"Nuance" Is Now a Naughty Word

Saying I'm going to blog about something is the surest way for me not to blog about it. But I'm breaking with precedent here. Walking back from Starbucks with Greg and Eric today, our earlier conversation about the mean-spiritedness with which even the "liberal" media was reporting on Jacques Derrida's death merged with our daily assessment of the pre-Election Day political landscape.

With the help of my interlocutors, I came up with the perfect nickname for W's opponent: Jack Kerrida. After all, both the Senator from Massachusetts and the philosopher from the Seine have been derided again and again for not staying "on point," for being distracted by details, not to mention for being excessively "French". It says a lot about the latest incarnation of American anti-intellectualism that it can make these men with almost nothing in common seem like they were cut from the same abstruse cloth. Here's to refusing to make hard things seem simple.

In Case You Were Wondering. . .

Sometimes the record is also the blueprint:

Nothing like a little photo journalism to brighten one's day.

That's the granite of Sather Gate, incidentally. I can see John Searle striding confidently under the coppered arch, back when it was still possible to be partisan for "free speech" without betraying one's party.