We couldn't help but notice that since we issued our "modest defense" of Jacques Derrida, various arms of the media empire seem to have rethought their initial scorn towards the late French philosopher and his work. This critical reappraisal is most apparent in the New York Times, which offers this panegyric, revealing, among other things, that Derrida gave carnival masks to young children of American academics.

The Guardian has a more diverse sampling of opinion from across the pond, some pro and some con.

Less hagiographically sympathetic (and somewhat saucier) than the Times op-ed is Marco Roth's piece in the upstart literary journal n+1, which has the virtue of describing a hot chick with whom the author attended Derrida's lectures in Paris:

...I watched the raven haired girl who always wore a miniskirt and a fur coat, the sort of Parisienne I fantasized about meeting before my trip. She filled line after line of graph paper in a neat miniscule hand, never stopping. She seemed to be able to take him down verbatim. At the end, she would dash out of the hall. Where?

To sum up, the new media consensus seems to be "Derrida: Not Necessarily A Pernicious Nihilist Who Threatened The Very Foundation Of Western Society And Cutlture." And, as always, dear reader, you heard it here first.

EARLIER: Confessions of a Teenage Deconstructionist

EVEN EARLIER: Jacques Derrida, 1930-2004