J.M. Bernstein proves that you can be "University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research and the author of five books," a contributor to the New York Times, and nevertheless totally clueless. The guy writes a 2,000 word piece on the Tea Party movement for the New York Times without any indication that he ever attended a Tea Party or even interviewed someone who did. He concludes, "There is indeed something not just disturbing, but frightening, in the anger of the Tea Party." Maybe it was too frightening to go to one?
Professor Bernstein's research on the Tea Party movement seems to have consisted of reading an essay on the Tea Party movement in the New York Review of Books by another professor who teaches at Columbia and who also gives no indication of having been to a Tea Party.
As of this morning Professor Bernstein's piece was high on the most e-mailed article list on the Times Web site.