Takes One to Know One

It's time once again to play "Fill-in-the-Blanks", the game where you the reader get to guess what the missing words words are. Here's the statement:

"But it must have been difficult for ______ to entertain seriously the academic arguments of a _____ whose disdain for all ______ was so pervasive."

Tough one, huh? Any number of words might work in that particular sentence.

The statement comes from pg. 145 of Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason. The other day I discussed the difficulty I was having with Ms. Jacoby's arrogant and insulting tone when it comes to the subject of religion in general and Christianity in particular. Fill in the blanks in the sentence above with "Christians", "author", and "religion" and it perfectly describes my feelings about Ms. Jacoby's book.


P.S. In case you are wondering, the actual deleted words are "liberals", "professor", and "social protesters". It comes from Ms. Jacoby's discussion of the late Dr. Allan Bloom's book, The Closing of the American Mind. Dr. Bloom had been a faculty member at Cornell during the 1968 mayhem at that university and had vehemently opposed the administration's caving in to student rebel demands to drop traditional academic requirements.