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This says more about the author than about Tyson. He takes Tyson hostage as an unwitting totem for the 'uneducated intellectual' in order to stridently indict t
by rebelos 6y ago
This says more about the author than about Tyson. He takes Tyson hostage as an unwitting totem for the 'uneducated intellectual' in order to stridently indict the scholar class that he clearly despises. The author also shoehorns Tyson's genuinely incoherent statements to fit his narrative. In short, the author had an agenda and a consequent myopia. Drivel.
- fredlindemann 6y ago> This says more about the author than about Tyson. He takes Tyson hostage as an unwitting totem for the 'uneducated intellectual' in order to stridently indict the scholar class that he clearly despises. The author also shoehorns Tyson's genuinely incoherent statements to fit his narrative. In short, the author had an agenda and a consequent myopia. Drivel. Your comment says more about you than you think. Try to pause and reflect on your own biases.
- rebelos 6y agoThe emotional valence of the word "biases" here suggests you're reading something in my comment that simply isn't there. This is not a substantive counterargument. The post was written as if a formal education is somehow a deliberate and calculated insult against the less privileged, thereby attempting to foment unnecessary divisiveness.
- krageon 6y agoI have read both of your posts and I do not follow what you are trying to say. Perhaps you could elaborate?
- pjc50 6y agoYes, it's unclear what the point the author is trying to make other than to have a dig at the audience.
- WalterGR 6y agoYeah, it’s pretty ridiculous. “...curator Paul Holdengräber, whose German accent strikes the American ear as both effortlessly intellectual and lightly amusing... ... it’s a shame to hear the audience laugh when Holdengräber asks, ‘Mike, how do you know all this shit?’ Whether Tyson is mapping his own experiences onto medieval history or hearing echoes of the Franks in his troubled life, the credentialed, status-conscious audience is uncomfortable with his sincere interest in a past they find trivial.” Or - and I’m just spitballing here - maybe the audience was laughing at the surprise of hearing an academic ask of someone’s chosen intellectual pursuit, “Mike, how do you know all this shit?”
- KingOfCoders 6y ago"lightly amusing" That's funny, as a German I find American accents also lightly amusing. Love the symmetry.
- istjohn 6y agoThat's a superficial, unconvincing take. Surely it is surprising to hear a "childhood criminal, devastating fighter, struggling alcoholic and recovering drug addict, convicted rapist, pop-culture eidolon" praise history by explaining that "the past is us in funny clothes." Maybe you disagree that it is interesting to learn that Tyson's mentor was a student of Nietzsche and Clausewitz and passed on his interest in the humanities to his apprentice, but it certainly is to me.
- rebelos 6y agoMy quarrel is entirely with the packaging and its author. Admittedly, I was already familiar with Tyson's double life as a reader. Many fans are aware of that detail.