the disease, he is the symptom.
I understand that. That wasn’t the basis of my question.
Sorry we’re not communicating well. I’ll give it a little time and think on what you’re saying (don’t know about you, but it’s pretty hot where I am - maybe I’m missing something, either in my own writing, or your replies).
I am on the second page of this thread now, and I haven’t seen anyone supplying actual quotations from President Bush on education or “intellectuals”, however that’s defined. So here is one:
April 2005:
Now, I’d like Molly Ivins to find an actual quotation where Bush takes an “anti-intellectual” pose. Because she hasn’t. She seems to confuse being a man of the people with being an anti-intellectual, or confuses making fun of Ivy League elites as being anti-intellectual (I know enough college professors who make fun of the Ivy League too). She just does not give evidence of how Bush strikes an anti-intellecutal pose, much less supply any quote of Bush speaking against education and against being intelligent.
I’m also amused that another here suggests that having conservative political beliefs on various topics ipso facto makes you anti-intellectual. There’s a self-fulfilling definition.
I don’t think it’s possible to make the argument that anti-intellectualism can be construed as a (good, healthy) anti-elitist attitude and not a (bad, block-headed) “anti-fact” attitude. Because the moment you make reference to “those eggheads at Harvard,” treating intellectuals as a monolithic power bloc, you’re trading in gross stereotypes of what constitutes the elite. For example, the set of “intellectuals” and the set of people who tend to end up at Ivy League schools are definitely not the same. Poor George W. might have been laughed at for being a Texas hick by people who were elitists or snobs, but not necessarily intellectuals…the same sort would have laughed at Noam Chomsky for being a shabby Jew from the wrong side of the tracks in Boston, and wouldn’t automatically respect him for being an intellectual whiz kid. To take a sillier example, Queen Elizabeth’s probably the classiest person in the world…she’s the most elite of the elite, but I don’t think anyone would mistake her for being an intellectual. Point is, “elitist” often doesn’t mean “intellectual” and vice versa, and so being “anti-intellectual” can only mean “anti-elitist” if we’re conceiving of elites in a rather warped sense. All this talk about “East coast elites” (and the related creature, the “elite liberal media”) is basically a way of scoring cheap political points by posing as a man of the people (as if George W.’s upbringing was common, humble, and anything like the upbringing of most Americans…)
I recognize Walloon’s point that in order to accuse George W. in particular of anti-intellectualism, we need to supply the relevant quotes…I just wanted to make a general point of how “elites” and “intellectuals” are conflated in the public imagination…the concept of “Ivy League elites” is a pretty paltry one. Just out of curiosity, I want to ask Walloon where he gets the impression that George W. is more a “man of the people” than, say, John Kerry?
The last post on a page usually gets lost, so I’m giving Loopydude some props here since I missed him when I responded to Liberal (and for somewhat selfish reasons as well 
).
Walloon, are you serious? It would be two steps backward in this thread to prove to you that George Bush is anti-intellectual. What “quotes” from George Bush have you missed? And I don’t understand why “education” is part of your criteria. An “educated” person can be anti-intellectual. No question George Bush had the best education money could buy.
I don’t agree with that premise. I think it would be better to address the broader premise and not cherry-pick a partisan reply as proof of anything. But as always, YMMV.
As if a boss has ever thought, “Every decision that Bob has made has been really dumb…but he makes those dumb decisions so quickly! Give that man a promotion!” :smack:
Perhaps intellectuals do a lot of Hamlet-like ruminating because they’re left with the task of coming up with real solutions to solve the enormous (and enormously complex) problems that ensue when anti-intellectuals have all the power…
I don’t! In fact, I think Bush and Kerry are a lot more alike than either of their partisans would care to acknowledge. (I voted for Nader.) Rather, Molly Ivins, and posts #1, 3, 7, 17, 22, 32 said it.
Well, we’re waiting. Feel free to supply those missing quotations.
Who is “we”? :dubious:
Frankly, I suspect you’re playing with me, but on the off chance you’re not, I’ll throw out a few links to get you started.
Keep in mind when you read them - this isn’t the newly arrived immigrant who barely speaks English you hired to clean your office, or the college kid who comes in on weekends to make cold calls for your marketing scheme - this is the “Leader of the Free World”, the POTUS, the person who represents everyone in the US.
I’ll assume you are aware of his education and family background:
These are very vanilla, non-partisan sites (about.com). I believe I’m doing everyone here a favor by not posting the most egregious quotes - you’ll have to wade through them.
There’s more than this to make a case for anti-intellectualism, but you’d have to convince me you’re for real before I make a real effort (and I’m not the OP, so it’s not really my call).
Those are Bush misspeaking and making malopropisms. They are not quotations of Bush expressing disdain for education, intellect, or intellectuals.
Your metaphor doesn’t counter anything I’ve stated. I was referring to elected leaders, not employees. The fictional boss in your example would be best served by advising the intellectuals and specialists on his/her staff, consider their advice and then make a decision.