Time trends in irritating contrarian arguments?
John points to an article by the always-irritating Stanley Fish, doing his contrarian shtick. This brings me to a research question: is contrarian-ness on the increase, or have pundits been doing this sort of thing forever? All someone needs to do is come up with a good measure for it and go through the right database and find out the answer. I really feel like the op-eds have become more contrarian in recent decades. Probably this is impossible to measure, but if anyone has a good idea, go for it!
Comments
What we need are counter-contrarians - or is that what bloggers do?
When I was introduced to debating early in high school, I found it difficult accepting the role of supporting a side I really did not believe in. Then in law school, I remember fellow students saying that they could take either side of a particular case. So perhaps this is where contrarians come from, an exercise in challenging just about any and everything, provided there is a byline - or a fee - or both. Stanley goes upstream too often but does not spawn very much, does he?
Posted by: Shag from Brookline | July 8, 2009 06:11 AM
I for one find unnecessary exclamation points contrarian. Or does that mean I am?
Posted by: daphne | July 8, 2009 08:07 PM
I’ve hated Stanley Fish since the 1970s, when I started the graduate English program at Berkeley, a department he had just left at that point but where the baleful influence of his profiteering “Whatever is, is right” cynicism remained far too strong. He’s a little old for me to call him “Son,” but whenever I see one of his columns, I’m inclined to recast the classic Animal House line: “Smug, contrarian, and sophistic is no way to go through life, Gramps.”
Posted by: forked tongue | July 8, 2009 11:42 PM
“So perhaps this is where contrarians come from, an exercise in challenging just about any and everything, provided there is a byline - or a fee - or both. Stanley goes upstream too often but does not spawn very much, does he?”
IMHO contrarianism usually supports the power and the money. Bill Maher got canned for saying that just maybe, suicide terrorists weren’t cowards; the neocons who decided that War is Good, Quick and Fun are still dominant in the media and think tanks.
I don’t see too many left-wing economists getting much airtime; the extreme left of that field who can get any airtime are those who merely noticed what’s happened.
Posted by: Barry | July 9, 2009 08:48 AM