Theodore Dalrymple in New York, Nov 2001 (1 of 5)

Theodore Dalrymple delivered this speech at the Harvard Club in New York on November 14, 2001 to promote the release of his book Life at the Bottom. The event was hosted by the Manhattan Institute, publisher of City Journal, the magazine that published the essays that were collected in the book. Dalrymple is introduced by City Journal editor Myron Magnet.

To learn more about Theodore Dalrymple, visit www.skepticaldoctor.com, an unofficial website devoted to the man and his work.

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• dalrymple
• dr.
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• life
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[Xenostrobe]

If I was dirty filthy rich I'd make a TV series based on Theodore Dalrymple, in fact, I'm mentally sketching it up, maybe a docudrama, not sure. It would be the most important thing to hit our screens ever.

[SkepticalDoctor]

We have actually thought about writing a screenplay based on his amazing life.

[Jitpring]

First, greatness in no way depends on the quantity of applause. If it did, cheap con artists like Madonna and Britney Spears must be called great. Second, the UK doesn't applaud him precisely because of the breakdown TD writes about.

Make no mistake about it, TD is the greatest secular essayist writing today. This would be true even if not a soul on earth applauded him.

[ajs41]

One of the main problems today is that the whole concept and idea of democracy has been hijacked to promote popular culture at the expense of high culture. The argument is this: because there are always going to be more people interested in pop culture than high culture, and because we live in a democracy, high culture therefore deserves to be sneered at and pop culture must be viewed as being as important or more important than high culture. Anyone who opposes this is an elitist anti-democrat.

[abdul7591]

What Dalrymple says about "unconventionality" is also true about such things as "tolerance" and "hate." Tolerance is supposed to be an unalloyed good and hatred an unmitigated evil, but they are neither one of them all good or all bad. THAT depends entirely on what it is one proposes to tolerate and what specifically one hates. That this simple fact rarely occurs to the defenders of p.c. orthodoxy reveals much about the intellectual emptiness and moral imbecility of such people.

[logotrix]

@ajs41

It sounds like you're suggesting that democracy has high-jacked high culture - which indeed it has. We are, after all, on youtube - hardly a pantheon of the high culture.

[Xenostrobe]

@Xenostrobe 'establish' not secure... small thing, but nags me when basic words elude me, even in this informal context.

[Xenostrobe]

@Xenostrobe Then it would be important to secure a powerful music association... if it were a character closely based on Dalrymple you could do more without unintentionally misrepresenting him, as how could you not, at least in particulars.

Anyway, theme music... well perhaps the following reflection could decide this.

"They spent what they thought would be their last hours of freedom together, and possibly their last hours alive, playing late Beethoven quartets."

and so on and so on.

[Xenostrobe]

Respond to this video... very roughly, I have notions that the scene concluding:

" He smiled at me, and I smiled back. Then we had a good chuckle together. I knew, he knew I knew, I knew he knew I knew, and he knew I knew he knew I knew.

‘Nice one, Doctor,’ he said as he left the room, in excellent spirits."

Would probably provide the ideal opening hook, this is incredibly, though worryingly, funny.

There is so much though, it's hard to know where to begin...

[Xenostrobe]

@crazymanstephen Thanks crazymanstephen, I hear you, read you... I would perhaps not be the best person (almost certainly not) to do such a thing however once my mind latches on to something like this it tends to keep evolving the matter, with interruptions, I have many ideas... and anyway, stranger things have happened. As to the obstacle you rightly allude to, all the more compelling for it I say.

[crazymanstephen]

@Xenostrobe They would not alow you to do so, since Dalrymple's observations and conclusions offends the socially liberal left consensus.

I hope you succeed, Dalrymple has certainly lived a life worth examining.

[VictrolaJazz]

@ajs41 I call them LCD (Lowest Common Denominator) people.

[2Touchstone]

Myron Magnet looks like Great Uncle Bulgaria.

[pablogrebe]

Que manera de no decir nada. En algun momento aborda los verdaderos problemas de nuestra sociedad? Tirania de las palabras. Pura semantica pero tan estrecha su vision, tan acotada, tan encerrada en su caja de doctrina que asusta. Esta es la gente academica donde un arbol no les deja ver el bosque. Deberian escuchar a Peter Joseph en su lectura Social Pathology y van a entender a que me refiero.