Two ways of being an intellectual

I was watching that Ralph Nader clip with Kenyatta yesterday, and telling her, I don't understand why people find it hard to say, "You know what I fucked up." I don't get the obsession--especially keen among public figures--with digging the ditch even deeper. And then this morning I saw Glenn Loury on bloggingheads doing the right thing.





Let me first say that this is self-serving--I'm happy because I disagreed with Glenn's analysis of Obama. That said, I'm not so much pleased to see him say "I was wrong" as I'm pleased to see the internal grappling over that, the willingness to actually interrogate what that means. In other words, the desire to be sharper the next time out. I have great, great respect for that.

With that in mind, I don't know what to say about Shelby Steele. I think a lot of people will read this and get angry. But they shouldn't--they should be sad. Steele--according to George Will--is black America's foremost intellectual. Given that status, you'd think after publishing a book subtitled, "Why we are excited about Obama and why we can't win," you'd not rush out and publish a column cumbersomely subtitled, "Barack Obama seduced whites with a vision of their racial innocence precisely to coerce them into acting out of racial motivation."

I not even sure what Steele's point is. I didn't like his book, so maybe it's not meant for me. But there's a deeper issue. I don't know the use of thinking for a living, if you're not exploring. Writers who exist to simply reinforce what they already think they know, are dudes on the corner shooting the shit about the world, knowing damn well they've never left the block. They are travelers, but only in their own minds. They don't want to see the world--they think the world should come, should bend, toward them. This is not a game. I moderated a panel with Steele last summer in Aspen. A few nights earlier, he'd blame the failures of the Iraq War on white guilt. I bullshit you not. What do you say to that?