If you’re the type of guy or gal who enjoys running through a hog wallow barefoot, you’ll want to read Ben Smith’s column in the New York Observer. It’s about plans for the GOP convention:
The Republican official in charge of the convention, Bill Harris, denies that the parties are anything but a pleasant sideshow from the main event: the Presidential nomination.
“I know that there are a lot of pseudo-intellectuals who like to talk about that, and like to complain about the lobbyists and the fund-raisers,” he said in an interview at his office over the Garden. “I think that is very superficial.”
That part about pseudo-intellectuals took me back. I don’t think I’ve heard anybody use the word since the early 1950s, and Harris, a lobbyist and fundraiser, is only 56. But then he’s from Alabama. Things take a while to filter down.
As I recall, the term pseudo-intellectual was popular in the sixties and used by Nixon and Agnew and their supporters to describe opponents of their administration's policies. I was but a toddler in the early fifties but I remember this phrase with distain from the sixties and thought Agnew had dragged it with him into ignominy when he was forced to resign the vice-presidency for taking bribes when he was Governor of Maryland.
Posted by: bouny on February 18, 2004 02:46 PMI think the word "elites" has officially replaced "pseudo-intellectuals" in the official Republican handbook of invective.
Posted by: JGil on February 19, 2004 12:23 AMAll these parties are likely to provide employment for thousands of undocumented hotel and catering workers.
Posted by: on February 19, 2004 01:50 AM