Dinesh D'Souza's cramped quarters in the Ideas Industry - The Washington Post - 0 views
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both Frum and D’Souza changed since the 1980s, but they have tacked in different directions.
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Frum still identifies as a conservative. But he opposed Barack Obama without thinking of him as un-American or the devil incarnate. For that act of moderation, he lost some affiliations but cemented his status as a heterodox public intellectual during a time when folks only wanted to hear from partisan thought leaders.
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So is this merely a tale of one intellectual losing power while drifting toward the center while another intellectual is gaining power by becoming more partisan? No, because there are few tidy endings in “The Ideas Industry.”
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In a review of his book on Obama’s governing philosophy, The Weekly Standard castigated D’Souza for “misstatements of fact, leaps in logic, and pointlessly elaborate argumentation.” D’Souza’s later books received praise from some politicians, such as Newt Gingrich. Conservative intellectuals, however, largely disowned or ignored D’Souza’s theses
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I discussed D’Souza’s (d)evolution in “The Ideas Industry” as “modern exemplar of a successful partisan intellectual.” To elaborate further:
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Frum remains a well-read columnist in the Atlantic who frequently writes essays that engage intellectuals from all sides. D’Souza lost the respect of intellectuals across the political spectrum more than a decade ago. The only reason any serious person engages with D’Souza in 2018 is to perform the intellectual equivalent of telling the loudmouth drunk at the end of the bar to shut up about his crackpot Kennedy assassination theories.
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Once you migrate into the ultra-partisan corner, there really is no way out. D’Souza pretty much acknowledged this to The Washington Post during the Washington premiere of “Death of a Nation,” saying, “I would love to reach the middle-of-the-road guy, the guy on the fence. But I also am realistic enough to recognize that it’s going to be predominantly Republicans and conservatives who come to the film.”
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D’Souza has morphed from an intellectual into an entrepreneur. He has had some success with his right-wing propaganda films.