I am a big Maclolm Gladwell fan.  I have read all of his books.  I started with Outliers as a gift from a friend and dove into the rabbit hole.  Later on, I discovered his first podcast Revisionist History.  Anxiously awaited each episode, devoured them and then listened to some over.  Recently he has started a new podcast on music.


I've always seen him as kind of non political, fun and entertaining.  Harmless.  Recently I posted something on facebook on my appreciation of Gladwell and a friend retorted "Gladwell is a phony intellectual bullshit artist whose ‘contrarianism’ is carefully designed to give the illusion of asking radical questions while ultimately reinforcing the norms, power structures & reigning ideology of neoliberal capitalism."

Now I admit, I am not woke enough to understand where all that comes from or even know what all the terms mean or why I would or should be afraid of them.  Nothing about that sentence reads to me as oh shit I have been enjoying Hitler's musings.  And frankly, I am a Gladwell nuthugger enough I doubt anything said about him was going to sway me.


He later posted an article
www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/06/malcolm-gladwell-unmasked-a-look-into-the-life-work-of-americas-most-successful-propagandist.html
and said "What I was getting at is something much more sinister than talking about marketing and management techniques."

The article is a bit of a mind number.  Politely being racist about Gladwell's hair, painting him with associations with people he is not loosely associated with.

What I am getting at is kind of two fold.  One:  Anyone else familiar with Gladwell enough and the terms to know whether or not this is a warranted attack?  Two: Can we just enjoy some things in life without looking to see if the podcast you are listening to or book you are reading are funded by the right or wrong interest group?

Nov 20, 2018 16:18:24 GMT theend said:

I am a big Maclolm Gladwell fan.  I have read all of his books.  I started with Outliers as a gift from a friend and dove into the rabbit hole.  Later on, I discovered his first podcast Revisionist History.  Anxiously awaited each episode, devoured them and then listened to some over.  Recently he has started a new podcast on music.


I've always seen him as kind of non political, fun and entertaining.  Harmless.  Recently I posted something on facebook on my appreciation of Gladwell and a friend retorted "Gladwell is a phony intellectual bullshit artist whose ‘contrarianism’ is carefully designed to give the illusion of asking radical questions while ultimately reinforcing the norms, power structures & reigning ideology of neoliberal capitalism."

Now I admit, I am not woke enough to understand where all that comes from or even know what all the terms mean or why I would or should be afraid of them.  Nothing about that sentence reads to me as oh shit I have been enjoying Hitler's musings.  And frankly, I am a Gladwell nuthugger enough I doubt anything said about him was going to sway me.


He later posted an article
www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/06/malcolm-gladwell-unmasked-a-look-into-the-life-work-of-americas-most-successful-propagandist.html
and said "What I was getting at is something much more sinister than talking about marketing and management techniques."

The article is a bit of a mind number.  Politely being racist about Gladwell's hair, painting him with associations with people he is not loosely associated with.

What I am getting at is kind of two fold.  One:  Anyone else familiar with Gladwell enough and the terms to know whether or not this is a warranted attack?  Two: Can we just enjoy some things in life without looking to see if the podcast you are listening to or book you are reading are funded by the right or wrong interest group?

I generally tend to genuinely enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast.

When my very left-leaning best friend and I were discussing podcasts we liked listening to, and I mentioned MG's RH, my friend goes: oh, I'm not sure about him.. I hear here's not a great guy.

Turns out a girlfriend of my friend's wife was a nanny or something for Gladwell's kids and Gladwell apparently made passes at her, apparently despite her saying no. Then I think there was some supposed retaliation when she quit.

But that all sounded like a heap of he said, she said bullshit to me. Plus, I liked Revisionist History. So I ignored it, don't care if it's true or not, and continue to enjoy RH and just don't discuss it with my left-leaning friends (or at least those that lean too left).

Weird story, but I think it speaks to your second question: I think the answer in this day and age is a resounding no.

🤯, color me naive but I had no idea that Gladwell was even on the spectrum of politics. So weird. The link I posted reads to me like a conspiracy theory.


RH was so freaking good and entertaining.

Nov 20, 2018 21:29:16 GMT theend said:

🤯, color me naive but I had no idea that Gladwell was even on the spectrum of politics. So weird. The link I posted reads to me like a conspiracy theory.


RH was so freaking good and entertaining.

I was surprised too that he apparently had any political charge to him. When I first stumbled onto RH, I thought it was just a levelheaded centrist with no real stakes left or right who was covering neutral topics. If anything, I figured he must be left-leaning himself because at the time I figured only left-leaning people made podcasts that sounded like NPR productions.

Goes to show what I know and how silly some of my assumptions can be.

For however little it's worth, I still don't think MG or RH has any political spin. But maybe if it does, it's all just going over my head. So maybe I'm naive too.

I don't like Gladwell, but I can't remember why, which is basically me in concentrate form. I think I just found him to be mostly a bozo making obvious findings seem more complicated than they actually were (and always somebody else's research). Basically like Morgan Spurlock in author form, with much better hair.

I like him in small doses. His focus on anecdotes to make larger points sometimes feels lacking in providing enough evidence of a point he’s trying to make, but the anecdotes are generally entertaining and interesting enough that I think about them at least. Revisionist History is usually entertaining and has made a few arguments worth making too. I don’t have big hopes for the music podcast though, I did at first but two episodes in I’m left feeling more empty about the whole thing.

I usually recommend his collection of stories, “What the Dog Saw” as an intro to him as the small scale of his stories and the ability to skip one that doesn’t interest you is a good place to start.