The Thinker

I waited for it, and it came.

Peggy Noonan: Newt Gingrich twitters that Judge Sotomayor is a racist. Does anyone believe that? He should rest his dancing thumbs, stop trying to position himself as the choice and voice of the base in 2012, and think.

I suppose I'm in danger of being labelled "anti-intellectual," but that's all right. Really I am just amused at the amount of times words like "think" and "thought" and "intellectual" are appearing in columns coast to coast nowadays.

Take Noonan's piece above. It takes about four or five paragraphs to make an entrance, but it finally shows up: Peggy thinks. Peggy's friends think. People that disagree with Peggy? They don't think (or live in the "world of thought," if you hang out with Chris Mooney, or embody "Spock's passion for reason," if you're a chum of Jeff Greenwald, or do the "work of thought," if you're related to Joe Klein, or practice "intellectual honesty," if you break bread with Krauthammer, or have "intellectual force and energy," a la Rahm Emanuel, or act "intellectually serious," like David Brooks - funny, when you add them all up like that, it starts to look like a trend).

The condescension doesn't drip from Peggy's pen. She isn't using the "think" word as derogatory. Hell, she doesn't even use italics to show she really means it. Instead, her snobbish "intellectualism" is en passant. And that's the point: Peggy and her ilk are good thinkers. They aren't angered by people that disagree with them, they pity them. If someone doesn't see eye to eye with Pegs, it's not because the person is wrong, it's because the person just doesn't know how to think properly.

This trend started when Obama got elected. We are constantly told that he was a university professor and an expert on the US Constitution (by no less an authority than Barack Obama himself, who constantly reminds us that he got a degree and read the Constitution a bunch of times; me too, but his views on the document differ from mine. There I go not thinking again). After his election, "brain power" became all the rage. Everyone wants to point out who is brilliant and who is not. Obama tops the list. University professors come shortly thereafter. Writers for big (but going bankrupt) publications come in third. Then there's...everyone else. You and me. The dummies (unless you agree with them, in which case you're called an "informed voter" or a "base.")

A question: when is the last time you talked to a university professor and thought anything they had to say mattered worth a damn? For that matter, when's the last time you talked to a university professor? I was on a college campus the other day and it reminded me just what a cloistered life it is. Old buildings, faculty lounges, residences, classrooms, restaurants, bars, you name it. When I was in school, I rarely left the grounds. There could have been a hundred angry lions at the gate and I wouldn't have known it until summer. I might as well have been on the moon.

University professors only leave their sanctuaries when they interview on Charlie Rose, lecture at another university, or run for office. Out of touch? Sure. Out to lunch? You bet. You never see these people because they're about as far from real life as you can get. But they think, damnit. How do they do that? How can I learn it? What is this "think" of which they speak?

When I disagree with political orthodoxy today, it's not because I'm wrong, or crazy, or even stupid. I'm just not thinking. If I just sit down and think for a while, I'll be all right. I'll learn to see it the good way. The proper way. When will I ever learn to think?