The obits..

We know that Derrida died last week. But those who have been following the New York Times also know about the furor over the obituary written by Jonathan Kandell for Derrida (all's I got to say after reading it is that I hope he doesn't write my obituary when I die). But good ol' Butler wrote a scathing letter to the editor that starts: Jonathan Kandell's vitriolic and disparaging obituary of Jacques Derrida takes the occasion of this accomplished philosopher's death to re-wage a culture war that has surely passed its time.  Why would the New York Times assign the obituary to someone whose polemics are so unrestrained and intellectual limitations so obvious? Whereas Yves-Alain Bois starts his letter: Topping the usually Philistine relationship of the Times to just about everything academic, and its habit of entrusting the composition of obituaries to overt opponents of the deceased supposed to be memorialized, the article by a Jonathan Kandell on Jacques Derrida, who died this past Friday, reaches a peak of populist anti-intellectualism--not to speak of the countless distortions it contains--that I thought only possible in a Murdoch publication. There is a petition to the editors of the Times about how it "has done its readers an injustice in publishing such a dismissive article as its official obituary".