Perhaps no employee in America better exemplifies the essential personality of his publication better than does Dylan Byers, "media" reporter for Tiger Beat On The Potomac. While his bosses are out chasing payola, Byers skates his wing, making sure that the important developments in the Green Rooms of America are not overlooked just because his publication is something of a corporate 'ho on the business side. Now, however, he has decided to punch well above his weight class, and the results are not a thing of beauty. He has gotten himself crossways with Ta Nehisi Coates in an absurd wrangle over the fact that Coates called the embattled Melissa Harris-Perry "America's foremost public intellectual," and it is not a pretty thing to see.

(And, not for nothing, but, perhaps because Gabriel Sherman's new book on Roger Ailes has tampered with the fundamental forces of the pundit universe, or perhaps simply because the moon is in dickhead right now, it seems to me that there is something of a coordinated attempt on the life of MSNBC at the moment. First, there was the silly ragegasm over what Harris-Perry said concerning Willard Romney's grandchild. Then the National Review fashions a hit piece on kindly Doc Maddow that Mr. Bogg already has disposed of. And Ed Schultz is getting sniped at from the right and the left. Watch your back, Steve Kornacki.)

It all began when Coates stood up for Harris-Perry. Because context is important, here's the passage that started the whole thing.

But there is no one more worthy, and more capable, of holding that conversation than America's most foremost public intellectual-Melissa Harris-Perry. There may well be intellectuals with more insight. And there are surely public figures with a greater audience. But there is no one who communicates the work of thinking to more people with more rigor and effect than Harris-Perry. Her show brings a broad audience into a classroom without using dead academic language and tortured abstractions. And she does this while awarding humanity on a national stage to a group unaccustomed to such luxury-black women.

OK, so we can all have press box arguments over what Coates says. In a similar vein, I've argued that The Who is the greatest rock band ever, that Bob Dylan has said more about America than anyone else in the 20th century, and that Field Of Dreams is the most overrated piece of lachrymose sentimental garbage in the history of the cinema. But Byers seems to have been peculiarly bothered by Coates's assertion.

On Tuesday morning, I asked Twitter if such a claim undermined Coates' own intellectual credibility.

OK, Sparky, here's the thing. If you begin a sentence with the words, "I asked Twitter," you lose all right ever to post anything titled, "What It Means To Be A Public Intellectual." I do not seek to find the comparative bona fides for public intellectualism in TBOTP for the same reason I don't go to The Daily Racing Form to find out about astrophysics. We continue.

Coates fired back, and now Byers found himself standing on very shaky ground with a very wounded fee-fee. First, though, the sucking up.

One, Coates is wrong when he writes that I believe "considering Harris-Perry an intellectual is somehow evidence of inferior thinking." Harris-Perry is obviously an intellectual, and an incredibly smart one at that. Coates is also an intellectual, and probably one of the more important columnists in American politics today. I read both of their work with relative frequency, and admire it.

Translated from the original Weaselspeak -- Some poor Politico internhad to do some serious googling over the weekend.

And then, the argument.

What I said was: I do not believe Harris-Perry is "America's foremost public intellectual," meaning that of all the public intellectuals in this country, she is not the most influential or important. What I suggested was that stating as much called one's own intellectual credibility into question, because it would take leaps and bounds to come to the conclusion that Harris-Perry occupies a more significant place in American intellectual thought than the towering figures who wear that title. That those figures are all white men is certainly an unfortunate result of America's troubled history.

Who are these giants? Byers apparently tweeted a list that included Noam Chomsky -- an intellectual, certainly, but not very public for a while -- and Jeffrey Sachs. He also, oddly, cites, "Paul Krugman (tho not any more?.)" (As E.O. Wilson once said to his bartender, before going off to play Big Buck Hunter in the corner. "What the fk is that shit about, anyway?") What actually got in Byers's grill was Coates assertion that Byers's weird vehemence about the whole thing might contribute to what Coates called "the machinery of racism." Again, context is key. Coates:

I came up in a time when white intellectuals were forever making breathless pronouncements about their world, about my world, and about the world itself. My life was delineated lists like "Geniuses of Western Music" written by people who evidently believed Louis Armstrong and Aretha Franklin did not exist. That tradition continues. Dylan Byers knows nothing of your work, and therefore your work must not exist. Here is the machinery of racism-the privilege of being oblivious to questions, of never having to grapple with the everywhere; the right of false naming; the right to claim that the lakes, trees, and mountains of our world do not exist; the right to insult our intelligence with your ignorance. The machinery of racism requires no bigotry from Dylan Byers. It merely requires that Dylan Byers sit still.

This is something up with which Byers will not put.

What I said was: I do not believe Harris-Perry is "America's foremost public intellectual," meaning that of all the public intellectuals in this country, she is not the most influential or important. What I suggested was that stating as much called one's own intellectual credibility into question, because it would take leaps and bounds to come to the conclusion that Harris-Perry occupies a more significant place in American intellectual thought than the towering figures who wear that title. That those figures are all white men is certainly an unfortunate result of America's troubled history. However, to deduce from that assertion that I believe Harris-Perry is not an intellectual is itself an anti-intellectual act. It requires supplanting what is in one's head for what it is I actually said. It requires an assumption of intention that has no relevance to my own. It is lazy.

Oh, dear.

Coates's "intellectual credibility" is "called into question" because Coates disagrees with Dylan Byers as to who, exactly, "America's foremost public intellectual" is. Actually, Dylan, you have spent three or four days now saying that Harris-Perry's credentials as a "public intellectual" are so threadbare that they can demolish someone else's intellectual credibility if that person simply asserts that she is the toppermost of the poppermost. That's what you've been doing. Oh, and for doing so, and for making a case in rebuttal. Ta Nehisi Coates is also "lazy." Mother of god, this is not going to end well.

Once, at spring training long ago, I asked Reggie Jackson if he thought he was the greatest baseball player who ever lived. I admit it. I was trolling Jackson's ego for an easy column. But he paused for a moment and said, "You know, when I came up, and I knew I could play really well at this level, I thought to myself, 'Just let me be in the conversation.' I think I did that. I think I put myself in the conversation." Look, I probably don't agree with Coates's assertion, either, although I enjoy MHP's work. I don't even know what a "public intellectual" is any more, since the adjective has so overpowered the noun that people actually still think David Brooks is one. What I do know is this, Melissa Harris-Perry is in the conversation. I also know this -- Ta Nehisi Coates is in the conversation, too, and Dylan Byers writes for a whorehouse.

Bartender, a double Prestone and see what the pundits in the back room will have.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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