Draft Scat

so i thought that cleaning out accumulated drafts would be a semi-useful activity. 

 it sounds focused and goal oriented, right?  but i keep running into funny little starts, 

some funny enough to evoke a snort, even after two years of storage.  like this, 

the beginnings of a favorite rant topic -- BHL.  so on the off chance that you carry 

benadryl to fend off unexpected exposure to bernard-henri lévy, this is for you!

I have mixed feelings about Bernard-Henri Lévy, that "public" philosopher, one of the roughly ten self-proclaimed nouveaux philosophes --  facile contrarians with an affinity for cameras and microphones. Nothings bests Cornelius Castoriadis' description of the New Philosophers moniker as a rare example of "double antiphrasis."

There's a marked tendency among the membership toward being former Maoists, and a marked approbation of Late Capitalism.  I ask you:  Among the Maoists of your acquaintance,  is there even one who doesn't sheepishly cite "the spirit of the times" as what led them so astray?

On the one hand, he is a buffoon.
On the other hand, where else can I get my necessary supply of  "trademark panache: crisp, unbuttoned white Charvet shirts, golden tan and a windswept silvery mane of hair"?

I see his name these days, and I usually smile.  Someone once described this reaction as "delighted disbelief," a deep amazement that there are publishers out there still willing to air the easy quibbles and antiblahblahs of BHL.  My official stance on Lévy, as on all those who have made the choice to dig their own graves, is that he should remain interred, undisturbed by media attention or any other backhoe.

Impervious, however, to public ridicule, BHL rises again and again, a sophist zombie.  That thoroughly explains his persistent returns;  What explains ours?

Things like this have made me chuckle:

In his newest book, Mr. Lévy attacked the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant as a madman, and in support cited the Paraguayan lectures of Jean-Baptiste Botul to his 20th-century followers.

In fact Mr. Botul is the longtime creature of Frédéric Pagès, a journalist with the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné...

Mr. Pagès has never made a secret of his fictional philosopher, who has a fan club that meets monthly in salons throughout Paris.

Mr. Botul’s school of thought is called Botulism, his followers are botuliennes and they debate such weighty theories as the metaphysics of flab. As they describe it, Mr. Botul’s astonishing ideas ranged from phenomenology to cheese, sausages, women’s breasts and the transport of valises during the 1930s.

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