Synopses & Reviews
In this elegantly written book, Ronald Roberts establishes a lineage for the Tough Love Crowd intellectuals that is both revealing and persuasive. The result is a timely and original contribution to the scholarly debates about critical race theory and to the public debate about black neo-conservatism.
--Andrew Ross, Director, American Studies Program, New York University
Will provoke a lively and vigorous debate among liberals, conservatives, and radicals of many different colors. Roberts is a cultural critic in the tradition of Cornel West, Trey Ellis, Michele Wallace, and bell hooks, with a powerful, passionate, and brash voice.
--Angela P. Harris, University of California, Berkeley
Ronald Roberts is refreshingly brash, brilliantly bold, and creatively intelligent. And he is unmistakably on to something. Clarence Thomas and the Tough Love Crowd carefully documents the manner in which the white majority is consistently able to divert the best minds in the minority community to the cause of continued racial oppression, by infiltrating minority conceptions of truth, meaning, and reality. Roberts manages to transcend the stale liberal-conservative debate without falling into the morass of postmodern paralysis. Social observers who pass up this book will be missing a front-row seat to the unfolding epistemological revolution.
--Girardeau A. Spann, Georgetown University Law Center
Timely and original. Roberts is an excellent writer and the lineage he traces for the black Tough Love intellectuals is revealing and persuasive. There is a real need for this book.
--Drucilla Cornell, Yeshiva University
In recent years, black neoconservatism has captured thenational imagination. Clarence Thomas sits on the Supreme Court. Stephen Carter's opinions on topics ranging from religion to the confirmation process are widely quoted. The New Republic has written that black neoconservative Thomas Sowell was having a greater influence on the discussion of matters of race and ethnicity than any other writer of the past ten years.
In this compelling and vividly argued book, Ronald Roberts reveals how this attention has turned an eccentricity into a movement. Black neoconservatives, Roberts believes, have no real constituency but, as was the case with Clarence Thomas, are held up--and proclaim themselves--as simply and ruthlessly honest, as above mere self-interest and crude political loyalties. They profess a concern for those they criticize, claiming to possess an objective truth which sets them apart from their critics in the establishment Left. They claim to be outsiders even while sustained by the culture's most powerful institutions. As they level attacks at the activist organizations they perceive as moribund, every significant argument they advance rests on fervent mantras of harsh truths and simple realities.
Enlisting the ideal of impartiality as a partisan weapon, this Tough Love Crowd has elevated the familiar wisdom of Spare the rod and spoil the child to the arena of national politics. Turning to their own writings and proclamations, Roberts here serves up a devastating critique of such figures as Clarence Thomas, Shelby Steele, Stephen Carter, and V. S. Naipaul (Tough Love International). Clarence Thomas and the Tough Love Crowd marks the emergence of a provocative and powerful voice on our cultural and political landscape, a voicewhich holds those who subscribe to this polemically powerful ideology accountable for their opinions and actions.
Review
"In this elegantly written book, Ronald Roberts establishes a lineage for the Tough Love Crowd intellectuals that is both revealing and persuasive. The result is a timely and original contribution to the scholarly debates about critical race theory and to the public debate about black neo-conservatism."
"Will provoke a lively and vigorous debate among liberals, conservatives, and radicals of many different colors. Roberts is a cultural critic in the tradition of Cornel West, Trey Ellis, Michele Wallace, and bell hooks, with a powerful, passionate, and brash voice."
"Ronald Roberts is refreshingly brash, brilliantly bold, and creatively intelligent. And he is unmistakably on to something. Clarence Thomas and the Tough Love Crowd carefully documents the manner in which the white majority is consistently able to divert the best minds in the minority community to the cause of continued racial oppression, by infiltrating minority conceptions of truth, meaning, and reality. Roberts manages to transcend the stale liberal-conservative debate without falling into the morass of postmodern paralysis. Social observers who pass up this book will be missing a front-row seat to the unfolding epistemological revolution."
"Timely and original. Roberts is an excellent writer and the lineage he traces for the black Tough Love intellectuals is revealing and persuasive. There is a real need for this book."
Review
“Overall, Jews, God, and Videotape is a well researched and insightful study. Shandler provides a series of convincing arguments. Rather than detracting from religious life, he argues, media can actually add complexity and texture to religious practices.”
-H-Net Reviews,
Review
“Shandler delivers a series of interesting essays on varied areas of American Jewish life sharing only some connection with modern media. . .His writing is clear, well-researched, and thoughtful.”
-Jewish Book World,
Review
"All I know is that after making my way through this wide-ranging and incisive book, I will never listen to music, surf the net, send a greeting card, screen a film, watch TV, or take a photograph, let alone a trip, in quite the same way again."-American Jewish History,
Review
“Serving as the definitive road map through the history of American Jews encounters with modern media. Jews, God and Videotape demonstrates that although we tend to think of media and religion as opposed to one another, media practices can enhance religious identities even as they also shape and ultimately change them.”
-Lynn Schofield Clark,author of From Angels to Aliens
Review
“Insightful and engaging. . . . Jews, God, and Videotape details the remarkable success that Judaism has found beyond the pages of the book. There is a life for Torah and durability of its message, he shows us, outside the scroll.”
-Samuel Heilman,Harold M. Proshansky Chair of Jewish Studies, City University of New York
Synopsis
In recent years, black neoconservatism has captured the national imagination. Clarence Thomas sits on the Supreme Court. Stephen Carter's opinions on topics ranging from religion to the confirmation process are widely quoted.
The New Republic has written that black neoconservative Thomas Sowell was having a greater influence on the discussion of matters of race and ethnicity than any other writer of the past ten years.
In this compelling and vividly argued book, Ronald Roberts reveals how this attention has turned an eccentricity into a movement. Black neoconservatives, Roberts believes, have no real constituency but, as was the case with Clarence Thomas, are held upand proclaim themselvesas simply and ruthlessly honest, as above mere self-interest and crude political loyalties. They profess a concern for those they criticize, claiming to possess an objective truth which sets them apart from their critics in the establishment Left. They claim to be outsiders even while sustained by the culture's most powerful institutions. As they level attacks at the activist organizations they perceive as moribund, every significant argument they advance rests on fervent mantras of harsh truths and simple realities.
Enlisting the ideal of impartiality as a partisan weapon, this Tough Love Crowd has elevated the familiar wisdom of Spare the rod and spoil the child to the arena of national politics. Turning to their own writings and proclamations, Roberts here serves up a devastating critique of such figures as Clarence Thomas, Shelby Steele, Stephen Carter, and V. S. Naipaul (Tough Love International). Clarence Thomas and the Tough Love Crowd marks the emergence of a provocative and powerful voice on our cultural and political landscape, a voice which holds those who subscribe to this polemically powerful ideology accountable for their opinions and actions.
Synopsis
Engaging media has been an ongoing issue for American Jews, as it has been for other religious communities in the United States, for several generations.
Jews, God, and Videotape is a pioneering examination of the impact of new communications technologies and media practices on the religious life of American Jewry over the past century. Shandler's examples range from early recordings of cantorial music to Hasidic outreach on the Internet. In between he explores mid-twentieth-century ecumenical radio and television broadcasting, video documentation of life cycle rituals, museum displays and tourist practices as means for engaging the Holocaust as a moral touchstone, and the role of mass-produced material culture in Jews' responses to the American celebration of Christmas.
Shandler argues that the impact of these and other media on American Judaism is varied and extensive: they have challenged the role of clergy and transformed the nature of ritual; facilitated innovations in religious practice and scholarship, as well as efforts to maintain traditional observance and teachings; created venues for outreach, both to enhance relationships with non-Jewish neighbors and to promote greater religiosity among Jews; even redefined the notion of what might constitute a Jewish religious community or spiritual experience. As Jews, God, and Videotape demonstrates, American Jews' experiences are emblematic of how religious communities' engagements with new media have become central to defining religiosity in the modern age.
About the Author
Ronald Suresh Roberts, a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, and Harvard Law School, is currently on leave from the law firm of Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam and Roberts, working with the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (NADEL) in Cape Town, South Africa, and to establish the Finance Literary Project at Funda Community College in Soweto, South Africa.