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Synergy Organic Clothing x GoMacro GIVEAWAY
Partnering with like-minded companies has quickly become an integral part of our brand. We always choose to promote those who are doing their share to encourage and cultivate a conscious lifestyle. We place a high value on the transparency of the products we choose to consume, and we're not solely speaking to the physical act of consumption, however that just so happens to be the case with GoMacro MacroBars. GoMacro is a company that believes "in feeling good about what we eat - how it tastes, how it's made, and how it sustains the environment." A company after our own heart! At Synergy Organic Clothing we believe our customers have the right to know who, what, where, and how our clothing is made. For us, it all comes back to living that healthy, organic, and mindful life. It was a no brainer to team with GoMacro for a super fun giveaway! Rooted in five core principles of Vegan, Macrobiotic, Wholesome, Gives Back, and Sourced Sustainably we can't say enough amazing things about this brand. Except we haven't yet mentioned how epically delicious these bars are! A flavor for every palette and without a pang of guilt for what you're putting into your body or the kind of company you're supporting. When you purchase GoMacro you are supporting a family owned business whose "mission is to manufacture wholesome, healthy snacks, because [they] believe that food and food quality impact health, happiness and well being for all." We couldn't agree more, which is why we're offering you the chance to enter this Facebook giveaway from GoMacro and us! It's so easy to enter! Here's how: 1. 'Like' the GoMacro Facebook page 2. 'Like' the Synergy Organic Clothing Facebook page. 3. Once steps 1 & 2 are completed write a comment on this Facebook post! Voila! A few clicks of the mouse and you are entered to win a prize estimated at over $300 dollars! The prize includes 3 boxes of GoMacro bars (approx. value $150) and 3 items of your choice from synergyclothing.com (approx. value $150-$300). Guidelines: Giveaways runs August 26, 2014 – September 9, 2014. Winner announced September 12, 2014. Must be 18 to enter. Valid to U.S. residents only.
Amy's Kitchen x Synergy Organic Clothing GIVEAWAY
Amy's Kitchen. Not only do they make organic, non-GMO, delicious food, but they are also family–owned. Founded 26 years ago in Sonoma County, California, Amy's Kitchen is a leader in the natural foods world and one of the few remaining companies to handcraft their own foods. They currently make over 250 different products, including entrees, burritos, soups, pizzas, and even desserts (like cake, gluten-free brownies, and candy bars!). Everything is handmade, and they even make their own tofu, pasta, and sauces from scratch! These words from Amy's co-founder Rachel Berliner sum up what makes Amy's so special: "We cook food just like you do at home – just with much bigger pots!" Now, if that isn't something special in this day and age, I don't know what is. It's so easy to lose sight of the importance of taking care, supporting quality and choosing organic, but Amy's has not. On top of that, their food is just delicious - perfectly suited for the busy person who wishes they always had time to hit the farmers' market. (For more information on Amy's Kitchen check out their website.) We're so excited to have teamed with Amy's Kitchen to celebrate a few of the key components of both our companies, organic products and being family-owned. That's why we're bringing you the #OrganicGathering GIVEAWAY! Enter for your chance to win a grand-prize worth $400. Two lucky runner-up winners will receive prizes totaling $150. Here's how you enter: 1. Follow the Synergy Organic Clothing Instagram, @synergyclothing and the Amy's Kitchen Instagram, @amys_kitchen accounts. 2. Post a photo on Instagram of any sort of gathering or group setting with the hashtag #organicgathering – The photo could be anything from a family reunion, to lunch with friends, or a casual hangout with a few close companions! Guidelines: Must have public account in-order for entry to be seen. Contest runs from July 1-14, 2014 at 11:59 PDT. Winner will be randomly selected and announced on July 16, 2014. The grand prize estimated at around $400 will consist of a $200 gift card to synergyclothing.com and "Free lunch For a Month" from Amy's Kitchen estimated at $200. The runner-up prize(s) estimated at around $150 will consist of the a "Sweet Treat" basket from Amy's Kitchen estimated at $75 and the option to select any single item from synergyclothing.com estimated anywhere between $50-$120 depending on what is selected.


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Vittoria Tires Vittoria Industries Ltd is the leading manufacturer of bicycle tires, and since being established way back in 1953, they have truly made quite a name for themselves in the bicycle industry, they manufacture over 7 million tires in a year covering almost every type and size of bicycle tire for the road, for urban commuting as well as for off road use, and on top of that, they also manufacture over 900,000 tubular tires and their infamous and unique Corsa series of cotton tires. Vittoria tires are proudly manufactured in their own factory which was founded in...Read More

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With its perfect size this fine linen covered notebook fits your pocket anyway. Covered either with a smoothy natural or a lighty pink linen with foiled name lines. The open edges give an imperfect "wabi-sabi"-look, showing the beauty of the material. Comes with plain or grid sheets and enough space for flashing ideas, sketches, short notes or long essays. See all combinations when choosing your favourite.
Blind logo-embossing on the back. Threadstitched for flat opening. Comes with a customized bookmark, helping to mark the pages. Handmade quality, very fine and smooth paper for all kind of pens.
10.5 x 17.5 cm, 160 pages, 90 g/m2


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The brief to Robert Serman Architects for this project, called for a family home which blended into the natural setting that the site offered. The owners were clear that they wanted to make the most of the surroundings and that they wanted spaces where the family could come together and spaces that would allow the teenage children a space of their own.
House Wisse is located at Monaghan Farm, which is a 400-hectare lifestyle estate in Lanseria on the outskirts of Johannesburg. As a development, Monaghan Farm prides itself on its sustainability initiatives and environmentally sensitive approach. The farm is organically certified, and with its vegetable garden and roaming cattle, remains a working farm. Through restricting development to six clusters and keeping the density of the development extremely low, it is not only the farm that is preserved but also the biodiversity of native Egoli Grasslands.
According to Robert Serman, the opening statement to the clients, "House Wisse is to be a house in the veld, a house in the sun," was as much a reading of the context as it was the concept. "It was from this starting point that designing a home, strongly rooted in its place, began. A home that sits comfortably within the veld but also protects itself from the natural elements and environment that it sits in," he explains.
Just under an acre in size, the House Wisse site is a quintessential piece of the highveld that slopes gently northwards. The site has no adjoining neighbours and is surrounded by natural veld. The position of the stand within the farm allows for nearly 180˚ view ranging from a row of Bluegum trees to the East, a soft rolling valley to the North East and then the distinctive flattop Renosterkop Mountain to the North.
The house is 640m² in total and comprises of four bedrooms (all en-suite), a study, a guest toilet, a kids lounge and entertainment room, an open plan lounge, dining room and kitchen space, a flexible outdoor living and dining space, garages for four cars, a store room and domestic quarters.
The immediate design response by Robert Serman Architects was to embrace the landscape. The slope of the land was respected and incorporated into the design. It is for this reason that the home gently steps down the terrain rather than creating a single large cut and inserting a single level home. Furthermore, in general the roofs follow the slope of the land with the exception being the main living wing. Here the roof pops up against the slope to accentuate its presence as the focal point of the home.
House Wisse was always envisaged as a home that relied on passive design principles to control temperature and create a comfortable living environment. In terms of orientation, the primary facades of the building face northwards which allow for good solar penetration in winter but through the use of deep roof overhangs and a combination of shutters and louvres, solar gain is mitigated in spring and autumn and totally excluded in summer. The staggered nature of the plan creates shaded courtyard spaces, which are utilised to enhance cross ventilation. Through a simple convection current, cooler air from these spaces is pulled across the narrow widths of the wings towards high-level openings on the Northern facades.
The louvres, screens and sliding shutters are the most distinctive feature of the home. These elements are made from composite timber slats on steel frames and their lighter, filigree nature, contrasts with the mass and solidity of the masonry and concrete components of the design. Although they have a strong aesthetic presence, these screening and shading devices are crucial in terms of modulating light and controlling the amount of heat that enters the home. The sliding shutters, located at the bedrooms and the outdoor living area, enable the users to adapt certain spaces based on the season or time of day.
Sustainable initiatives
Ecological responsibility, critically endorsed by the client at the briefing stage, guided the design of the home. The strategy was to provide a well-insulated envelope, shade the building where required and to reduce the energy demand.
A thermally efficient envelope was created through the installation of insulation under the surface bed, within the cavity walls and within the ceiling. The well insulated skin aids in reducing the need and costs associated with heating and cooling the home. The glazing chosen for the project continues this principal with glazing types (varying from double glazing to Low E single glazing) rationalised to specific spaces and orientations.
Where required, screening and shading, in the form of fixed louvres, sliding shutters or horizontal projections are introduced and integrated into the design. Although these devices have a strong aesthetic presence and expression, they are crucial in terms of modulating light and controlling the amount of heat that enters the home. The sliding shutters, located at the bedrooms and the outdoor living area, enable the users to adapt these spaces based on the season or time of day.
In a similar but more subtle way, the rain chains acting as downpipes are designed to recede into the background. However, one specific chain is suspended off a cantilevered gutter and is clearly visible, it drops directly into the 'hidden' underground tank alongside the pool. Thus, demonstrating and hopefully leaving the viewer with the intriguing question of where it leads to. The 'hidden' underground water harvesting tank has a capacity of 40 000 litres. Rainwater and storm water harvested from the majority of the roofs and the driveway reduce the need for municipal water for irrigation purposes.
The energy demand, in terms of electricity, is reduced by the introduction of a gas hob. Water heating is handled by energy efficient heat pumps, with all hot water points supplied with hot water circulated via insulated pipework on a ring main. This simple intervention, reduces the amount of hot water wasted while waiting for hot water. A hydronic under floor heating system operated by the same heat pumps lead to reduced heating costs and a comfortable "barefoot and t-shirt" environment even in winter. At the time of construction consideration, in terms of roof structure and electrical reticulation, was made for the installation of photovoltaics on the north facing garage roof. Therefore, further reductions in energy demand can sought in future.
Landscaping, is endemic if not indigenous and is kept to a minimum. The veld grass that surrounds the home has re-established itself and provides a low-cost, low-maintenance solution as it doesn't require additional irrigation and is left to follow the natural systems. The landscaping further contributes to the reduction of waste as all excavated material was utilised to create landscaped berms. These two principals ensure that the home is integrated back into the landscape and screened from neighbouring properties and roads.
When discussions regarding the inclusion of a pool arose, the decision was to introduce a natural pool. A natural pool, or wetland pool, doesn't require any chemicals and relies on a natural eco-system of carefully selected planting for its cleansing. With water quality and clarity reminiscent of a mountain stream, this low-maintenance and self-sufficient eco-system is also beneficial as it attracts further bio-diversity to the garden.
"The concrete elements such as the off-shutter and board-formed concrete posed challenges both in finish and mass," notes Serman. Through a series of mock-ups a finish that the contractor was confident of reproducing and the owners were pleased with was established. During the course of the build, lessons were learnt regarding formwork kicking and techniques were improved and adopted moving forward. The louvres and shutters were also incredibly labour intensive and required a considerable amount of detailing, planning and on-site testing before they could be finalised.
"There were no major issues with the site, however, the first challenge came from the perspective of, how not to detract from the beautiful setting presented. And secondly, due to the fact that there were no existing structures or distinguishing features such as rocky outcrops or established trees to restrict or anchor the building, much consideration was given to positioning the home within the large expanse of open veld."
House Wisse recently won a 2017 Award of Merit from Gifa (Gauteng Institute for Architecture). There were 36 entries of which 30 were short listed and 20 or so received wards. The regional institutes individually award prizes of Commendation, Merit and Excellence. Projects that receive Awards of Merit & Awards of Excellence then progress to be judged for the National awards from SAIA (South African Institute for Architecture).
"With the home inhabited and the landscaping established, I am very pleased with the end product," says Serman. "I am incredibly grateful that the owners were bold and that I had their support and trust from the first concept presentation onwards. Good clients make good buildings! Admittedly, receiving photographs from the owners capturing the home from their point of view and hearing the owners affectionately referring to the home as 'Sonvanger' is deeply satisfying and rewarding."
"An old colleague once mentioned that you only get 80% of what you draw, forty drawings and numerous sketches later I can confirm that he was indeed correct. Although the level of finish and detail achieved on this project was remarkable, what has become apparent is that there is an immense effort required to create a truly crafted piece of architecture," Serman concludes.
About Robert Serman Architects
Robert Serman studied at The University of the Witwatersrand and graduated with a BArch degree in 2004. He gained experience in a few medium sized firms before starting his own practice, Robert Serman Architects, in 2010. The focus of their work is concept, context and clarity, resolving projects with an approach rather than a style. Since the practices' inception, the odd renovation and small house have led to larger and more challenging briefs. Although still undertaking mostly residential work, they currently have an indoor swimming school and Aquaponic Greenhouses on the boards.
Photography: Paper Cut Photography – Natasha Laurent


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MILWAUKEE – Forget points, Dikembe Mutombo said upon arriving in New Jersey. He wanted to lead the NBA in two categories: rebounds and blocked shots. He already had done both in the past and set his sights on a repeat.
But on the Nets, all goals are gauged with the team in mind. For Mutombo – or anyone – to lead the league in any department, requisite minutes are vital. And if there has been one point about Mutombo on which Byron Scott has been clearer than spring water, it's minutes. He intends to keep them down. Through four games, Mutombo has averaged 24.8 minutes, not seeing more than 26 in any game.
That is fine by all concerned.
"I'm kind of getting used to it. It's a big change and a big transformation in my career so I better accept it," said Mutombo, who averaged 36.3 minutes in Philadelphia last year, on par with his career mark (36.4). "If I can do it, I might play maybe 10 more years. But I'm not worried about it. All I've got to do is make sure when I'm in there to do what the coaches ask me to do.
"I think I'm past that stage of worrying about minutes. But now in my career I want to have a perfect game every night and just relax."
The Nets care only about being fresh when it counts: in June, they hope in the Finals. Everybody's numbers will suffer; their best scorer, Richard Jefferson, averages 17.3 points. In four games, only once has a player scored 20.
"It says we're a very unselfish basketball team. All these guys care about is winning," said Scott, whose gang sought to go 5-0 for the first time in the NBA history of the franchise against the Bucks here last night.
Regarding Mutombo, Scott said his 36-year-old center still can average double-figure rebounds and lead the league in blocks even with lower numbers. If not, big whoop. Only winning matters. So Scott monitors Mutombo's minutes, down equal parts by design and circumstance. Don't forget, it's not just the wear and tear of games that will cost Mutombo. It's practice, too.
"Before we started, [I felt] 36 minutes was too much, especially when you play 100 games," Scott said. "So if you can keep him around 30 minutes, that's enough time for him to get the job done and still keep him fresh for when the playoffs start.
"He's pretty much got the idea that I'm not going to play him a lot of minutes. He can play 28-30 minutes and still be very effective … At 36 years old, playing 35 minutes and then you have to get up and down in practice every day, it's going to wear you out."
For now, Mutombo is fresh and a huge reason why the Nets are making noise in the East and, according to Bucks' coach George Karl, displaying a "cocky" walk.
"They are a cocky team and [Mutombo] is a part of that," Karl said. "They know there will be a lot of games that the big guy is going to be a factor. He has added a defensive foundation that will only get better. Knowing the team is winning and confident, big players usually fit into those things quicker.
"They think they are good, they want to prove to people that they are good. They play the right way. They've got a great player in Jason Kidd leading them. Mutombo makes them only better defensively," Karl said. "That is one thing that you see on film, that they are not only confident on the defensive end of the court, they can win the game with their speed and explosiveness."
Minute by minute
The Nets plan to limit Dikembe Mutombo's minutes this season in an effort to keep the 36-year-old fresh for the playoffs. Here's a look at Mutombo's average minutes per season.
Year, Team Minutes
1991-92, Nuggets 38.3
1992-93, Nuggets 36.9
1993-94, Nuggets 34.8
1994-95, Nuggets 37.8
1995-96, Nuggets 36.7
1996-97, Hawks 37.2
1997-98, Hawks 35.6
1998-99, Hawks 36.6
1999-00, Hawks 35.0
2000-01, Hawks, 76ers 34.5
2001-02, 76ers 36.3
2002-03, Nets 24.8
Career average: 36.4 minutes per game
12.3 points, 12.3 rebounds, 3.4 blocks


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Samsung TVs with LG display panels might be developed starting next month
Samsung found itself in a bit of a pickle when Sharp notified the company late last year that it would stop supplying it with LCD panels. Sharp decided to end supply to Samsung after being acquired by Foxconn, a decision that was likely meant to promote the company's own TVs instead of backing Samsung in the lucrative LCD TV market.
Samsung then started to look for other suppliers who could fill the gap and crosstown rival LG Display seemed like the perfect fit.
It was then reported that LG Display might start supplying Samsung with LCD panels as early as June this year. Subsequent reports reiterated that claim and added that LG Display was planning on supplying 700,000 units of LCD panels for TVs.
The latest reports out of South Korea suggest that Samsung will start producing LCD TVs with panels from LG Display next month. LG Display is reportedly going to supply the company with 40-inch and 60-inch panels for its high-end TVs. The production is said to take place at Samsung's P7 and P8 plants in Paju, Gyeonggi Province.
Samsung remains the largest TV manufacturer in the world. It used to source up to five million LCD panels from Sharp. LG Display is said to supply up to 1 million panels which means Samsung still has ground to cover. It may consider sourcing panels from other manufacturers in China and Taiwan to fill the gap.


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Order online or call1-800-533-0255
From $739.00
Crank up your gaming, movies and multimedia to the maximum with excellent advanced processors from Intel. Triton will deliver great frame rates at high HD resolutions by using the power of the top quality AMD and Nvidia graphics cards. Available dual core i3 and Quads i5/i7 processors have great features like Turbo mode to rock the frequency past regular levels and Hyper Threading that excels is multi-threaded applications. Aggressive case designs with advanced cooling design - bottom mounted power supply and four or more cooling fans with 120/140/200mm sizes - quite and highly efficient. CrossFire multi-GPU configuration with dual AMD videocards for extreme gamers and enthusiasts. Easiest upgrades available with a lot of expandability on B85 and H87 chipsets.
Original Storm configuration includes:
Chassis - Rosewill Blackbone, Blue LED fanMotherboard - Intel B85, up to 16GB RAMProcessor - Intel Core i3 3220 3.3GHz Dual CoreMemory - 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 1333MHzVideocard - Nvidia GeForce GT 640 1GB GDDR3Hard Drive - 500GB, SATA-III, 7200 RPMOptical Drive - CD/DVD Burner +/-RW, Dual LayerPower Supply - 460W Dual 12V rails 38ASound - Digital HD 7.1 channel integratedCPU Cooler - Stock Ivy Bridge coolerSystem cooling - 2x fans 120mm, blue LED, silentUSB 2.0 ports: 4-6x, USB 3.0: 2x on the backDigital Audio Output: Optional S/PDIF (TOSLINK)Dual Graphics: CrossFire support optional Additional ports: Front Audio, HDMI, Gigabit LAN
Rosewill Blackbone
CM Elite 430
Zalman Z5
Zalman Z9 Plus
NZXT Guardian
CM Storm Scout
Please select all the option you desire below and add to cart. Starting configuration - $739.00
Computer case or chassis is important because is holds everything else inside, it provides cooling with multiple fans and it's what you see every time you look at your PC. Many cases have clear side window to see what's inside, all cases we offer come with full array of silent fans.
Please select cooling level for the processor and system. It is very important because lower operating temperature prolongs life of the CPU and allows much higher overclock.
Pick Intel Core i3 or i5 Dual Core with Hyper-Threading. Faster CPU with more cores and more cache can take on increased workloads such as modern games. We overclock CPU frequency at about 20% rate on every PC.
RAM - random access memory - stores data while you use your PC. More memory allows you to run more applications at the same time. Faster RAM speed allows CPU to process data stored in RAM faster.
Videocard - GPU handles graphics processing on your computer. Faster GPU cards with more memory deliver more detailed picture in games and higher frames per second - essential for gaming!
Dual GPU - video cards in SLI or CrossFire configuration provide almost double speed of the single videocard. Make sure you upgrade motherboard and PSU here. Cards should be of the same model.
Power Supply (PSU) powers your whole system. You have to have enough power for reliable and safe operation. Many hi-end videocards require a lot of power. Make your PC future proof - get good PSU today!
Hard Drives (HDD) store all saved content on your computer - music, photos, games. SSD is the fastest option today, comes at a higher price and smaller size but it's worth it. Get a backup HDD to store your media and games.
Additional storage volume may be required if you have a lot of data stored or if you want to create a backup. It's especially crucial when you pick small SSD as your main drive - it fills up very fast, use backup for media files.
Optical drives include CD, DVD and Blue Ray drives. All drives have CD/DVD reading and burning capability. Blue ray drive lets you watch hi-quality HD movies, and Blue Ray burner will let you record up to 50GB discs.
Chosen by professional gamers, the SB X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty sound card delivers the ultimate PC gaming audio experience - hear them coming before they even see you!
Gain wireless freedom with one of the WL adapters for internet connection and local networks. Available as regular 802.11g and new and powerful N modifications. Pick internal card or external USB 2.0
Cold Cathode Neon Lightning makes your computer stand out of the crowd. Located under the side window or front panel they will look great at dark. With on/off switch.
Windows 7 Home Premium has all the features for most of the users. Professional edition has XP emulation, Ultimate includes everything possible.
Do you have anything to tell us about your new computer? Do you have any special request? May be you don't want an overclock, specific case color or want no software?
If you need any add-ons and peripherals like monitor, keyboard and mouse, card reader, speakers and more - you can browse our "Peripherals" page. You can add your custom computer to cart now and navigate to peripherals from there.
2000-2013 Centaurus PC is a registered trademark of Centaurus Computers ©. All rights reserved. Custom computer prices, specifications are subject to change without notice. Centaurus Computers is not liable for any typo, photograph or any other errors and reserves the right to cancel any order at any time.


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Bothell Youth Court Advisory Board:
The Community Advisory Board consists of members whose knowledge, skills and abilities closely meet the current needs of this community collaboration. As the program continues to grow, those needs are ever changing. The board members are passionate about community engagement, youth leadership, and creating an alternative to the current ways in which youth first encounter the justice system. We meet four times a year and we strive to maintain both youth and adult members.
The Community Advisory Board will meet on the following dates in the 2018-2019 school year;
- 10/1- Back to BYC, CAB meets @ 5pm,
- 1/21 @ 5pm
- 3/4 @ 5pm
- 6/10- End of year celebration, CAB meets @ 5pm
Meet Our Board
Kara Adams
Lori Caldwell
Gina Christiansen
Joren Clowers
Michelle Gehlsen
Eileen Jowell
Sandy Hayes
Sharyn Mehner
Nancy Pipinich
Vicki Smith
Camille Walsh
If interested in becoming an Advisory Board member, please fill out an application.


text: Miyuki Crochet On CTV Montreal News! by Stefanie Nakamura Oct 29, 2015 http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/video?playlistId=1.2571671 Tagged with: christine long ctv ctv canada ctv montreal ctv news miyuki crochet pop montreal puces pop shop in person shop local shopping montreal trends Older Post Newer Post 0 Comments There are not comments yet. Be the first one to post one! Leave a comment Name Email Message


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By Henry John Steiner
Historian of Sleepy Hollow
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" was completed by Washington Irving 200 years ago, in 1819. (2019 is its bicentennial year!) The larger work in which it appears, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. was published by Washington Irving in installments during 1819 and 1820. Soon collected editions of the The Sketch Book appeared in Britain and the United States. The next-to-last offering in that work is entitled, "The Angler," which precedes "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."
This was not always the sequence of the two sketches, but let's not get too deeply into the historical "weeds" of their publication. Suffice it to say that, at a later date (1848), Irving considered "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" to be the most compelling "finale" to The Sketch Book.
In "The Angler," Irving neglects to mention his own earliest experiences on a trout stream in Sleepy Hollow. Although, some of that first experience seeped into the pages of both "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "The Angler." These angling forays began in the summer of 1798, when Washington was the youngest and frailest child of the Irving family in New York City. That summer waves of yellow fever that summer visited the port city of New York, a deadly side effect of its trade with the Southern States. Irving's family worried that one such wave of yellow fever might carry the fifteen-year-old boy away.
Irving was sent for the summer to the Hudson River community of Tarrytown, New York. A few years before, his oldest brother William had married Julia Paulding at the Paulding home on the Tarrytown waterfront. Julia was the daughter of a formerly prosperous merchant, William Paulding, and she was the sister of James Kirke Paulding who would in time become one of Irving's literary collaborators. (Note, the many Paulding children were also the cousins of local Revolutionary-War hero, John Paulding, well known in Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow lore.) The marriage of William Irving and Julia Paulding significantly linked the Irving and Paulding families.
That summer of 1798, James K. Paulding served as Washington Irving's guide through the forests and along the streams of the Pocantico River Valley in nearby Sleepy Hollow. Paulding was an experienced woodsman who when still a child had partly sustained his family by local hunting and fishing. That was during the post-Revolutionary War years, while Paulding's father languished in the county jail for debt. Irving later remembered that it was during his 1798 visit that, "I first tried my unpracticed hand at fishing." He recalled, "A thousand crystal springs… sent down from the hill-sides their whimpering rills, as if to pay tribute to the Pocantico…. I delighted to follow it into the brown recesses of the woods; to throw by my fishing gear and sit upon rocks beneath towering oaks and clambering grapevines…. My boyish fancy clothed all nature around me with ideal charms, and peopled it with the fairy beings I had read of in poetry and fable."
A few years following the great success of The Sketch Book, James K. Paulding published his own book which included a friendly critique of Washington Irving's angling ability: "He was the worst fisherman we ever knew…"
Irving's essay, "The Angler, is loaded with tact and diplomacy. His earlier sketches had already charmed both sides of the Atlantic. He sought to maintain a cultivated American perspective that literally disarmed the British reader and informed Americans about nuances of British character, but never at the sacrifice of a good laugh. He also showed unique insight in the process of revealing aspects of British character to Britons! Of course Irving succeeds in this while demonstrating uncommon literary ability and sophistication. The American writer is entertaining, poking fun at Americans and Britons alike, but his humor never cuts too deeply. Where he jokes, he is generally good-natured and agreeable. An Anglophile and devotee of English Letters, Irving arrived in England only a few years after America's conflict with Great Britain the War of 1812, making his enthusiastic reception by British readers and British literary critics all the more startling. He seemed to show through his writings that he had come to Britain with an open heart. His literary tone and style would have resonated well with this audience, as it "looked back" to the stylistic antecedents of British literature's Classical Age and incorporated contemporary traits of English Romanticism.
Washington Irving was on a tour of Wales from July 31, 1815 to August 14, 1815, during which he toured with a traveling companion (James Renwick), kept a journal, and enjoyed more than a few local trout and grayling dinners. His journal sheds almost no light on the subjects in "The Angler." Irving appears to have had little interaction with Welsh country folk on that trip, although he recorded his impressions of the countryside and some figures in Welsh history. After completing the tour, he arrived in Liverpool where he was confronted with family business problems. Those troubles would continue to unsettle him until the bankruptcy of his brothers' export partnership in 1818. Irving was associated with the business as a kind of junior partner, but his personal finances and fortunes were bound up in it. A year after the Wales excursion he would travel to Derbyshire with his brother Peter in August of 1816. They sought to follow the "tracks" of early British angling authority, Izaak Walton. Irving would take yet another excursion through the Welsh countryside in late June 1817, with his brother Peter and William C. Preston—an American lawyer and political figure.
"The Angler" begins with a verse motto by 17th century British diplomat and angler, Sir Henry Wotton, who enjoyed fishing a particular section of the River Thames with famed seventeenth-century English angling authority, Izaak Walton. The work is a relatively short "sketch" of twenty-one paragraphs. It suggests to us an idea of what a varied work The Sketch Book is as a whole. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "The Angler" have aspects in common. They share a humorous tongue-in-cheek tone, and they both exhibit rustic backdrops and moments of Romantic Era sentimentality. Astoundingly, both sketches include a charactacter or person who was maimed by a cannonball! But, unlike "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," "The Angler," is a work of nonfiction. One might called it an essay or a short memoir.
The sketch begins with its narrator observing how the legacy of early British author/angler, Izaac Walton, and his book, The Compleat Angler (1653) have seduced and inspired young gentlemen in America. The old book has ignited a vogue which Irving describes as, "angling mania," a craze similar to that produced by Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, which inspired British boys to run off to sea. We learn that "The Angler's" narrator and a group of his friends were enthused one winter by reading The Compleat Angler. By early summer the young men traveled together on a quixotic adventure along an American country stream.
A particular type of novice fisherman is introduced, one whose attention to the requisite dress and accoutrements of the sport absurdly outweigh his skill. He is a common "butt" character-type of English literature, with precursors reaching back to and before the cross-gartered Malvolio of Shakespeare's, Twelfth Night. We see him in twentieth century American Westerns too, he is the "dude" or "tenderfoot," the ludicrously tailored cowboy who arrives at the ranch never having "thrown" a rope in his life.
The narrator contrasts the typical English trout stream with one in his native United States. The American stream is a rough, steep brook set in the terrain of the Hudson River Highlands. It is contrasted with a typically placid English trout stream. He later returns to the American stream, which presents itself as an angry torrent. He describes how it runs its course, becoming agreeably peaceful as it descends to more level terrain. The paragraph ends with a bit of unexpected and gratuitous misogyny. The stream is likened to a housewife who is petulant and difficult at home, but who walks out in public with a phony air of sweet good-nature.
There follows a short revery, invoking the memory of a cherished rural scene in the narrator's home country. He places before us a picture of peace and calm along a rustic brook, finishing with an earnest exclamation.
We next meet "the bungler," a self-effacing portrait of the narrator as an angler. He lacks the "patience and adroitness" for angling and finally abandons the pursuit of trout to meditate and dream under the trees, submitting to the realization that it was the idea of angling that had bewitched him and not the actual practice. The narrator watches his companions as they continue their hunt, secure in their delusions about the sport. The creatures of the forest are alarmed and unsettled by this indelicate intrusion on their precincts.
The narrator remembers that after a day of these inept efforts the squad of over-equipped gentlemen had little to show for their exertions. Soon there appeared a young country boy, a proficient "urchin," who equipped with the crudest equipment put to shame the older empty-handed amateurs.
The narrator fondly remembers the special camaraderie in his group of friends, sitting about having lunch at stream-side, reading aloud passages from Walton. He remembers the warm feelings they shared. We learn that these thoughts and feelings are triggered by the narrator's more recent experience on the River Alun in Wales. [The River Alun empties into the River Dee about twenty miles south of Liverpool in England.]
There he encountered a "weathered" old man with a wooden leg who was coaching "two rustic disciples" in the art of angling. One of these followers he typed "the poacher," from his slightly cagey manner. The other he labeled "a tall, awkward country lad." Our narrator refers to an old treatise on fishing which touts the pure and unoffending nature of the average fisherman and the moral benefits of angling. The narrator claims that, since reading Izaak Walton, he has a "kind feeling" for those who fish. Walton manages to turn the accustomed image of the idle, uncouth fisherman on its head, crediting the angler with industry and spiritual devotion.
Our storyteller believes he can read into the character of the old man an attractive, "cheerful contentedness." This energetic and skilled instructor demonstrates to his students how best to hold the rod and the proper use of the other equipment. The beauty of the Welsh countryside is noted.
The narrator then joins the old angler for the better part of a day, encouraging him to speak broadly on angling. For, "who does not like now and then to play the sage?" The angler is also spurred on to provide details about his life in general.
The old man tells the narrator that he spent many of his youthful years in America, where he was ruined by an unscrupulous business partner. He relates the story of how he lost his leg—carried away by a cannonball when he served in the British Navy. [Note that, in the story which follows "The Angler," there is a character—the Headless Horseman—who has also lost a body part through the agency of a cannonball!] Due to this wound, the old man enjoys the benefit of a pension amounting to nearly forty pounds-per-year. In the words of the narrator, "This was the only stroke of real good-fortune he had ever experienced…" It enabled him to retire to his native village and live the life of an avid fisherman of modest means.
The old man, too, has an appreciation of Walton's famous book. His manner is generally outgoing and positive by nature. He does not appear to carry any ill will toward the United States for his business misfortune in America. One of the old man's "students"—the tall awkward one—is the son of a stout widow who keeps the village inn. No doubt the old man hopes that this will secure him a favored place at the inn's fireside and an occasional free drink for years to come.
Anglers, while exacting cruel torments on the live bait they employ, nevertheless tend to be, by nature, gentle and serene. The English are adept and systematic at "softening" nature. The dedicated angler receives beneficial religious ministrations as he walks in a "meadow along some gliding stream." To him, it is a God-affirming experience, or so Walton asserts. A short poetic interlude about fishing follows.
The narrator seeks out the old man in his country village, arriving at the one-room cottage a few evenings later. The description of his modest home seems intended to endorse the wholesome, simple lifestyle of a humble Briton. The man lives with a cat and a parrot in the well-ordered modest cottage amid simple pleasures. He is regularly mopping and sweeping it to keep it tidy. He speaks of his fishing activities that day—the big trout he caught—and tells of sending the fish to the woman who keeps the inn, presumably to enhance his good will there.
The old man is praised and approved of for his peaceful contentment and good nature. He is a "universal favorite in the village and the oracle of the tap-room…". To that is added, "his life was quiet and inoffensive…". He is a regular attendee at church services (sleeping during sermons), and he desires to be buried in the churchyard where the remains of his parents lie. He can see that very gravesite as he looks out the window from his seat in church.
The narrator fears he has wearied his readers and must end his story. He loves the idea of fishing, but the practice of it will always elude him. He offers a tongue-in-cheek blessing on the reader, adapted from Izaak Walton, who hopes that his own reader will trust in God, "and be quiet, and go a-angling."
In "The Angler" Irving is entertaining and his style proficient and cultivated. Admittedly, he is not brilliant. Still, the sketch is preparatory to the final story of The Sketch Book. There we will find the voice and tone of "The Angler" employed in one of the truly brilliant works of American Literature, the virtuoso performance of Irving in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."
[Copyright © 2019 Henry John Steiner]


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More Information on Barrier Pipe:
The range used for securely distributing water via contaminated land (brownfield sites) or on building sites with possible future contamination issues, ie: petrol station forecourts.
It consists of a normal internal PE80 or PE100 layer (for carrying out the water) wrapped in an impermeable aluminium barrier layer (to stop contaminant ingress) and an outer polyethylene protection afterwards. Sizes 25-355mm are available.
What is Barrier Pipe?
The range features a reinforced pipe used to protect water supplies against certain types of contaminants from the ground that can degrade standard MDPE pipe and place your water supply in danger. There are different types of these product ranges available, including ductile iron, plastic-coated copper and multi-layer plastic with a metal layer. The most common range is used for water distribution and includes a polyethylene core surrounded by a protective metal barrier and covered with another layer of polyethylene to act as a protective barrier. This product range is identifiable using the black/brown stripes along the length of the outer coating of plastic. The picture adjoining reveals a cross-section. The methods of construction of are completely different to standard MDPE ranges and this makes it a much more expensive product to manufacture.
Why Use Them Over Normal MDPE?
The metal produces a barrier to permeation of hydrocarbons, such as gas, and protects the water in the core from contamination. These products not only provide added security against land that's already contaminated but also protects against any potential troubles going forward. Although innocuous at the time, a simple drip of oil or leak of gas from a vehicle sitting on a driveway can, over time, start to permeate through the floor and a contaminating substance could come into into contact with the pipe then contaminates seep through and gets into the water supply.
Each application will be evaluated on its merits. Where no ground condition assessment is provided to support the program, your water authority will make a determination about the pipe range based on the details on your program and other sources of info available to them. If they determine that the risk is sufficiently high, they'll specify that a suitable barrier pipe must be used. You then have the option to accept the decision or to provide them with a ground condition assessment to provide them with more info.
A further review can be made and may amend their decision. This will definitely incur a delay to your program so you are encouraged to provide a ground report with your application if you have any concerns about your building site. It is important to note that the choice of the product resides entirely with your water authority. You're strongly advised not to lay any pipework until you've sent your completed application form to your water authority, and spoken to a member of the team to ensure that you your distribution pipe and diameter is correct. If they ask for a protective pipe range to be installed and you install MDPE in your property boundary instead then your water authority can refuse to connect your supply.
When is it Necessary to be Used?
The previous use of the building site will determine whether the land is at risk of contamination and a barrier pipe range has to be used. We ask you to provide details about the present and past use of your building site to help understand the risk. The more detail you can provide, the clearer the assessment will be, and they would welcome additional sketches or photographs of the building site to support your application. If the land has been used for some of the following activities, there is a high possibility that contaminants are present in the ground which could harm or permeate plastic water pipes:
- Railway yards
- Petrol stations and/or onsite fuel storage
- Scrap yards
- Print works
- Paper manufacture
- Vehicle repair/manufacture/storage
- Tanneries
- Gas works
- Timer products
- Landfill sites
- Chemical works
In the absence of a ground condition assessment for a new or replacement distribution, where the site is presently employed as or has previously had activity in one of the above categories, your water authority is likely to ask you to lay your supply pipe in an approved material, such as protectaline or puriton pipe ranges.
How can I find out for sure if the land is contaminated?
To determine if you have contaminated land and will need to use barrier pipe, you'll need to get a floor condition assessment (soil report) carried out. We adhere to the WRAS Guidance Note 9-04-03 Issue 1, The Selection of Materials for Water Supply Pipes to be Laid in Contaminated Land, which you can get a replica of online. Then they might allow you to install MDPE if the levels of contaminants are below the limits given. However, if these limits are exceeded, then a more protective system will have to be installed. It's important to understand that a floor condition assessment is used along with other procedures to determine the probability of contamination to your supply.
Why EasyMerchant?
Because we're here. We're available! Need to call us? We'll answer. Want to email? Expect a reply. Order something, well - expect it to arrive! In the eventuality that you do run into an issue? Then expect us to put it right! That's why we called ourselves EasyMerchant - We stand out because we make your life a simpler one.
We keep two brands of barrier pipe in stock. Protectaline barrier pipes and Puriton barrier pipes giving our customers the choice of which system they prefer or are used to.
For builders, contractors and tradesmen in the construction industry who can't afford delays in getting critical goods. EasyMerchant guarantees you receive the products you require, on time to finish your project without any flaws or over-runs. We stock a comprehensive selection of items, that are accurately chosen and fast shipped so you can finish your projects on time, every time.
In our view customers usually buy because either the products are cheap, or because their provider looks after them, or because they want the goods quickly - So we thought we'd do all three! We hope you enjoy your experience using EasyMerchant, and if you have any issues at all, just let us know, we will look after you.
We Easymerchant believe in something known as the "Service Triangle". For the ones that haven't head of this earlier, it is the connection between cost, product and service. We believe you have to achieve satisfaction in each of these areas in order to fully please a client and win their repeat business. Unfortunately, this seems to have been lost on the majority of the other net merchants out there and the cyber space seems filled with cheap product ranges, cheap employees, and an even more cheaper delivery support. Here at EasyMerchant Limited we use our years of business experience to streamline the process. We utilise our long standing connections with industry leaders to create an unbreakable network geared solely to your own satisfaction. We use our buying power to buy in bulk and pass those savings on to you personally, and we carefully pick and package your order, before sending it out for shipping on a professional vehicle whenever possible.
Feel free to contact us if you need to view installation instructions or a list of product accreditations. We will be able to source these on request!


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"Have you forgotten the other bankruptcies? What was Christianity doing in the various catastrophes of society? What became of Liberalism? What has Conservatism produced, in either its enlightened or its reactionary form? … If we are indeed honestly to weigh out the bankruptcies of ideology, we shall have a long task ahead of us."
— Victor Serge, Midnight in the Century
"…the dimension of time has been shattered, we cannot love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes off along its own trajectory and immediately disappears. We can rediscover the continuity of time only in the novels of that period when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded, a period that lasted no more than a hundred years."
— Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler
Michiko Kakutani, former She Muppet of The New York Times, has a new book coming out soon. The Guardian coughed up some space for her to lament the collapse of truth in the age of Trump.
Invoking the bogeymen usually reserved for target practice on the right – Postmodernists and leftists – Kakutani is arrived to tell thee that she alone has survived with objective truth in her hands.
While editors, not writers, select headlines we begin with the bold faced lie used by The Guardian:
"The death of truth: how we gave up on facts and ended up with Trump."
This sets the stage. "The truth" used to exist because "we" had the "facts" but now "we" have Trump.
Except of course arguments about objective truth are as old as the dirt, systemic distortion and shredding of the facts is hardly an invention of Trump or the malignant trolls who support him and spout Orwellian bullshit about "professionals" hired to act as if they've been shot, or that environmental collapse is a "Chinese hoax" or a "left-tard hoax."
And just as, if not more importantly, the headline reduces Trump to a single cause and effect which elides the facts and thus is a negligent and mendacious contradiction of the premise in the headline.
Bigotry, fascism, cults of personality, the ill-effects of capitalism, the treachery of the aristocratic liberals, the mendacity of the media, the Southern Strategy of the Republicans, with their coded and not so coded dog-whistle calls to gin up the atavistic base of white supremacists, suffering under the vapor trail of the hangover that is the defeat of the Confederacy, are all factors in the rise of Trump.
As are the corrupt bargains of the neo-liberals, the corruption and thuggery of the intelligence agencies, and paramilitary local police, Russian sabotage, and the enforced apathy of millions of citizens who have been beaten into a state of passive aggressive indifference by a system, that is by any reasonable definition, an economic gulag and thunder dome, that pits all against all.
And then there's Kakutani herself.
Formally of the New York Times, which helped sell the war in Iraq and has blood on its hands. But not a word about that little historical sideshow, from the she Muppet or for that matter a word from The Guardian.
For The Guardian, situational ethics are old hat. With you no matter what should be their masthead. They are so without a sense of ethics, that faced with telling the truth and pointing out that it is ironic to have a former grand dame of The Grey Lady, complain about the death of objective truth precisely because The Times is a establishment whore, they instead, ignore the inconvenient truth, and hype Kakutani to use her as a wee cudgel with which they hope to beat Trump.
And while Trump deserves every verbal assault imaginable the fact (sic!) is that The Guardian is trading integrity for cheap points that will in the end cost them as much if not more than a Trump victory.
For Kakutani, memory is a function of perpetual selective amnesia. Judith Miller?(1) Who? Weapons of Mass Destruction? Mission Accomplished? Say what?
And so Kakutani having jettisoned the facts is free to launch her assault on the liars – for whom she has contempt not because they are liars but because they have given lying a bad name which makes it difficult if not impossible to have The New York Times as your coat of arms.
As we mentioned in a recent post (2), the true moral dilemma at the heart of Trumpism is that while his caterwauling about "Fake News" is designed to destroy the press and give him a permanent get out of jail free card, and is a reflection of his pathological narcissism, the truth (sic!) remains – Network, Broadcast News, Night Crawler, and Citizen Kane are not irrelevant and are in fact as damning today as they were previously.
William Randolph Hearst may or may not have told Frederic Remington, you supply the pictures and I'll supply the war, but what matters is that we know the press has been fabricating alternative facts since day one.
But to address that, Kakutani would have to bite the hand that feeds her.
Instead, she lines up for execution, ideas and people usually reserved for target practice by the conservatives, and the reactionary neo-fascists like Jordan Peterson and the cyber Brownshirts who use him as their spirit animal guide.
First up, right wing fascism and left wing fascism.
"Two of the most monstrous regimes in human history came to power in the 20th century, and both were predicated on the violation and despoiling of truth, on the knowledge that cynicism and weariness and fear can make people susceptible to the lies and false promises of leaders bent on unconditional power."
Well, she's not wrong. But she's not correct either. How did Fascism come to power in the West? Was it because the Nazis lied? Yes certainly, and it's also true that they came to power because the liberals and the conservatives told the truth – they did not want the left to come to power and in order to defeat them they advocated alliances with Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler. And let it not be forgotten that had they been successful, the Western liberals and conservatives, would have installed the arch fascist, anti-Semite, and mass murdering Kulchuk and the White Russians to continue the war against Imperial Germany.
Winston Churchill went to Italy, and stood by Mussolini (then on the payroll of British intelligence) and told the adoring crowds, that he was the West's champion who would defeat the godless Bolsheviks. And since Kakutani, former literary critic, is so fond of using literary guideposts as appeals to authority, it is worth pointing out that noted fascist and Jew hating genius, T.S. Eliot was also a vocal supporter of Il Duce, and wrote to the local British press to say how much he appreciated their refusal to give in to what he categorized as cheap sentimentality, and instead celebrate the noble god fearing great deeds of Mussolini and his Blackshirts. And some three weeks after that, he was no doubt pleased to read about the hundreds of dead union members, and leftists in Turin who Mussolini and his thugs had murdered.
But of course, why let the dreary facts get in the way of a good rant.
Certainly not Kakutani or The Guardian.
None of which is to say or even suggest that Hitler and Stalin wren't monsters. But it is to highlight that Kakutani, ostensibly railing against the abuse of factual argument, is engaged in a shabby abuse of factual argument. And while that is by itself cause for both mirth and concern, what is far worse, and cause for genuine alarm, is that it showcases the extent to which, as always, the aristocratic liberals are willing to sacrifice everyone else to preserve their power and to give aid to both the morally bankrupt status quo and the fascist attempt to destroy the status quo.
Consider Kakutani's use of Hannah Arendt:
"As Hannah Arendt wrote in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, "The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e the standards of thought) no longer exist.""
Once again what strikes any intelligent reader is not that Kakutani is wrong, though she most certainly is, but that she is wrong in the manner of someone who has made no effort to hide her gross intellectual negligence. Instead she has barfed a cut and paste hatchet job that is slightly above the Jordan Peterson level of demagoguery 101. And that of course is not something that requires much effort. After all if Peterson has any idea who Hannah Arendt was we'll eat a hockey puck.
And why do we draw your attention to Arendt? Because while she does indeed say, exactly what Kakutani claims, she also unloads a series of intellectual hairballs of such magnitude that they rise to the level of rhetorical fatbergs.
For example:
"Equality of condition, as the Jacobins had understood it the French Revolution, became a reality only in America, whereas on the European continent, it was at once replaced by a mere formal equality before the law."
This is such a distortion of the facts, such a misleading, and misreading of the record, such an abuse of history, that one's first impulse might be to consider it farce. But that passes quickly and what we have instead is not only that Arendt is cherry picking, but that Kakutani is as well and in the service of making the claim that by appealing to Arendt, she bolsters her claim to be standing the watch against the barbarians who, cherry pick the truth to create dangerous sets of alternative facts that can easily help establish tyrannical nightmares.
Arendt's work and the stunning elisions, distortions and outright pratfalls, would require an entire other book to document, and so must wait for another time as our task here, is to pin Kakutani to the wall as an agent of the aristocratic liberals, who are determined to push back against the left by using Trump as a pretext.
This is the crucial issue.
It is no accident that Kakutani's primary target is Postmodernism. By using the Jordan Peterson method of screaming that Michel Foucault and Karl Marx are hiding under your bed – leather restraints and a worn copy of Das Kapital at the ready – she not only takes aim at Trump but fires off a bank shot designed to restore the aristocratic liberals to their position of authority, at the expense of the increasingly angry resurgent left.
The context here is the rise of Bernie Sanders and more recently, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The rejection of Clintonian neoliberalism, the contempt that the increasingly militant left has for Nancy were capitalists get used to it Pelosi, the manufactured "crisis of civility" in which the haute liberals wring their hands and whine that such boorish behavior will only energize Trump's base, are not a reflection of their fear or contempt for Trump and his base, but are a reflection of their fear and contempt for the left.
Kakutani is a princess of the liberal establishment. She stands with Rob Reiner who said that Robert De Niro's Fuck Trump would only help Trump when the truth is, if you are so feckless, and such a moral hermaphrodite that a famous actor saying Fuck Trump is enough to make you vote for a racist demagogic neo-fascist, then who the fuck wants you (to paraphrase the simplistic Joe Rogan) on our team anyhow?
Kakutani, continues:
"Arendt's words increasingly sound less like a dispatch from another century than a chilling description of the political and cultural landscape we inhabit today – a world in which fake news and lies are pumped out in industrial volume by Russian troll factories, emitted in an endless stream from the mouth and Twitter feed of the president of the United States, and sent flying across the world through social media accounts at lightning speed."
Indeed, as are establishment media platforms like The New York Times that gave Trump billions of dollars in free advertising, in exchange for what little remained of their souls, and billions derived from clickbait.
But in addition, in an attempt to raise the alarm about troll factories, how about a word or two about Nixon's assault on the media – the enemies list, itself an ugly incestuous bastard child of the Hollywood Blacklist, which in its turn fed into the Truman regime's loyalty oaths (not overturned until Bill Clinton was into his second term) or perhaps some discussion of the Yellow Press, with its ginned up violence against the Irish, the Jews, the Yellow Peril, opium dens, crack babies, and communists, hippies or "super predators?"
But no, of course not. Why would Kakutani dive into the shit pile that is the history of American journalism when her goal is to pretend that the assault on objective truth is recent, and down to the intellectual malfeasance of the Postmodernists and the left.
As she says, by way of another bank shot that uses Margaret Atwood as a cue ball to hit Orwell, and claim the right to use Animal Farm and 1984 as warnings:
"…what Margaret Atwood has called the "danger flags" in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm – that make a people susceptible to demagoguery and political manipulation, and nations easy prey for would-be autocrats.To examine how a disregard for facts, the displacement of reason by emotion, and the corrosion of language are diminishing the value of truth, and what that means for the world."
A disregard for the facts, indeed.
And so on to a litany of Trumpian offences – his egregious thuggish, dictatorial assaults on the judiciary, the civil service, and of course the press.
All true.
Except of course we return to where we started – the press is as often as not a shithole in which for every Woodward and Bernstein, there is a Judith Miller or Stephen Glass. Or Juan Thompson, Brian Williams, or Jayson Blair and Michael Finkel – both, along with Miller, formerly of The New York Times.
And then Kakutani finally gets around to sticking her rhetorical sow cow:
"How did this happen? How did truth and reason become such endangered species, and what does the threat to them portend for our public discourse and the future of our politics and governance?"
And her answer (first the head fake):
"It's easy enough to see Trump as having ascended to office because of a unique, unrepeatable set of factors: a frustrated electorate still hurting from the backwash of the 2008 financial crash; Russian interference in the election and a deluge of pro-Trump fake news stories on social media; a highly polarising opponent who came to symbolise the Washington elite that populists decried; and an estimated $5bn‑worth of free campaign coveragefrom media outlets obsessed with the views and clicks that the former reality TV star generated."
Unrepeatable? Why? Are the systemic defects of capitalism only to appear once? Again here is Kakutani sadly telling tales of dead kings, begging us to stand up for the truth but ignoring the facts – demagogues repeat with the frequency of the tide rolling in and rolling out and capitalism is an endless series of boom and bust, predicated on the ruling classe's ability to exploit the market, and control the levers of power. And a note about that "five billion" – that may have been free advertising for Trump but notice that Kakutani leaves out that it was a revenue cash cow for the media including her former employer The New York Times, who received an increase in clicks which generate money. Thus, Kakutani is either too stupid to understand the system and thus not worth listening to, or smart enough to avoid any facts that would get in the way of her agenda – which, hobbled by her cherry picking, is not worth taking seriously but should be seriously taken as an example of liberal mendacity.
And then, reversing course away from her pissing on the facts, Kakutani throws up the smoke and mirrors of the intellectual manque by appealing to the effete haute intellectuals – Trump, if invented by a novelist, she says, would remind one of Ubu Roi and a character discarded by Moliere – oh my dear, how droll – why even Moliere wouldn't bother to make use of Trump.
But then, to show she's down with the woke and hip to the jive, Kakutani flys her pop culture street cred by referencing Conan O'Brien's Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.
Trump, she tells us is indeed a clown, and a pathological liar but his ascendancy is a result of the contemporary witches brew of technology and not a regurgitation of any other demagogic tyrant.
Except of course for Father Coughlin.
Or Huey Long.
Or Hearst.
Or Lindberg.
And she adds the banal received wisdom that the current climate is down to "the toxic polarisation that's overtaken American politics"
Well where does that leave Preston Brooks?(3)
Where does it leave the Civil War or the Alien and Sedition Act which allowed the Founding Fathers to arrest a newspaper publisher because they didn't like what he was saying? (4)Where does it leave the lethal toxicity of the gossip columnists who were used by the government to destroy people? Where does it leave Fatty Arbuckle and the countless others ruined by the violence of the toxic polarization that has been endemic to America since the Federalists ginned up the mob to believe that Thomas Jefferson was, if elected, going to confiscate their bibles and burn them?
For decades now, she tells us, objectivity has been under assault.
"For that matter, relativism has been ascendant since the culture wars began in the 1960s. Back then, it was embraced by the New Left, who were eager to expose the biases of western, bourgeois, male-dominated thinking; and by academics promoting the gospel of postmodernism, which argued that there are no universal truths, only smaller personal truths – perceptions shaped by the cultural and social forces of one's day. Since then, relativistic arguments have been hijacked by the populist right."
And there it is. The liberal dog whistle – Trump is the fault of the 1960s radicals.
The "New Left" who, poor naive scoundrels, were eager to expose the biases of western bourgeois, male dominated thinking.
Which is exactly the same argument Jordan Peterson is peddling minus only his use of "cultural Marxism" which is itself, regurgitated Nazi propaganda.
But Kakutani is smarter than Peterson and knows better than to use that phrase leaving it hanging in the air as a suggestion, for which she can offer plausible deniability.
Notice she does not say the New Left was wrong (per se) but sticks the landing by saying that they lead directly to the alternative facts demagoguery of the alt-right – and therefore might as well stand accused as the one who have commited the crime of producing Trump.
"Relativism, of course, synced perfectly with the narcissism and subjectivity that had been on the rise, from Tom Wolfe's "Me Decade" 1970s, on through the selfie age of self-esteem. No surprise then that the "Rashomon effect" – the point of view that everything depends on your point of view – has permeated our culture, from popular novels such as Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies to television series like The Affair, which hinge on the idea of competing realities."
Except of course Rashomon by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, (the story upon which the later film is partially based) was written in 1915. And that is two years after the New York Armory Show in which the wider public was first exposed to Cubism which, had of course, sprung up from the collaboration of two European geniuses who were responding to the thunderous transformations in psychology and society in Europe.
All of which obviously predates the New Left. And of course is contextualized by the rise of the industrial nation-states, the reality bending technological changes wrought by cars and air travel, recorded music, the telegraph and a host of other factors none of which are Trumpian or have anything to do with the 1960s except in the sense that the revolutionaries of the New Left were the inheritors of the radicals of the preceding decades.
So again Kakutani, while barfing up her lies, distortions and half truths, not only gets the facts wrong but dances a jig on her own behalf because, she claims, she is telling us the truth.
Which brings us to this:
"I've been reading and writing about many of these issues for nearly four decades, going back to the rise of deconstruction and battles over the literary canon on college campuses; debates over the fictionalised retelling of history in movies such as Oliver Stone's JFK and Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty; efforts made by both the Clinton and Bush administrations to avoid transparency and define reality on their own terms;"
Well first, who cares if she's been reading about it? And secondly given what we've already detailed clearly she needs to read more, and better books or fewer worse books.
But what does she mean by "the rise of deconstruction?"
Technically she means the school of thought that holds that how we define who is in control of defining the narrative is as important, if not more important, than the narrative itself. In other words, not only a regurgitation of Hume and Bundle Theory, which pushes us back to the 18th century but also basic Buddhism, with its meditations on the idea of the self as ultimately an illusion comprised of an endless set of begets, which upon examination fly away into the ether.
Thus, as with the a-historical pettifogging neo-fascist blather of Jordan Peterson, Kakutani is not just wrong on points, she is as a result wrong morally, and is making common cause with the reactionaries.
Consider her dig at Oliver Stone's JFK. Notice that ironically the very language – the use of Stone's JFK, denoting that the myth of Kennedy is a question of who is telling the story and thus, ironically she is being Postmodern – but what is at stake of course is yet another distortion of the facts.
For Kakutani, Stone's film is a example of the fabrication of alternative facts that subvert the official record.
But of course Kakutani does not bother to mention the extent to which the pre Trump establishment rammed the official set of alternative facts down the nation's throat, and sold the world the set of interconnected lies about those six seconds in Dallas.(5) And don't forget, that it was a conservative republican, Arlen Specter, who invented the great alternative fact called, the magic bullet.
But for Kakutani, it is sufficient to invoke Oliver Stone as both accusation and proof of guilt that establishes the left as the fellow traveler and useful idiot of the Trumpian right because, per Kakutani, Stone traffics in flimsy, paranoid conspiracy theories that thrive precisely because the objective truth has been hijacked.
Thus, again without saying it, Kakutani positions herself with the establishment and dismisses the counter culture, which rightly looks to the coup that killed JFK, as one of the rally points in which the industrial scale Orwellian assault gained its power.
Again rejecting the facts, Kakutani references another naif who she tells us, it is right to proclaim that, ignorance was now fashionable with both left and right embracing the doctrine of relativity in which expertise was suspect and one opinion was as good as any other.
Except of course for Mark Twain in the middle of the 19th century, making the case that America, if not humanity itself, was full of liars, conmen, distorters, and assorted morons who couldn't discern shit from the truth if their lives depended on it.
What is The Man who Corrupted Hadleyburg, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court or the Million Pound Note, if not a clarion call to be aware of the human capacity for peddling bullshit and calling it faith and the human habit of fabricating, alternative facts.
Consider that the introduction to Huck Finn has Twain as Huck talking about Twain being more or less honest.
In other words, postmodern deconstructed and appearing vaguely in and around a vast cloud of cigar smoke, as master Twain snarls with barely concealed contempt at the fools.
But the issue here is Kakutani's attack on the right and the left – the suggestion of (i)moral equivalency in which the misguided leftists are the parents responsible for the monster Trump.
"The postmodernist argument that all truths are partial (and a function of one's perspective) led to the related argument that there are many legitimate ways to understand or represent an event. This both encouraged a more egalitarian discourse and made it possible for the voices of the previously disfranchised to be heard. But it has also been exploited by those who want to make the case for offensive or debunked theories, or who want to equate things that cannot be equated."
Is that in fact the postmodern argument?
Madness and Civilization says no such thing.
In criticising Darkness at Noon, Merleau-Ponty says no such thing.
Does Baudrillard say that?
Do Deleuze and Guattari?
And is that the philosophy behind Pynchon or Borges or for that matter is that what Cervantes meant when he subverted the authority of the singular narrator in Quixote back in the 16th century? Is that the truth behind Jacques the Fatalist?
And it bares repeating that Hume predates the 1960s and the Buddhists predate Hume so when Kakutani dismisses the idea that "truth" is a slippery bastard, what exactly is she saying?
Of course, lese majeste, she allows for how the New Left gave voice to the previously disenfranchised but of course, she adds, the cost has been too great.
But then consider how she links that moment in time to the Handmaid's Tale fascists:
"Creationists, for instance, called for teaching "intelligent design" alongside evolution in schools. "Teach both," some argued. Others said, "Teach the controversy."
Not false but, the Scopes Monkey Trial was in 1925 not 2016.
In order for Kakutani to be right, we would have to blame Darwin for igniting the creationists and the call to teach Intelligent Design.
And in a sense that's not wrong, but it means at best Kakutani is right but for the wrong reasons and the anti-Darwinian crusade predating Trump by a century plus means that again, the facts refute Kakutani's entire argument.
The assault on truth, on facts, came with us out of the ocean and went with us as we learned how to stand up and walk.
What is the myth of the Ten Commandments if not an manifestation of the anxiety generated by one set of facts versus another?
Go kill me a son, says god to Abraham because, faith is a belief in alternative facts. It is tyrannical, and subversive, and it is constant.
But then Kakutani digs deep to tell us that – Charlottesville and Trump's claims about moral equivalence are the result of both his fascism and the misguided rebellion of the left.
Which is in fact Trump's argument repurposed by Kakutani in order to claim that there is ultimately a moral equivalence between the left and Trump.
Sorry Michiko but you can go fuck yourself.
And to paraphrase Robin Williams, in the dictionary, under irony, see irony and thus, Kakutani quotes Christiane Amanpour who says apropos of the genocide in the crack-up of Yugoslavia:
"I believe in being truthful, not neutral. And I believe we must stop banalising the truth."
Well yes, but shouldn't Kakutani who begins by appealing to the moral and intellectual authority of Arendt, step in here to say, the banality of evil is Arendt's touchstone and that singular thesis predates Trump and the 60s?
Of course not. Instead we get this:
"As the west lurched through the cultural upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s and their aftermath, artists struggled with how to depict this fragmenting reality. Some writers like John Barth, Donald Barthelme and William Gass created self-conscious, postmodernist fictions that put more emphasis on form and language than on conventional storytelling. Others adopted a minimalistic approach, writing pared-down, narrowly focused stories emulating the fierce concision of Raymond Carver. And as the pursuit of broader truths became more and more unfashionable in academia, and as daily life came to feel increasingly unmoored, some writers chose to focus on the smallest, most personal truths: they wrote about themselves."
Notice the use of "lurched" with its suggestion of a drunken stupor – a lack of purpose or conscious action and instead as a result the attempts at reform are transformed from intentional rebellion, to the spasmodic defects of a political tourette's syndrome, devoid of moral justification or intellectual rigor.
As a result, Apartheid, Jim Crow, lynchings, segregation, misogyny, and the industrial scale genocides in Central and South America, and Southeast Asia, are elided from the narrative. COINTELPRO, Tuskegee, MKUltra, death squads in Vietnam, run by the CIA, support for Pinochet – all of it, per Kakutani just sort of happened, like bad weather.
Thus Kakutani, enters through the front door of reasonable liberal and exists through the back door of revisionist liberal reactionary with fabricated alternative facts to suit her narrative.
The rebellions of the 60s, rising in part from the civil rights struggles of the 50s and the righteous rebellions of the 1930s (themselves reaching back to the 19th century and so on back to the 18th century) which were attempting to stem the tide of the fascism and systemic mendacity Kakutani began her missive with, are all erased precisely because she is a sloppy, first rate huckster.
She has created a false narrative into which she inserts Barth, Barthelme and Gass (6) as if they were nothing more or less than either idiot savants or irresponsible* instead of towering talents, committed to doing what they could to stand the watch against the the establishments war on not just the truth but human dignity.
One wonders what exactly Kakutani thinks the response to Kissinger and My Lai should have been? What does one say in response to Pinochet and the Mothers of the Disappeared? Consider that the South American Boom – Marquez, Cortazar, Fuentes, etc were all committed leftists and fabulists using fable, myth and magic to deconstruct the official "truth" and then ask what exactly Kakutani believes would haven the better response?
Must we remind Kakutani that Picasso's Guernica is a taffy pull of fable, myth and the surreal, and that precisely because it is not realistic, it triumphs over the attempts to destroy reality?
The answer apparently, is yes we do need to remind her.
And we need to point out that the minimalism of Carver was a fabrication of Captain Fiction (Gordon Lish), who rewrote the original stories, and transformed them into Hemingway Lite to fool the public into believing Carver was someone he was not. Or, one could say that Lish and the publishing industry created a set of alternative Carvers.
And that Carver himself, said in response to Barthelme, that when he hears the words formal experimentation he reaches for a bottle of booze – a construction not so very different from, when I hear the word culture I reach for my gun.
And yes, we mean to contextualize Carver by reference to fascism not because Carver was even remotely a fascist, but because the context of his contempt for postmodernism was the Reaganite counter revolution of the 80s.
Minimalism was not just a lark but a product of the media machine that served Reagan from its knees. It, and Carver, were sold as a slick package stripped of complexity in an era dominated by the reactionary corporate fascism of Reagan's It's morning in America. And in a work that claims to be about defending the idea and ideals of objective Truth, Kakutani leaves out any truth that contradicts her version of events. Thus, we are treated to the spectacle of the former literary critic of The New York Times, ignoring the fact that Raymond Carver's work was, Fake News, and the truth was that his real work, remained buried for a generation while the machine turned a profit from bull shit – slick, packaged bull shit.
To compound this outrage Kakutani delves into pure unadulterated reactionary contempt for the avant garde.
She offers up literary fop and Reagan-worshiping, Tom Wolfe, calling for an end to experimentation. This leads her to jump to pointing out that writers like Louise Erdrich and Don DeLillo ignored him and instead followed in the wake of giants like William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf. The implication being that those two towering figures, with their literary fireworks, and their attempts to deal with multiple realities, were moral failures and are responsible for the demagoguery and fascism of Trump.
But, per Kakutani, Faulkner is a fraud specifically because he embraced the idea that there are multiple truths within the mono-truth – that ancient Greece can be found in a dilapidated plantation house in Alabama. And without saying it directly Kakutani is dismissing Mrs. Dalloway, and To The Lighthouse because Woolf dared to go where few others had ever been before.
Which of course means that, if true, Kakutani has Wile e Coyote style blown herself up with her ACME anti-postmodern device because of course Faulkner, heir to 19th and 20th century giants from Dostoevsky and Joyce predates the counterculture of the 60s. But more importantly of course is the fact that Faulkner reached back to ancient Greece to say, the past aint even hardly past and, the facts and the truth seldom have much to do with each other and that what you call the now is better summed up by his contemporary Eugene O'Neill who said: there is no such thing as the future, no such thing as the present only the past happening over and over again right now.
Thus, literary critic of the paper of record, Kakutani reveals herself to be a fraud and the very definition of a hack making common cause with the establishment. One assumes then that everything from Rites of Spring to Nude Descending a Staircase are next on her hit list.
And then like a fish returning to spawn, the aristocratic liberal must mention Philip Roth and the more mentioned than actually read, Writing American Fiction.
Here we refer you to our deconstruction of Roth's intellectual perfidy (7), and at this point we do not wish to dwell on Roth's reactionary half-truths – on his smug bourgeois dismissal of the Beat rebellion and their honorable defense of freedom, or on his reactionary defence of American apartheid, by pretending that it did not exist, his collaboration and apologies for the regime by making common cause with the right wing and Podhoretz, his contemptuous, feckless, and hypocritical digs at Mailer, or his a-historical borderline racist refusal to acknowledge James Baldwin or M.L.King, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
What matters here is that Kakutani doubles down on Roth's establishment collaboration in her effort to offer up the left, in order to either appease the fascists or buy herself and her liberal aristocratic friends more time.
While Kakutani wants to rally her troops, such as they are, around the weak bubbler that is Roth, we instead are reminded of Pablo Neruda.
Following the American backed coup that installed the fascists led by Pinochet, Neruda retreated with his wife Mathilde, to their home at Isla Negra.
There, after either being poisoned or waiting for his cancer to kill him, they waited for the thugs.
They did not have to wait long.
A few days before he died, the army arrived and busted down the door and ransacked the house.
They tore open cabinets, destroyed paintings and first editons of Baudelaire and Whitman.
When they were done, the officer in charge came to Neruda's bedroom. He apologized, saying that they had been told there was something dangerous in the house.
Neruda pulled himself out of bed and shuffled to the officer.
He stood in front of him and said:
No need to apologize. They did not lie to you. There is something dangerous here.
It's called poetry.
And we say, Michiko Kakutani is not right.
Editor's Note. The Violent Ink wishes to apologize for the extraordinary number of typos in this post. We are working to correct them and apologize for any inconvenience.
1 Judith Miller was a reporter with The New York Times who had an affair with Scooter Libby, a mandarin of the Bush Cheney junta. He fed her cooked information which she duly wrote up for The Times as part of the effort to distort reality and sell the war. All of the following were reporters caught either fabricating sources or plagiarizing the work of others.
Judith Miller, Stephen Glass, Juan Thompson, Brian Williams, Jayson Blair and Michael Finkel – both, along with Miller, formerly of The New York Times.
2 See the following:
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Brooks
4 See, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Aurora
5 Consider one of Kakutani's establishment voices on the idea of "objective truth"
"We wonder whether a genuine mystery is being concealed here or whether any similar scrutiny of a minute section of time and space would yield similar strangeness – gaps, in consciousness, warps and bubbles in the surface of circumstances. Perhaps, as with the elements of matter, investigation passes a threshold of common sense and enters a sub-atomic realm where laws are mocked, where persons have the life-span of beta particles and the transparency of neutrinos, and where a rough kind of averaging out must substitute for the absolute truth. The truth about those six seconds in Dallas is especially elusive; the search for it seems to demonstrate how perilously empiricism verges on magic."
— John Updike
6 William Gass was no fan of the establishment.
7 Regarding Roth and his essay, Writing American Fiction:
See The Guardian article here:
An for a brief and critical appraisal of Kakutani see the following:
Addendum: Regarding Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism.
The work seems a train wreck of contradictions, unsupported assertions and distinctions without any difference.
Given its length of over 500 pages we do not propose to refute each point.
A few examples will have to suffice.
First as it connects to Kakutani it is worth noting that Kakutani's premise, that the assault on objective truth is a recent phenomenon, and that its faults are the result primarily of leftists and postmodernists, it is well worth considering that she cherry picks Arendt who, mentions that the culture wars over truth and alternative facts is a subject to be found in Plato.
From the introduction:
"Plato, in his famous fight against the ancient sophists, discovered that their "universal art of enchanting the mind by arguments" (Phaedrus 261) had nothing to do with truth but aimed at opinions which by their very nature are changing and which are valid only at "the time of the agreement and as long as the agreement lasts." (Theaetetus 172)"*
Well, how very Trumpian or, Postmodern.
Arendt continues:
"He also discovered the very insecure position of truth in the world, for from "opinions comes persuasion and not from truth" (Phaedrus 260)."
Thus, Kakutani's appeal to authority blows up in her face. Far from being a support to the idea that the assault on facts is a recent issue, Arendt traces it back to antiquity.
Among the issues with Arendt generally, we take note of her comment that, per de Tocqueville, the growing late 18th century hatred of the aristocracy was down to a sense among the peasants that the aristocrats while losing substantive power had lost none of their privileges and as a result they came to be seen as parasites deserving of hatred. There is something to this if one were to focus on Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès' What is the Third Estate, (in which, for example, he writes: "The nobility, however, is also a foreigner in our midst because of its civil and political prerogatives.") but needless to say, Arendt does not. Instead we have this:
"Foremost among them is de Tocqueville's great discovery (in L'Ancien Regime et La Revolution, Book II, chap, 1) of the motives for the violent hatreds felt by the French masses for the aristocracy at the outbreak of the Revolution – a hatred which stimulated Burke to remark that the revolution was more concerned with the "condition of a gentleman" than with the institution of the king. According to de Tocqueville, the French people hated aristocrats about to lose their power more than it hated them before precisely because their rapid loss of real power was not accompanied by any considerable decline in their fortunes. As long as the aristocracy held vast powers of jurisdiction they were not only tolerated but respected. When noblemen lost their privileges, among others, the privilege to exploit,and oppress, the people felt them to be parasites, without any real function in the rule of the country.
In other words neither oppression nor exploitation, as such, is ever the main cause for resentment; wealth without visible function is much more intolerable because nobody can understand why it should be tolerated."
Well, needles to say this is a train wreck. How does one distinguish between the system that is oppressive, and those who are both functionaries of that system, and define it, and engage in acts of oppression? Where does one end and the other begin? How are the oppressed to distinguish one from the other and even if they could how could it fail to be a distinction without a difference?*
The French monarchy and the aristocracy maintained considerable arbitrary power up to the chaotic days of mid July 1789. The use of arbitrary detention was one of the great weapons of state terror and it was used widely well into the opening phases of the Revolution. Backed by the force of the army the monarchy may have been financially crippled but it retained great power.
Secondly Arendt has it that there was a great psychological shift based on a realization that the crown was destitute or at least insolvent. Certainly among the likes of the educated, such as Sieyes but among the rest of the society?
Exactly what would a 18th century peasant base such an assumption on? His lordship only whips or rapes three times per week instead of five? What would an average Jaques or Marie of the era know or understand about relative wealth?
Obviously Arendt is firing blanks. (And Kakutani is probably betting most people haven't read Arendt so she's free to cherry pick the details).
As to the idea that people will tolerate being oppressed because they believe the ruling class serves some purpose that justifies the oppression of the peasantry, it is clearly refuted by any number of historical examples where the exploited simply reached a breaking point regardless of the perception that the aristocrats serve some purpose or not.
A lack of food and massive casualty rates did not convince the Russian workers and peasants that the Czar was pointless but they did convince them that it was pointless to go on listening to the Czar tell them to starve and die.
Arendt seems very much to be chewing far more than she's bitten off.
*Regarding the muddle that was 18th and early 19th century Europe, one might consider the strange trajectory of, Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens. A radical, anti-clerical exile, famous for any number of thing including the single most popular "pornographic" novel of the era. He was for a time a diplomat and a favorite of the court of the King of Prussia. Was he an example of the hated aristocracy; a parasite? Was he a hero of the anti-clerical peasantry? Both? Neither? Were his "pornographic" works popular for their depictions of corrupt lascivious priests, or for the depictions of sex? Were his readers jealous or disgusted or both? Were his novels read for their sexuality or their philosophical meditations? Both? Neither?
History is not the neat set of categories as imagined by Ms. Kakutani.
*Regarding Plato's argument with the Sophists, it is well worth remembering (or learning as the case may be) that the founder of the Sophist's school was Protagoras. Plato considered him to be a dangerous relativistic thinker who did not accept objective facts.
Here's Karl Popper on the ancient Greeks (emphasis in the original):
"With the sole exception, perhaps, of Protagoras, who seems to argue against it, all serious thinkers before Aristotle made a sharp distinction between knowledge, real knowledge, certain truth (saphes, alethiea; later: episteme), which is divine…and opinion (doxa), which mortals are able to possess, and is interpreted by Xenophanes as guesswork that could be improved…"
Protagoras is mostly remembered, if at all, for a formulation that held: Man is the measure of all things."
It was that and the ideas that followed from it that led Plato in one of his more authoritarian fits of demanding discipline to his views, to castigate Protagoras as a relativist.
Thus, Kakutani is revealed both as a hack, and a run of the mill reactionary coughing up nonsense. Arguments about objective truth, and the facts that support it, and those who claim reality qua reality is a patchwork of guesses, and thus, subjective, are as old as the dirt.
Trump is not a product of the 1960s or the revolutionary fervor of 1917 or the fascism of the 1930s.
We are here reminded of Lucien Febvre's magisterial deconstruction of the idea that Rabelais was the beginning of Modernism. After reconstructing the era of Gargantua and Pantagruel, he stuck the landing by saying that while the first caveman to rub two sticks together to start a fire was, undoubtedly a genius, it doesn't mean he's responsible for the electric stove.
Of course Febvre was a scholar and Kakutani is a former critic for The New York Times.
A further note regarding the idea that anxiety and social tension about truth and subjectivity are recent developments. Here is a quote from a former editor of The New York Times Athens bureau, Theognis of Megara(emphasis added):
"Hope is the only good god remaining among mankind;
the others have left and gone to Olympus.
Trust, a mighty god has gone, Restraint has gone from men,
and the Graces, my friend, have abandoned the earth.
Men's judicial oaths are no longer to be trusted, nor does anyone
revere the immortal gods; the race of pious men has perished and
men no longer recognize the rules of conduct or acts of piety."
The genuine cause for concern is not the idea that these are recent developments but that they have been with us since the beginning and are as old as the dirt.