Title: Smarter than thou: Neil deGrasse Tyson and America's nerd problem Author(s): Charles C.W. Cooke Source: National Review. 66.13 (July 21, 2014): p26. Document Type: Critical essay Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 National Review, Inc. http://www.nationalreview.com/ Full Text: [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
'MY great fear," Neil deGrasse Tyson told MSNBC's Chris Hayes in early June, "is that we've in fact been visited by intelligent aliens but they chose not to make contact, on the conclusion that there's no sign of intelligent life on Earth." In response to this rather standard little saw, Hayes laughed as if he had been trying marijuana for the first time.
All told, one suspects that Tyson was not including either himself or a fellow traveler such as Hayes as inhabitants of Earth but was instead referring to everybody who is not in their coterie. That, alas, is his way. An astrophysicist and evangelist for science, Tyson currently plays three roles in our society: He is the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History; the presenter of the hip new show Cosmos; and, most important of all, perhaps, the fetish and totem of the extraordinarily puffed-up "nerd" culture that has of late started to bloom across the United States.
One part insecure hipsterism, one part unwarranted condescension, the two defining characteristics of self-professed nerds are (a) the belief that one can discover all of the secrets of human experience through differential equations and (b) the unlovely tendency to presume themselves to be smarter than everybody else in the world. Prominent examples include MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry, Rachel Maddow, Steve Kornacki, and Chris Hayes; Vox's Ezra Klein, Dylan Matthews, and Matt Yglesias; the sabermetrician Nate Silver; the economist Paul Krugman; the atheist Richard Dawkins; former vice president Al Gore; celebrity scientist Bill Nye; and, really, anybody who conforms to the Left's social and moral precepts while wearing glasses and babbling about statistics.
The pose is, of course, little more than a ruse--most of our professional "nerds" being, like Mrs. Doubtfire, stereotypical facsimiles of the real thing. They have the patois but not the passion; the clothes but not the style; the posture but not the imprimatur. Theirs is the nerd-dom of Star Wars, not Star Trek; of Mario Kart and not World of Warcraft; of the latest X-Men movie rather than the comics themselves. A sketch from the TV show Portlandia, mocked up as a public-service announcement, makes this point brutally. After a gorgeous young woman explains at a bar that she doesn't think her job as a model is "her thing" and instead identifies as "a nerd" who is "into video games and comic books and stuff," a dorky-looking man gets up and confesses that he is, in fact, a "real" nerd--someone who wears glasses "to see," who is "shy," and who "isn't wearing a nerd costume for Halloween" but is dressed how he lives. "I get sick with fear talking to people," he says. "It sucks."
A quick search of the Web reveals that Portlandia's writers are not the only people to have noticed the trend. "Science and 'geeky' subjects," the pop-culture writer Maddox observes, "are perceived as being hip, cool and intellectual." And so people who are, or wish to be, hip, cool, and intellectual "glom onto these labels and call themselves 'geeks' or 'nerds' every chance they get."
Which is to say that the nerds of MSNBC and beyond are not actually nerds but the popular kids indulging in a fad. To a person, they are attractive, accomplished, well paid, and loved, listened to, and cited by a good portion of the general public. Most of them spend their time speaking on television fluently, debating with passion, and hanging out with celebrities. They attend dinner parties and glitzy social events, and are photographed and put into the glossy magazines. They are flown first-class to deliver university commencement speeches and appear on late-night shows and at book launches. There they pay lip service to the notion that they are not wildly privileged, and then go back to their hotels to drink $16 cocktails with Bill Maher. [continued]
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2014-07-28 05:43 am (UTC)Title: Smarter than thou: Neil deGrasse Tyson and America's nerd problem
Author(s): Charles C.W. Cooke
Source: National Review. 66.13 (July 21, 2014): p26.
Document Type: Critical essay
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 National Review, Inc.
http://www.nationalreview.com/
Full Text:
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
'MY great fear," Neil deGrasse Tyson told MSNBC's Chris Hayes in early June, "is that we've in fact been visited by intelligent aliens but they chose not to make contact, on the conclusion that there's no sign of intelligent life on Earth." In response to this rather standard little saw, Hayes laughed as if he had been trying marijuana for the first time.
All told, one suspects that Tyson was not including either himself or a fellow traveler such as Hayes as inhabitants of Earth but was instead referring to everybody who is not in their coterie. That, alas, is his way. An astrophysicist and evangelist for science, Tyson currently plays three roles in our society: He is the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History; the presenter of the hip new show Cosmos; and, most important of all, perhaps, the fetish and totem of the extraordinarily puffed-up "nerd" culture that has of late started to bloom across the United States.
One part insecure hipsterism, one part unwarranted condescension, the two defining characteristics of self-professed nerds are (a) the belief that one can discover all of the secrets of human experience through differential equations and (b) the unlovely tendency to presume themselves to be smarter than everybody else in the world. Prominent examples include MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry, Rachel Maddow, Steve Kornacki, and Chris Hayes; Vox's Ezra Klein, Dylan Matthews, and Matt Yglesias; the sabermetrician Nate Silver; the economist Paul Krugman; the atheist Richard Dawkins; former vice president Al Gore; celebrity scientist Bill Nye; and, really, anybody who conforms to the Left's social and moral precepts while wearing glasses and babbling about statistics.
The pose is, of course, little more than a ruse--most of our professional "nerds" being, like Mrs. Doubtfire, stereotypical facsimiles of the real thing. They have the patois but not the passion; the clothes but not the style; the posture but not the imprimatur. Theirs is the nerd-dom of Star Wars, not Star Trek; of Mario Kart and not World of Warcraft; of the latest X-Men movie rather than the comics themselves. A sketch from the TV show Portlandia, mocked up as a public-service announcement, makes this point brutally. After a gorgeous young woman explains at a bar that she doesn't think her job as a model is "her thing" and instead identifies as "a nerd" who is "into video games and comic books and stuff," a dorky-looking man gets up and confesses that he is, in fact, a "real" nerd--someone who wears glasses "to see," who is "shy," and who "isn't wearing a nerd costume for Halloween" but is dressed how he lives. "I get sick with fear talking to people," he says. "It sucks."
A quick search of the Web reveals that Portlandia's writers are not the only people to have noticed the trend. "Science and 'geeky' subjects," the pop-culture writer Maddox observes, "are perceived as being hip, cool and intellectual." And so people who are, or wish to be, hip, cool, and intellectual "glom onto these labels and call themselves 'geeks' or 'nerds' every chance they get."
Which is to say that the nerds of MSNBC and beyond are not actually nerds but the popular kids indulging in a fad. To a person, they are attractive, accomplished, well paid, and loved, listened to, and cited by a good portion of the general public. Most of them spend their time speaking on television fluently, debating with passion, and hanging out with celebrities. They attend dinner parties and glitzy social events, and are photographed and put into the glossy magazines. They are flown first-class to deliver university commencement speeches and appear on late-night shows and at book launches. There they pay lip service to the notion that they are not wildly privileged, and then go back to their hotels to drink $16 cocktails with Bill Maher.
[continued]
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 10:11 pm (UTC)