Leaving the Left behind

[pegkerr]

From Arts and Letters Daily:

A continuously renewing society needs to foster innovative, versatile, and self-renewing men and women. For Keith Thompson that means leaving the Left behind...more...

Well? What do you think of his critique?

Comments

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I think it's facile. He takes a lot of easy and obvious shots in a very sarcastic tone of voice. The impact would have been much greater, I think, had he sounded more disappointed instead of disdainful, confused rather than condescending.

Also, he clearly doesn't understand what the people he criticizes are actually talking about. For example, Bill Cosby is right--but so is Jesse Jackson. It's all well and good to expect people to talk correctly, and they should, but to focus your energy on language when there are no jobs is the definition of short-sighted.

It's apparent to me that as soon as the movement went beyond easy legalities with clear good guys and bad guys to looking at the core of the problems that come with capitalism (and always how to fix them within the system of capitalism) he lost his beloved black and white. Something tells me that he would not have thought as much of Dr. King's later speeches about Vietnam and economic conditions as he did the "I have a dream" speech.

Let's face it, the movement got him off the hook for a long time. He was a "good" white person who didn't want to discriminate against anyone. But he also wants anyone who is successful to pretty much look just like him, have his background, his cultural understanding. What's really sad is that people who agree with his cheap shots--and some of them are dead on, no doubt about it--will think that they need to follow in his wake or risk being fools.

But he's the fool.