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Tony_Balony
Joined: 12 Apr 2007
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 Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 1:57 pm Post subject: The Worst Op-Ed Ever Written? |
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The Worst Op-Ed Ever Written?
A professor makes you feel sorry for Starbucks.
College professor and NY Times columnist goes to Starbucks for the first time. Is amazed by shiney objects, ponders significance in universe.
http://www.slate.com/id/2172217
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It seems that professor Fish is a real man of the people who has been getting his coffee served to him amidst the regular folk for years, at the kind of place where you could order your coffee and cheese Danish, and "twenty seconds later, tops, they arrived, just as you were settling into the sports page."
You can tell he's a down-to-the-earth guy, not some pointy-headed intellectual, because he uses phrases like "twenty seconds later, tops" and reads "the sports page."
But our professor seems to think he has encountered a brand-new cultural phenomenon: coffee places that are disturbingly different from the lunch counters of yesteryear.
Well, I did a little Googling, and it turns out he's right! There are hosts of these coffee chain stores, including one with the improbable name Starbucks, infiltrating our cities. I don't understand why the Times' cutting-edge "Styles" section hasn't done something on this before. Wake up and smell the coffee, "Styles" section editors!
It turns out these new coffee places are incredibly difficult to navigate, even for a brilliant academic like professor Fish. |
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stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 8:25 pm Post subject: |
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Ah, Stanley Fish, the reader response theorist who coined the term "interpretive communities" to describe the pattern of reader engagement with the text and who poo-pooed David Horowitz's Student Bill of Rights even after he was invited and agreed to edit an early draft of legislation to improve intellectual diversity on college campuses.
Fish is aptly named--he is a curmudgeon of the highest order who writes exceptionally well, is often witty, and sometimes brilliant. He can also be a pompous ass, according to a friend of mine who was once his colleague at Univ. of Illinois-Chicago Circle. He does often employ street vernacular but it's partly a front. While he's not PC windbag in the least, he's a habitual contrarian.
Leave it to the campus crowd to get their undies in a bundle over anything that has to do with Starbucks. 
Interesting piece and coincidentally I'll be posting another from him later on. |
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