Thursday, December 13, 2007
The heart, she bleeds:
"It’s like death," Finkelstein says. "You keep saying you’re going to die, but you never really come to grips with it. And I can see I’m not going to get another job. I haven’t yet fully absorbed it."
His days are now spent in solitary scholarly pursuits; his bookshelves buckle under the weight of tomes by Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky. Notes of support from his students sit on a piano; there’s a photo of him and Noam Chomsky ("my closest friend") bare-chested on the beach at Cape Cod.
He was a Maoist revolutionary in his youth. By his own account, his academic career was bedeviled from the start by his politics: It took him thirteen years to wrest his doctorate from Princeton, since no faculty member would agree to advise him on his thesis, an analysis of Zionism. When he finally did earn the degree, none would write him a recommendation. He went on to take a series of adjunct posts—at Brooklyn College, Hunter, and NYU—rarely earning more than $20,000 a year...
...[After being denied tenure at DePaul], Finkelstein says, he lost seventeen pounds. "People saw me wasting away," he says. A student group held a hunger strike; Chomsky and others defended him. One of his colleagues made him a mix CD with tracks like "I Will Survive" and "What’s Goin’ On?" "I’m an old fan of the Negro spirituals," Finkelstein says. "I was going around singing to myself, ‘Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there?’ That’s how I felt. I was being crucified by the end."...
Get a job. Perhaps "heroic" Hizballah is hiring.
[h/t: Daniel H]
Click to share this post
ma.gnolia | Reddit | Newsvine | Furl | Google
Spurl | Yahoo | Blink List | Connotea | Feed Me
Simpy | Linkroll | Blogmarks | Sphere | Technorati
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Finkelstein's Coney Island Exile.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.solomonia.com/cgi-bin/mt4/mt-renamedtb.cgi/13830
Norman Finklestein cries himself a river..
At 54, Norman Finkelstein is pretty much back where he started. This summer, the leftist scholar—who made a name for himself in 20...Read More
7 Comments
Leave a comment to: Finkelstein's Coney Island Exile
Comment Info and Policy:
1) You must have Javascript enabled in your browser in order to comment (blame the spammers). If you don't know what that is, you're probably fine.
2) HTML is on, so basic html should work. Raw links will be made auto-clickable, too, so even if you don't know html you can just paste in the link and it should work fine. Keep the "http://" in it.
3) Comments are generally unmoderated, which means I don't necessarily agree with the tone and tenor of everything posted. In fact, sometimes people post things they don't really mean just to make other people look bad. The internet is an anonymous place for the most part. That said...
4) I welcome you to post here. I'd love to have your input, agree, disagree or just offer a different data point, really. If I didn't want any participation, I'd turn off comments. Be aware, however, that this blog and the comments section exist for my entertainment. Therefore, I reserve ALL RIGHTS here, including the right to remove any or all comments on nothing more than a whim. Please don't even bother complaining. I'm the one providing the space and the free news and thought buffet. I don't owe anyone anything.
Anyone who posts here will be treated as my guest. That means I'm happy to be polite as a default, but if anyone is rude to the host they'll be unceremoniously shown the door.
It may pay to recall a famous line from the Tom Selleck magnum opus, Mr. Baseball: "Jack-san, you want Yoji's advice about the babes, you come to Yoji with respect."
5) Enjoy your stay!
Maybe Finkelstein could start up a 'scared straight' program for young Marxists. He can show young NYU students the ugly, harsh realities that come from an academic obsession with Marx and Engels. Chomsky is the gateway drug. Once you open a copy of "Manufacturing Consent" it's a nonstop path to living in a van down by the river..
"Negro" spirituals???
How about "Colored"?
Norman is SO out of touch with reality.
The man inspires a mixture of pity and contempt. Reminds me of Mordechai Vanunu's pathetic life.
only shows how powerful and effective Jewish interests can be when they want to destroy a man. well done.
Cecil, can you arrange for a Dubai business man to give Norman a stipend or get Norman a meeting with mahmoud ahmenijad of the Islamofascist Regime of iran?
Destroyed?
Finkelstein is on a well-paid speaking tour of Lebanon (I'd love a free tour of Lebanon, wouldn't you?) then on to speak at Oxford (nice gig!) He recently toured Turkey and the Netherlands, and is on a multi-stop tour of California in late February. Oh and Japan, did I mention that just befoe this article ran he was on a speaking date in Japan?
Nice life.
His books have been translated into German and Arabic, and sell in big enough numbers to give the man a comfortable income and lifestyle. Not to mention free foreign tours and lecture fees.
Just think of all the Frequent Jihad Miles he's accumulating!