By <\/strong>Jim Sleeper<\/a> – September 18, 2010, <\/strong>TPMCafe<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In French the phrase on dit<\/em><\/strong> means, literally, “one says.” But really it signifies what someone in the know considers it au courant<\/em> and fashionable to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No one works harder to parade his apartness from such pseudo-sophisticated posturing than New Republic<\/em> literary editor Leon Wieseltier, who dispatched the apostles of on dit<\/em> last week<\/a> by complaining,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Our sophistication is merely a skill for many surfaces. … Its objective is breadth, not depth. It is… the intellectual aspiration of a dinner guest. …. We teach ourselves to become even a little haughty about what we discovered the day before yesterday. (“What, you haven’t seen Osipova?”) And the victims of our intimidation go home to bone up in private, to remediate their out-of-the-loopness and prepare themselves for a role in the on dit<\/em><\/strong>–except of course the strong ones among them who recognize this game for what it is, and prefer something better than sophistication, more specific and more substantive, a parcel of knowledge strenuously acquired and genuinely possessed…..”<\/p>\n\n\n\n