Dear HCN,


I don’t care much for Jeffrey St. Clair’s writing. This was my reaction to the first essay of his that I saw in your paper; and the feeling is only reinforced by his second essay (HCN, 3/21/94). Both pieces seek to validate accusations with such meaningless generalizations as “ecological cleansing” and “intellectual venereal disease.”


St. Clair is opinionated but not informative. Perhaps there is a place for him in some tabloid called Polarization Weekly. There he could share the op-ed page with Pat Buchanan. “We are all in a cultural war blah, blah, blah …”

Patrick Barickman


Salt Lake City, Utah

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Blah, blah, blah

by Patrick Barickman, High Country News
April 18, 1994

<h1>Blah, blah, blah</h1> <p class="byline">by Patrick Barickman, High Country News <br />April 18, 1994</p> <p>Dear HCN,</p> <p>I don’t care much for<br /> Jeffrey St. Clair’s writing. This was my reaction to the first<br /> essay of his that I saw in your paper; and the feeling is only<br /> reinforced by his second essay (HCN, 3/21/94). Both pieces seek to<br /> validate accusations with such meaningless generalizations as<br /> “ecological cleansing” and “intellectual venereal disease.”</p> <p>St. Clair is opinionated but not informative.<br /> Perhaps there is a place for him in some tabloid called<br /> Polarization Weekly. There he could share the op-ed page with Pat<br /> Buchanan. “We are all in a cultural war blah, blah, blah …”</p> <p>Patrick<br /> Barickman</p> <p>Salt Lake City,<br /> Utah</p> <div class="wp-block-group hcn-print-edition-box"> <p>This article appeared in the <a href="/?p=188177">print edition of the magazine</a> with the headline <span class="hcn-magtitle">Blah, blah, blah</span>.</p> </p></div> <p>This &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/issue-7/blah-blah-blah/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; first appeared on &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://country-survey-collabs.info Country News&lt;/a&gt; and is republished here under a &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;img src=&quot;https://i0.wp.com/www.hcn.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/cropped-HCN_Logo-Monogram_White_Sq-2.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;amp;quality=100&amp;amp;ssl=1&quot; style=&quot;width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;&quot;&gt;&lt;img id=&quot;republication-tracker-tool-source&quot; src=&quot;https://country-survey-collabs.info/?republication-pixel=true&amp;post=122663&amp;amp;ga4=G-0NS3WVPPTN&quot; style=&quot;width:1px;height:1px;&quot;&gt;&lt;script&gt; PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: &quot;https://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/issue-7/blah-blah-blah/&quot;, urlref: window.location.href }); } } &lt;/script&gt; &lt;script id=&quot;parsely-cfg&quot; src=&quot;//cdn.parsely.com/keys/hcn.org/p.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;</p> Copy to Clipboard

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