Robert Godwin just takes these two apart. This is gonna leave a mark.
The various elements that make up the perversion that drives men like Keller and boys like Pinch are too well known to dwell on at length here. In the most general terms the perversion presents as an emptiness of soul, an abiding cynicism about the good that lies at the foundation of the nation, a smug waft of amoral sanctimony, an obsessive concern with the primping and feathering of the body, an immense self-regard for one's privileged set that justifies the notion that a few men can know better than a majority of citizens what is good for all, and a kind of intellectual pouting that is unremitting when the majority ceases to respect, patronize, and admire the trappings and outer glitter of the perversion.
A more precise term for the feeling both the man Keller and the boy-man Pinch receive from their compulsive "news-making" activities is frisson, meaning "A moment of intense excitement; a shudder." A frisson has much to recommend it over an its more intense cousin. A frisson is more easily had than an orgasm and not nearly as messy. It can be shared in polite company and arrived at through writing or speech. To achieve a frisson does not absolutely require the couple disrobe, unless the two involved are also interested in frottage; which is properly described as " The act of rubbing against the body of another person, as in a crowd, to attain sexual gratification," or its secondary meaning, most interesting when applied to Keller and Pinch's means of attaining their gratification, that of " making a design by placing a piece of paper on top of an object and then rubbing over it." In any case, even a cursory examination of the actions of the Times over the past half-decade would confirm that there is a lot of rubbing of one thing against another in the highest editorial offices, even if it is limited to a frottage of sensibilities similarly malformed.
Much more at the link. |