Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

WASHINGTON POST DISGRACES ITSELF
Powerline ^ | 01/18/2017 | Stephen Hayward

Posted on 01/19/2017 6:32:28 AM PST by safetysign

Normally I’m able to keep my equanimity in the face of the relentless stupidity of the media and even academia, but once in a while something sets me to full boil. Such as this headline and story in the Washington Post, which is beyond a disgrace even for the worst of the comPosters:

David Gelernter, fiercely anti-intellectual computer scientist, is being eyed for Trump’s science adviser

By Sarah Kaplan

Now let’s pause and note that reporters are not responsible for headlines, so for the moment we should only say that the Post headline writer should be fired first thing tomorrow morning. After all, do you really want to employ a headline writer so clueless that he/she would write that a person who lost an eye to a terrorist bombing is being “eyed” for a White House job?

Anyway, to continue with the copy:

Computer scientist David Gelernter, a Yale University professor who has decried the influence of liberal intellectuals on college campuses, is being considered for the role of the Donald Trump’s science adviser. Gelernter met with the president-elect at Trump Tower in New York City on Tuesday, according to press secretary Sean Spicer.

Again, let us stop here and note that Kaplan’s story so far does not say that Gelernter decries “intellectuals,” but rather, liberal intellectuals. But “fiercely”! So how does “anti-intellectual” get in the headline? As I say, this headline writer should be fired. To continue:

Gelernter is a pioneer in the field of parallel computation, a type of computing in which many calculations are carried out simultaneously. The programming language he developed in the 1980s, Linda, made it possible to link together several small computers into a supercomputer, significantly increasing the amount and complexity of data that computers can process. Since then he has written extensively about artificial intelligence, critiquing the field’s slow progress and warning of AI’s potential dangers.

In 1993, Gelernter was seriously injured by a letter bomb sent by Ted Kaczynski, the anti-technology terrorist known as the Unabomber.

Some other time, perhaps, we can talk a bit more about where and how the Unabomber learned his leftist anti-technology ideology. Hint: it involved leftist “intellectuals” at Harvard. It has long been rumored that the Unabomber had a heavily marked-up copy of Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance in his cabin in Montana. Gore was at Harvard around the same time as Kaczynski, learning the same early post-modern nihilism. The FBI has never confirmed whether Kaczynski had Gore’s book. I asked a senior FBI agent I once knew about it. He professed not to know. But see also Alston Chase, Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist. If anyone has moral standing to critique leftist intellectuals, it’s David Gelernter. To continue:

Beyond computer science circles, Gelernter has made a name for himself as a vehement critic of modern academia. In his 2013 book, “America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered in the Obamacrats),” he condemned “belligerent leftists” and blamed intellectualism for the disintegration of patriotism and traditional family values. He attributed the decline in American culture to “an increasing Jewish presence at top colleges.” (Gelernter himself is Jewish.)

Let’s just stop right here, as Kaplan’s story doesn’t get any better from here on. The invocation of “intellectualism” here is obviously an ideological caricature. “Vehement” critic? It’s pretty clear that if you dissent from the liberal orthodoxy of the universities, for Kaplan it makes you a “vehement” critic.

I’ve only met Gelernter once, but I’ve read many of his fine books and articles. This can be stated as categorical, objective truth: Intellectually, Sarah Kaplan isn’t fit to carry David Gelernter’s jockstrap. She should be fired, too, for such a shoddy piece of “journalism.”

And people in the media wonder why Trump, and much of the population, think the media is the enemy.

UPDATE: A Facebook friend points me to a Time magazine profile of Gelernter:

“Inside the house, evidence of the mind of Gelernter is everywhere. The towering walls of books–including his own works on computer science, religion, popular culture, history and psychology. His works of art–some abstract, some powerfully figurative, like the life-size evocations of the great kings of Israel inspired by Christian tomb art at the Basilica of St. Denis outside Paris. Musical instruments fill the floor space. Flamboyantly colored birds survey the scene–a purple parrot in a cage near the kitchen and a multihued macaw named Ike that presides over the family room. Gelernter’s conversation runs in torrents from the prophesies of Isaiah to the subtleties of Gothic engineering to the proper design of graphical user interfaces.

Indeed, the breadth of his interests and the range of his thoughts can be overwhelming. Gelernter expresses sympathy for the graduate students in his new seminar on software design at Yale, which has been his academic home for most of his life. The students are flummoxed, he reports, by their professor’s extensive discussion of medieval architecture, specifically the so-called strainer arches at Wells Cathedral in Somerset, England. Wrought from massive stone blocks and installed nearly 700 years ago to prevent the church from collapsing, these arches are as strong as steel–and as lovely as butterfly wings. His reason for dwelling on the subject, he explains, is that all truly great designs are beautiful as well as functional. “I try to tell them, if you’re going to do anything good in software, it will be beautiful.”

Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy has called Gelernter, who pioneered breakthroughs in parallel processing, “one of the most brilliant and visionary computer scientists of our time.”

But because he disagrees with liberals, he’s a Spiro Agnew level “anti-intellectual” to the Washington Post.

We’ll do more updates if the Washington Post does the right thing and takes down this risible article.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: conservative; professor; science; yale
The ComPost has had a horrific month. This one is shameful on multiple levels. Gelernter is among the smartest and most respected people on the planet.
1 posted on 01/19/2017 6:32:28 AM PST by safetysign
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: safetysign

Great read. Thanks for finding it and posting it


2 posted on 01/19/2017 6:42:41 AM PST by Nifster (I see puppy dogs in the clouds)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Nifster

It is a major crime against Nature and Civilization that even one sick dead sapling is killed to make paper for the washington compost. This yellow-journalism rag is so untruthful that even my pet parrot refuses to crap o0n it.


3 posted on 01/19/2017 6:45:02 AM PST by hal ogen (First Amendment or Reeducation Camp?.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: safetysign

A computer scientist is anything but anti-intellectual.

For true anti-intellectuals (or non intellectuals) go to the local Studies, History, English, journalism departments, where you will find folks who have shat upon the title “professor”.

I admit that with respect to History, English, etc, there are truly good folks whose only flaw is that they have allowed idiots to infect their trade.

As for “studies” departments, well, face it, it’s full of turds. The only hope there is the guillotine, followed by turning of the remains, followed by collecting them and launching into the sun. :-)


4 posted on 01/19/2017 6:47:57 AM PST by Da Coyote
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: safetysign

Awesome demolition of Washington Commpost Fascism.


5 posted on 01/19/2017 6:51:00 AM PST by RedWing9 (Jesus Rocks Zero Sucks)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: safetysign

WASHINGTON POST DISGRACES ITSELF

Again?....................


6 posted on 01/19/2017 6:51:12 AM PST by Red Badger (If "Majority Rule" was so important in South Africa, why isn't it that way here?............)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: safetysign

,,,,,,, disgrace is their ambition and they work very hard at it ,, they are some the oldest of the dinosaurs in their industry . Hardly anybody is still aware of their existence .


7 posted on 01/19/2017 6:54:55 AM PST by Lionheartusa1 ()-: ISIS is Islam without the lipstick :-()
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: safetysign
President Trump should double down and name Dr. Roy Spencer from the University of Alabama Huntsville as his Climate advisor.

DrRoySpencer.com


Click pic to read first few pages

8 posted on 01/19/2017 6:55:37 AM PST by Texas Eagle (If it wasn't for double-standards, Liberals w.ould have no standtairds at all -- Texas Eagle)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: safetysign
Gelernter’s conversation runs in torrents from the prophesies of Isaiah to the subtleties of Gothic engineering to the proper design of graphical user interfaces.

Sounds like our kind of guy!...............

9 posted on 01/19/2017 6:56:54 AM PST by Red Badger (If "Majority Rule" was so important in South Africa, why isn't it that way here?............)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: safetysign
"Washington Post Disgraces Itself"

You mean yet again???

10 posted on 01/19/2017 6:57:42 AM PST by Savage Beast ( "You can--in fact must--shout 'Fire!' in a crowded theater. It just has to be the truth. J Goldberg)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Savage Beast

The real anti-intellectuals are codified in the pages of the NYT, WaPo and LATimes, among other less notable tomes. They are its scribes and editors, followed in short order by most of the tenured glitterati at most of our ivy leagued hallowed halls. Politicians are not worthy of the label “anti-intellectual.” They are simply the swill eaters who perpetrate madness in fits of legislative pandering.


11 posted on 01/19/2017 7:09:17 AM PST by Louis Foxwell (The Left has the temperament of a squealing pig.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: safetysign

You could pretty much post that headline every day and be accurate.


12 posted on 01/19/2017 7:16:32 AM PST by Buckeye McFrog
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: safetysign

“I try to tell them, if you’re going to do anything good in software, it will be beautiful.”

*************

That statement in itself reflects on the man’s true brilliance. Great software is rare, but when it’s elegantly designed and programmed, it IS like a work of art.


13 posted on 01/19/2017 7:23:49 AM PST by Starboard
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Starboard

Since Trump won the WP has become unhinged. They were awful before but now they actually worse then the NYT and that’s saying something. It seems personal. I wish Gelertner was tapped to head the EPA.


14 posted on 01/19/2017 7:35:19 AM PST by gibsonguy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: safetysign

Sounds like he has more grounds to voice his opinions than John Lewis.


15 posted on 01/19/2017 9:26:41 AM PST by Defiant (The media is the colostomy bag where truth goes after democrats digest it.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: safetysign
Yah! Female power! Everyone knows that little eight year old girls routinely beat up huge hulking men with guns.

Hollywood is still pushing that politically correct meme, but one which bears no resemblance to reality.

16 posted on 01/19/2017 11:19:45 AM PST by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: safetysign

Sorry, I posted this on the wrong thread. Please disregard.


17 posted on 01/19/2017 11:20:37 AM PST by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: safetysign
"One would have to be an intellectual to believe such nonsense - no ordinary man could be so foolish" - Orwell (or somebody)

Probably Gelertner would condemn such shallow thinkers as those who tout their "intellectualism", but he himself is a genuine intellectual in the smartest sense of the word - in additional to his work in computational science, he wrote the fascinating book America-Lite (How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered In the Obamacrats), in which he suggests the highly plausible theory that the reason the counter-culture succeeded so wildly beginning in the '60's was that the sons and daughters of "The Greatest Generation" which took on the Great Depression and won WWII were so overwhelmed by what their parents had accomplished and felt so unable to ever match those accomplishments of their elders that they deliberately rebelled against and abandoned much of the traditional beliefs and practices of those going before so their own progress or lack thereof would not suffer in comparison.....

18 posted on 01/19/2017 9:32:19 PM PST by Intolerant in NJ
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson