Arguing the World

I've the good fortune of finally being able to stream Netflix to my TV.  Here were my first three selections:

1) Once Upon a Time in the West:  worth seeing for close ups of Claudia Cardinale's eyes
2) The Decameron: more enjoyable if one has already read the book.
and 3) Arguing the World: a documentary on the four New York intellectuals who graduated from CCNY in the late 30s: Irving Howe, Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, and Nathan Glazer.  I highly recommend this.  The chronology of their lives coincides with the major events of the 20th century: the Depression, World War II, anti-communism, the Sixties.  It's hard to characterize what they had in common, other than the belief in the power of ideas and the worthwhile pursuit of exposing and arguing these ideas in public. 

By the way, I had the good fortune of driving Irving Kristol from the Indianapolis airport to Wabash College in 1979, where he was to spend a day on campus.  He was interesting, but somewhat aloof and supercilious.  I remember how shocked he was at the size of the Wabash endowment, as if he assumed any college in Indiana had to be running on a shoe string.  Something in the documentary made sense of this: he remarked that growing up in Brooklyn was second rate.  He grew up wanting to migrate to "the City," i.e. Manhattan.  The rest of us couldn't even compete with Brooklyn!