We noted here a couple of months back the obvious truth that Chelsea Clinton is a nitwit. Who knew, however, that a leftist would stumble across this fact?
Prof. Corey Robin of Brooklyn College, author of a book popular among leftists called The Reactionary Mind that purports to explain conservatism (gee: I wonder if we can figure out the thesis from the title), got into an argument recently with Chelsea. On Twitter. About banality. No, you can’t make this up.
Chelsea tweeted a link to a story about an arson fire at an LGBT center in Arizona with her coda about how it is an example of “the banality of evil”—the phrase made famous in Hannah Arendt’s controversial book Eichmann in Jerusalem. Prof. Robin thought this a gross misuse or misunderstanding of Arendt’s phrase, and naturally defaulted to the usual mode of progressives everywhere, hectoring Chelsea for her superficiality. And Chelsea responded!
You can read the whole delicious saga at Corey Robin’s website, but here are a few lowlights:
I didn’t think Clinton was using Arendt’s concept of “the banality of evil” correctly. I retweeted her with some snide commentary.
There follows a lot of explication about Arendt’s phrase, but twice Robin describes Chelsea thus: “author of a best-selling book; vice chair of a powerful global foundation; former special correspondent to NBC; possible congressional candidate, with a net worth of $15 million; daughter of the former president of the United States; daughter of the former Secretary of State and almost-president of the United States,” adding that “We have in this country a really weird ruling class.”
There’s lots more here in the whole post, and Chelsea does not come out well in the exchange. I do especially like this initial response from Chelsea:
“Thankful to have read Arendt at Sidwell & Stanford” is a nice touch, another sign of the total lack of self-awareness of entitled elitist mediocrities of the left. It takes something for me to side with Corey Robin on anything, but that’s what makes the ongoing left-on-left action so much fun to watch. Popcorn please!
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.