Stanley Fish, still suffering from a chronic and certainly fatal emeritus (a affliction exclusively among intellectuals where by the afflicted disguise declining intellectual vigor with what is know as being a smug prick) has decided everybody is being too mean to Hillary Clinton in light of her less than stellar moment during the debate:
"She could have then proceeded in a straight line to make her point and protected herself from the accusation – made by John Edwards on the spot – that she was talking out of both sides of her mouth. She wasn’t. It was a bad rap, although one she invited by failing to get the parts of her answers in the right order and thereby allowing her rivals to treat points that went together to form a whole as if they were separately, and inconsistently, made. "
Epistemologically speaking, if Fish weren't such lazy shit for brains, he would know that the socially constructed reality, which he has made his career with, would dictate, in this case, he is shill- a point I will work through in a little bit. Some of us still deal with actual students, Stanley...
later...
The socially constructed reality, in this particular case, is, in fact, not socially constructed at all, unless you are drinking buddies with Stan, who has managed to devolve the idea of a public intellectual, a la Edward Said, or Noam Chomsky, into just another pundit, a la Alan Colmes.
See, for those of us out here in what can be called "society", we are not really as in love as Hillary as Stan is. The problem with interpretative community, and the Fish's reading of this political text, and the rest of the pundit class as well, is that the assumptions which Fish basing this on are the assumptions of an elite corporate hegenomy, or in his case, a form of WASP deragement which is symptomatic of emeritus. Of course Hillary is the front runner, of course she should be president because she best represents their interests. Ideas of social and economic justice are meant to be facile. Universal Health Care is a Hillary brand, which, like Budweiser, proclaims it self to be beer when it is clearly not.
Hillary Clinton is the polite, safe way to show opposition to the disasterous, cryptofascist polices of George Bush and his NeoCon gangsters, with out the actual discomfort of really doing anything about this mess. Hillary would never make you confront the inconsistencies of your imported car, parked at Wild Oats, while you listen to some nominal world music on NPR and spout some "liberal" platitudes with your organic toothpaste...Yes, Hillary is a way to be progressive without all that progress. Wow, a aristocratic, hawkish white yuppie woman. That'll show'em...
For Stanley, being progressive without progress has always been the way to fly, because, at its core, his entire intellectual enterprise is pinioned to the ostensibly radical notion of reader response. On the surface, it would certainly appear to free literacies; however, in praxis, reader response merely piggybacks on other critical theories, because each brings its share of cultural assumptions, and, what is more, even having a articulated critical framework signifies a certain academic bearing which would privelege the ivorytowerism over a truly egalitarian reading of any text. Reader response is not a theory so much as it is a parasite on critical theory-kind of like its fat headed avatar.
Certainly, it would be interesting to see what Stan made of the Vegas debate, with Blitzer's hackneyed questions, the booing of Edwards and Obama-certainly, a sign that is criticism is correct, because the interpretive community, the audience, reacted accordingly.However, in my reading of that text, it is impossible to ignore the Fish/Clinton paradigm which framed the text, because it was so naked in doing so, especially with the semiotic plants working the textually field, all to get you to come to the same conclusion: Hillary is future. Stanley Fish knows more than you. Go with a winner.
But who wins in this narrative? The same guys who always win.
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