Why We Hate Us

Update from Dick Meyer

shawnnicholls — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 12:23:33 +0000

I have a new column up on NPR.org. It goes far afield from politics and current events. The headline is “Cancer And Community.” The topic puts rather bracing perspective on all the pleasant and fun events I have been since the book was published.

Many readers have made Herculean and successful attempts to reach me, which is very flattering and encouraging. The easiest way to be in touch is through this e-mail: editorial.director@npr.org. Thanks.

Dick Meyer On Faith

shawnnicholls — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:46:06 +0000

Against the Grain
Community, Choice And Faith
Dick Meyer

Athletes have an inelegant term for the fans, reporters, owners and managers who like to hang around them. They call them jock sniffers.

I have been a faith sniffer. Having no ability or capacity for faith, religious practice or mystical experience, I am fascinated and attracted to people who do.

In high school, I spent a long, hot Ozark summer working on a ranch with a man who came back from the Vietnam War as a born-again Christian. He was studying to be a Pentecostal preacher, and his final exam was to convert me, the lonely little Jewish boy with whom he worked. I enjoyed the hours we spent picking rocks out of a hay field, when he preached at me and I argued back, citing Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche. I majored in comparative religion in college.

Since then, I have thought consistently about why it is so hard for many Americans of my generation and younger to embrace traditional inherited religion. “Traditional” is the key word here. It is obvious that since the 1960s there has been no shortage of spiritual seeking. There has been an equally obvious rise in alternative religion, including Christian fundamentalism, which isn’t especially traditional in many parts of the country. This is rather different than Europe, which has tended to just reject religion in all forms.

Click here to read the rest of Dick’s “Against the Grain” NPR column.

Dick Meyer in the Media

bookauthor — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:30:39 +0000

The media appearances and reviews continue to roll in for Dick Meyer’s Why We Hate Us. Check out the links below.

RJSBookLady

LA Times

Miami Herald

Herculodge

MuskogeePhoenix

Talk of the Nation

NPR

San Francisco Chronicle

WNYC’s Leonard Lopate Show

NPR Morning Edition

CBS Early Show

Patt Morrison’s Blog on Dick’s NPR appearance

Video Interview on Marketwatch

Also, check out this blog review.

Browse Inside Why We Hate Us

shawnnicholls — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:42:02 +0000

Flip through the first chapter of Why We Hate Us by clicking here.

A Civic War

bookauthor — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:20:28 +0000

My column last week tried to tie some of themes of Why We Hate Us to the 35^th anniversary of the end of the Watergate hearings in the summer of 1973. It was the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of high school and I watched the hearings every chance I got. I was already a political junkie; that happened in 1968.

In the chapter called “A Civic War,” I discussed in some detail how Watergate was followed by a weakening of political parties, a rise in political consulting and marketing, and perpetual series of feckless pseudo-reforms. In this piece, I talk more about the civic distrust fostered by Watergate, distrust which hasn’t lifted more than three decades later. Admittedly, it was a stretch to hang that on Watergate, but I do think it is interesting how little change there has been in the basic civic mood since the 1970s.

The Anchoress on Dick Meyer

bookauthor — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 14:44:19 +0000

One of the most unpredictable, thoughtful and hilarious bloggers I have ever come across is a conservative Catholic who writes as The Anchoress. She wrote a post about my column this week that was fascinating. Whenever The Anchoress tackles a topic, she will say something you’ve never thought of before.

Full disclosure: thanks to a mutual friend, The Anchoress and I became pen pals. She helped with the manuscript of Why We Hate Us and was the muse for the title. Browse her blog and you’ll be delighted. If you tend to lean left and east, and tend to seek out opinion writing you agree with, get unanchored from old intellectual habits with The Anchoress can be quite fun.

A Note from Dick Meyer, Author of Why We Hate Us

shawnnicholls — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:49:51 +0000

Thanks for checking out this little Author’s Notes part of the site Crown have kindly built to pull together some of the activity around my book, Why We Hate Us. As I have written an online column for many years, have lots of relatives and more than seven close personal friends, there are a few people mildly interested in this project. That’s not even the counting the people how always hated my column and put me on their enemies list.

Today I just want to share that I have resumed my column. I wrote it for CBSNews.com for many years. Some of those columns can be found here. Search and ye shall find many more, however.

The debut column at NPR.org is here. I called it “Consuming the 2008 Campaign.” It’s sort of a recovering cynic’s guide to what to be grateful for in this long campaign. A good blog called The Moderate Voice kindly linked to it.
As it was on CBS, the column is called “Against the Grain.” It’s actually a tribute to Sir Isaiah Berlin, the British historian of ideas who published a wonder collection of essays called Against the Current. I had a chance to study with Berlin and as a graduate student and actually wrote my unreadable thesis about his political philosophy. Berlin came back to my life in a big way this past year as I worked on my book.

The last chapter of the book is the result of thinking about Berlin’s ideas for 25 years and coming back to them as a father, journalist and citizen, not just as a student. Berlin understood the anthropology of philosophy without degrading philosophy. He could empathize with why people believed what they did; he understood the questions they sought to answer and the inherited ideas they wanted to reject. All this made ideas more interesting to Berlin, not less. He believed in measuring a philosophy by its utility and honesty, not its internal coherence or grandiosity.

I’ve perpetrated enough grandiosity here. I expect my columns will now run regularly on Thursdays on NPR.org. Check them out if you’re bored at work.