D'Souza Reaction

http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2010/09/dsouza-reaction

Two days after the post here on Dinesh D'Souza's Forbes article, Glenn Beck had Mr. D'Souza on the radio (transcript here), and Mr. D'Souza's book The Roots of Obama's Rage shot up the Amazon bestseller list. Now the left press is circling the wagons: The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz had an article yesterday critical of Mr. D'Souza's article and quoting the Columbia Journalism Review describing the piece as "a fact-twisting, error-laden piece of paranoia" and "the worst kind of smear journalism--a singularly disgusting work." Today, in the New York Times, David Brooks — the guy Congressman Paul Ryan praised the other day as "a columnist of intellectual rigor and much-deserved respect" — weighs in:

The Tea Party style is beginning to replicate itself in parts of the conservative world. Dinesh D'Souza's Forbes cover article, "How Obama Thinks," contained the sort of untethered assertions that have become the lingua franca of this movement. Obama got his subversive radicalism from his father's grave, D'Souza postulated: "He adopted his father's position that capitalism and freedom are code words for economic plunder." The fact that Newt Gingrich embraced this offensive theory is a sign of how severely the normal intellectual standards have been weakened.

Mr. Brooks calls the piece "untethered" and "offensive" but he doesn't actually explain why it is either. I think it's actually telling that the D'Souza speech seems to have touched such a nerve.

by Ira Stoll  |  Sep 17, 2010 at 9:22 am Related Topics:  David Brooks, Education, President Obama, Press receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free futureofcapitalism.com mailing list