The novelist, James Kellman, in 1988 in a reading of Chomsky:
Finding new ways of denying reality is a key function of the mainstream intelligentsia.
Reading think tank thinkers to stay up on "philanthropy" is almost as bad as reading critics to stay up on literature. I will sometimes read a paragraph or two in an essay on philanthropy and flip around trying to find the author's bio. I am stunned to find they generally have a PhD from a second or third rate school, followed by a long line of crappy and humiliating jobs. They don't come up to that standard. Writing on giving they bristle with resentment. Pennies to the poor? When the pennies could go to the think tank thinker? Why give to the poor when we have think tank thinkers right here in America today making less than $200 k? How can donors justify this outrage? It takes one to know one; living in a Dumpster, I can only commiserate. We all do what we must to retain a little dignity while the mind within us dies.
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