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From: judith@proper.UUCP (Judith Abrahms)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Critics and SF
Message-ID: <212@proper.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 14-Aug-85 07:57:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: proper.212
Posted: Wed Aug 14 07:57:43 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Aug-85 07:40:37 EDT
References: <3206@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <>
Reply-To: judith@proper.UUCP (judith)
Distribution: net
Organization: Proper UNIX, Oakland CA
Lines: 35

In article <> wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly) writes:

>There's been a fierce hostility toward intellectuals in American 
>culture for a long while; I doubt many other languages can rival
>American's variety of pejorative slang for intellectuals (although I
>suspect the Chinese language acquired quite a few back around the
>cultural revolution :-).

   "Bumping up and down in a corner seat, she looked gloomy, introspective,
amazingly old.  When he asked her why she was so withdrawn, she told him she
hadn't been satisfied with their lovemaking.  She said he'd made love to her
like an intellectual.

   "In the political jargon of the day 'intellectual' was an expletive.  It
designated a person who failed to understand life and was cut off from the
people.  All Communists hanged at the time by other Communists had that curse
bestowed upon them."

				-- Milan Kundera, "Lost Letters"
				   (_The_Book_of_Laughter_and_Forgetting_)

   I imagine the word "intellectual" has been used as pejorative slang for
"intellectual" by most speakers of American ever since it became a noun.  I'd
like to hear some synonyms from the people who brought us "running dog lackeys
of the imperialist warmongers."  What real variety has our native anti-egghead
invective displayed in the last 50 years (aside from "nattering nabobs of
negativism," of course! :-)?

Judith Abrahms
{ihnp4,ucbvax}!dual!proper!judith
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Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction; for fiction is the creation
of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.
						 -- Chesterton
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