Michael Perelman asks: > Granted that many people do move to the right in their careers, why does the > quality > of their work also decline in the process? And of course, the decline in > quality is > associated with a rise in popularity?
maybe the decline in quality arises from the dilution of a relatively coherent analysis (even crude Marxism) with all sorts of idealist and liberal notions, undermining coherence. I think of the contrast between the text Hacker's TRIUMPH OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM (vaguely Marxist) and the preface (idealist and leaning toward capitalist triumphalism, in light of the Truman-McCarthyite Fear). Of course, it's hard to talk abstractly about such things. There's also the very-iffy meaning of the word "quality." To be a bit more concrete, you might say that David Horowitz went from producing medium-quality Marxian analysis to higher-quality biographies of the Rockefellers, etc. Or that the quality of his sectarian self-promotion didn't change, but that only its political orientation. I don't know about popularity, but leftists and minority ethnic group members who go hard-right usually get much more money than they did before, because of the big money coming from cranky oil millionaires and publishers. (If the former chair of my department, once a Freedom Rider in Mississippi, were to go right-wing, he'd be rich.) BTW, the L.A. TIMES not only fired left-liberal columnist Bob Scheer but hard-right editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez. I'd stopped reading Scheer (out of boredom) but for me it's hard to not read editorial cartoons. So maybe it's a net improvement. -- Jim Devine "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
