Gladwell handling

Purveyor of conventional wisdom Malcolm Gladwell first came to my attention when I read a short piece of his in the New Yorker detailing his lovely lunch with a racist theoretician at a right-wing thinktank. I thought it a rather shameless piece of suck-up, even for the flagship of celebrity culture, and wrote in to the magazine saying that once journalists spoke truth to power, but now they supped with it. My letter was published, but their editing for space, as they like to say, took some of the sting out of it. Pity. Since then I’ve followed Gladwell’s ascension to the ranks of the best-sellers with dismay, but understanding; he tells people what they want to hear. The other week, I was in one of the supermarket book stores, (meeting someone in the rain; they are good for that, and restrooms) and an entire table right inside the door was piled high with his latest, which brings us the fresh news that the very successful had luck and help along the way. Here’s a swift demolition of his pabulum.