One hundred years ago – in 1927 – French writer Julien Benda published a book with the above referenced title, translated loosely as “Treason of the Intellectuals.”
The gist of the book is that European intellectuals had led their nations astray by encouraging political dogmatism at the expense of intellectual and moral values.
I think of this phrase when I consider the arrogant elitism of a different Julien, Julian Zugazazoitia, director of the Nelson Gallery here in Kansas City.
It’s been four years since the Z-man ordered the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department during the 2020 George Floyd riots off the museum’s property.
No one has ever explained to me how a single employee of the museum had the authority to commit that institution to a public political position.
Not only did the Z-man emphatically state that it had a moral obligation to withhold cooperation with local authorities at a time of civil unrest, but he broadcast this by adding a Black Lives Matter screen saver to the Nelson’s website and committing it to support that movement in statements to the press.
What did the Trustees say?
Was this dramatic move their call?
Apparently not.
Because after I raised these issues in a post here on KC Confidential, ‘The Necessary Murder’-Nelson Atkins vs KC Cops,’ 7/1/20, I sent copies to every member of the Board. And not one person bothered to respond to the dozen copies I sent to them.
I thought of that when I heard my friend Jack Cashill, a local author and journalist, interviewed on talk show host Pete Mundo’s program last week. He later asked about how Kansas City has changed since he moved here in 1975, and Jack said:
“It’s not the place it was…I mean by this that whenI drove down Ward Parkway 50 years ago, there was substance behind those walls. The people who lived there cared. There were adults in Kansas City running the city. You had an adult newspaper. You could tell the truth…When we stripped the J.C. Nichols name from the fountain on the Plaza that was the turning point, the archetypal surrendering to the woke masses by the city’s corporate leadership. I don’t have any confidence in the city’s leaders after this, a real decline further evidenced by their abandonment of the Country Club Plaza to crime because of fear of being called racist.” Continue reading