Slog May 14, 2019 7:40 PM

Malcolm Gladwell, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Patti Smith, and Mary Ruefle Are Coming to Seattle

by Rich Smith

Comments

1

There are good ways to critique Malcolm Gladwell, but holy crap Rich, quoting Richard Posner is not one of them.

Gladwell did good work earlier in his career, when he was a science reporter on an underexposed beat, and before he started pulling down five and six figures for speaking to luncheons of car salesmen. He's been trash for a long, long time, though, going back to at least his first book (Blink was the second, iirc).

robotslave on May 14, 2019 at 8:54 PM · Report this
2

Gladwell's early work includes chestnuts like asian kids are good at math not because their parents put a primacy on mastery of this skill but because their ancestors were rice farmers.

Agrippa on May 15, 2019 at 5:35 AM · Report this
3

Gladwell's early work like shilling for cigarette companies?

tiredofeverything on May 15, 2019 at 9:03 AM · Report this
4

@3

That's agitprop from Yasha Levine and Mark Ames, and it's been pretty thoroughly debunked.

You don't need to argue in bad faith to show Gladwell has been completely compromised by big money.

robotslave on May 15, 2019 at 10:26 AM · Report this
5

does anyone know how that crash happened? driver swerved to avoid stopped traffic and the airbag didn't deploy?

Max Solomon on May 15, 2019 at 3:45 PM · Report this