Malcolm Gladwell photographed in New York, 2013 (Photo: Dan Callister)
Malcolm Gladwell seems to believe that Israel has become a Goliath but he doesn’t think American readers are “self-critical” enough to absorb this truth. Gaby Wood of the Telegraph interviews him about his new book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the art of battling giants.
[T]he truth is, he doesn’t go all that far. There’s something troublingly palatable about the new book. In the endnotes to one of the chapters on education, for instance, Gladwell has much stronger views than he expresses in the text itself. “So what should we do? We should be firing bad teachers,” he suggests. But he has buried that stuff at the back. “Yeah. It’s true. That’s absolutely the case,” he admits when I put this to him.
Far from being a purveyor of self-evidence, I suspect Gladwell is much more radical than he lets on. Why hide it?
“The problem is, in America, there are all these landmines,” he says. “Like, I wanted to do a chapter on terrorism, and the question is, which example do I use? The example you cannot use is Israel – not because there aren’t a ton of fascinating lessons to be learnt in how Israel has navigated these issues in the course of its history. But it would have gotten politicised – no one would read your book anymore.” So he chose Northern Ireland, because it was “safer”, and because “the willingness to be self-critical in England is much greater than the willingness to be self-critical in America”.
But if he has things to say about Israel, why doesn’t he want to say them?
“I actually don’t even know if I do,” he says. “I just worried too much. I didn’t want the book to be put in a pigeonhole. And I don’t know if I’m smart enough. What’s interesting with Israel is that in some contexts they’re always David, and in some contexts they have become Goliath.
“Depending on your perspective. If I were to write another chapter to this book I’d love to write about that tension – because lots of people wear two hats. Companies do this all the time – they start out as Davids and become Goliaths.”
I wonder if Gladwell is referring to Jewish readers when he says that American readers are not self-critical. It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jewish readers, including ones in important editorial jobs, play an important role in making a book a bestseller. I recommend Goliath by Max Blumenthal. He knows what Israel has become, and is not afraid to describe it. P.S. You don’t have to be smart.
(h/t Michael Auerbach)
To be a public intellectual is not only about being highly intelligent.
It is also about being courageous, to speak what others do not dare to speak.
It is easy for us to speak truth; we have our daily lives that is divorced from any literary establishment(which is often less about talent and often about your opinions, who you know and so on).
Why has Chomsky been banned from most of the mainstream media during his career? His intellect is astounding.
It’s because he is an uncomfortable person; he views the media just as critically and he has no sacred cows.
Gladwell is very concerned with his place in the establishment, and as such, prefers to write about meaningless pop psychology. In addition, while you’re right you do not have to be smart to see the obvious Apartheid in Israel, tt helps being highly intelligent to truly delve deep into the system. Go far back in history, cover the country from every angle over a period of years.
Max Blumenthal does that.
Gladwell prefers talking about blinking.
Phil you are missing Gladwell’s point, I think, which funny enough is Gladwell’s point.
It is impossible to talk honestly about Israel in public because for the vast majority of people interested in the discussion only one list; either achievements or defaults, matters. Any mention of Israel as David or Israel as Goliath means to most close observers of this conflict that you are creating a polemic. A neutral statement is always going to be taken as Zionism or anti-Zionism.
Gladwell is saying he wants to discuss ideas not get caught up in (explicit) politics so other cases are better suited.
Well, alot of it is purely circumstantial. Technology advances give huge advantage to those who can use it well – whether in terms of setting organizations that can harness it effectively or through warfare asymmetry. It eliminates a past intrinsic disadvantage of the small – if you command hi-tech you can create advanced tools, for military purposes or economic one (and get prosperous); if you command cyber-tools you can get information (e.g. by able to spy on others) and disrupt other`s systems – no matter how big is the other entity; if you have an advanced air-force you can win wars against bigger rivals and then the ultimate warfare asymmetry tool – nukes. No matter how small you are if you have 100 warheads and long-range missiles you have a decisive advantage over entities far bigger than you. So real simply, Israel has been and still is a David by physical circumstances (it cannot change that) but has become a Goliath due to general technological advances (which it managed to exploit and create a compensatory trade-off).
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jewish readers, including ones in important editorial jobs, play an important role in making a book a bestseller. ”
Lets hear some Non Jews point of view?
wonder who will comment first.
“he doesn’t think American readers are “self-critical” enough to absorb this truth.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d0d02dda-7b79-11e2-8eb3-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz2h6tw0vR3
“During last year’s election the group called We Are Change gathered internet videos of Obama supporters being coaxed into criticising Mitt Romney, his Republican rival, over various policies (including drone attacks and extending the Patriot Act, which limits privacy rights for suspected terrorists), and then being informed those policies belonged to Mr Obama. One fellow said “wow”, but more typical was the young woman who replied: “Well, I understand what you’re saying but there’s a lot of other reasons why I’m going to vote for Obama, and hearing that stuff honestly doesn’t change it …”
http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/obama_supporters_actually_hate_obamas_policies/
It is such a mess. And then the Republicans have their own parallel media vortex. Issues such as Israel or climate change are essentially off limits.
Look at the Tea Party bringing the US to the edge of the fiscal cliff next week. The debate is so polarised. That is why progress on anything is so difficult.
There is a fundamental difference between how American and British media operate and it relates to the history of each country.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/03/edward-snowden-files-john-lanchester
“In Europe and the US, the lines between the citizen and the state are based on an abstract conception of the individual’s rights, which is then framed in terms of what the state needs to do.That’s not the case in Britain: although we do have rights, they were arrived at by specific malfeasances and disasters on the part of the state.”
In the US the Constitution is worshipped – that wouldn’t work in the UK. There is no such thing as eternal perfection . The Constitution is just another document, after all.
The UK experience has been about modifying as things change. Maybe it is because the UK has a much longer shared institutional history than either the US or Israel. I think the Brits understand contingency better than Americans do.
Brits are possibly more questioning, more sarcastic and less likely to take PTB pronouncements at face value. They acknowledge opposing viewpoints more readily. I think there’s a big difference between the dynamic of the Republican party and that of the British Conservative party at the moment and that history has a lot to do with it.