amusing pseudo-intellectual quotes
From Andrew Sullivan's blog

POSEUR ALERT WINNER 2004: "But how to paint or sketch such a genius at substitution [as Jacques Derrida]? One must, one can only catch him, portray him in flight, live, even as he slips away from us. In these sketches we shall catch glimpses of the book's young hero rushing past from East to West, -- in appearance both familiar and mythical: here he is for a start sporting the cap of Jackie Derrida Koogan, as Kid, I translate: lamb-child, the sacrificed, the Jewish baby destined to the renowned Circumcision scene. They steal his foreskin for the wedding with God, in those days he was too young to sign, he could only bleed. This is the origin of the immense theme that runs through his work, behind the words signature, countersignature, breast [sein], seing (contract signed but not countersigned), saint --cutting, stitching -- indecisions -- Let us continue." - from the prefatory author's note in "Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint," by Helene Cixous, published by Columbia University Press.

POSEUR ALERT RUNNER-UP: "Admittedly, Midge Decter's biography of Donald Rumsfeld may stand the test of time as a classic achievement in the literature of coprophagia; the vivid yet bulimically svelte anthology of paranoid slanders Ann Coulter has given us in "Treason" has added something innovative to that small, delectable canon of hallucinatory works that also includes Celine's Bagatelles Pour un Massacre and the unjustly anonymous Protocols of the Elders of Zion; and the eloquent-as-a-treacle-tart Christopher Hitchens, in a prodigious outpouring of books and articles, has rendered the mental process by which intellectual prostitutes magically change form in alignment with shifting power formations as legibly as few besides Curzio Malaparte have managed since the fall of Mussolini." - Gary Indiana, Village Voice.

POSEUR ALERT HONORABLE MENTION I: "Yesterday I posted an announcement of my new piece on gay marriage. This piece, I believe, will shift the gay marriage debate from speculation about the future to a discussion of present realities. For that reason, I see it as the most important piece on gay marriage I've ever published." - Stanley Kurtz.

POSEUR ALERT HONORABLE MENTION II: "The value of listening to Brion's score by itself - with the exception of his thematically tongue-in-cheek "Strings That Tie to You" - is situated in the potency of its corresponding visual nostalgia. This seems to be the logical fate of most film scores, but in the case of Eternal Sunshine, Brion's insistence on certain themes popping in and out of his textures seems particularly appropriate, as the soundtrack's fluid matrix performatizes the cinematography's mind/body collapse: In the film, Brion's organi-synthgaze postlude "Phone Calls" plays after Joel decides not to try and save his first memory of Clementine, but just to enjoy it. Here, Brion's score meets Eternal Sunshine's oculophilia halfway, and fittingly comprises one of the film's most potent scenes." - Nick Sylvester, Pitchforkmedia.