My ignorance amazes even me. I finally learned the source of the "How could he have won? I don't know a single person who voted for him!" quote from a couple posts ago. It's not a joke - it was supposedly uttered by film critic Pauline Kael about Nixon's defeat of McGovern in 1972. I lament my poor fact-checking, but am delighted by the fact that it was actually uttered by a real clueless Manhattan lefty. I'd rather it have actually been about Reagan than a neo-liberal megalomaniac like Richard Nixon, but it's still funny. Of course there are slightly different versions of the quote floating around. One website has the emphasis reversed: "Take a lesson from Pauline Kael, Paul. In 1973, she said she couldn't believe McGovern lost. She said, 'Everybody I know voted for him.' (He lost 49 states.)"
Enlightenment courtesy of a great piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the phenomenon of 'liberal groupthink' on university campuses.
Respond
No comments:
Post a Comment