To Review or Strut Your Feathers

I have been reading The American Prospect since it was launched back in 1992, and it is one of my favorite publications, but even with a magazine you like, you are bound to sometimes be disappointed. One such instance happened today when I read Chris Arnade's snarky review of Anne Case and Angus Deaton's new book "Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism" and Nicholas Krystof and Sheryl Wudunn's "Tightrope - Americans Reaching for Hope." I have only read "Deaths of Despair", but I often read Nick Krystof's NYT columns, so I think I know where he comes from.

Arnade writes that Case and Deaton are "good enough scholars" and he can't really complain on their path-breaking research, "but it can’t replicate spending years in a neighborhood where you are woken up nightly by sirens, or a desperate knock from a neighbor whose son just OD’d, or the police investigating a killing out front." Well, he could have said the same thing about Karl Marx, who spent much of his time reading the British parliament's Blue Books at the British Museum's Reading Room. 

The critique of Krystof and Wudunn is even more bizarre, depicting them as naive philanthropists. "They insist that working-class kids leave behind their former lives, give up their worldview, and become educated. All with guidance, help, and enlightenment from America’s new noble class." 

At the end of the review Arnade goes all out, accusing the authors of "intellectual colonialism from the educated elite", which he accuses of wanting to "strip-mine" the poor, "taking what they want and leaving behind towns filling with death and despair. Lots of Americans want to stop being told they are on the wrong ladder. They want to live in a country that doesn’t insist you have to live like the elites. They want to stop being considered losers for not wanting to shape their life around building a résumé."

If there is anybody being condescending, it is not the authors, but the reviewer. 

I was surprised and disappointed to find this subpar piece in The American Prospect.