Academic contempt for working class

Joe,

Look at Amazon, they're pairing your book up in a deal with Ann Coulter.

I've read your essat, "A Feral Dog Howls in Harvard Yard". I've been working for a few years here with a UAW local made up of Southern migrants to the auto industry on what makes a union strong. The hatred and contempt I've heard other "academics" express here at my university for the working people here is the other side of your point. I worked blue collar jobs before and during my time at the university (to finance my education), was in the timberworkers union out west (learned how to use a chainsaw at 10) and worked on longliners in the Bering Sea.

I'm leaving academia in couple months to go out on my own out of disgust with much of what you have described, and the active censorship I've encountered of any honest and not demeaning portrayals of working class life and mores: including the fact that academia is where adolescents are trained to becoem the next generation's rulers (while keeping the kids blinded to their faux-hipness and radicalism), and the university becomes the central institution for class reproduction.

I wrote mostly to give you the heads up on what they're doing with your book on Amazon. Keep up the good work, brother,

Pete

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Dear Brother Pete,

Let me from the bottom of my heart extend the hand of fraternity and union. We who have busted our backs in the real world (and like millions of others, I have two spinal bone grafts as testimony) must speak through our actions. You have done just that, for which you have my profound admiration.

Proud to know a man who doesn't take the morally cheap way out.

And do feel free to phone me or visit me at home any hour, night or day.

In art and labor,

Joe

PS: I'll check intom the Amazon thing.