Dumbing Down The Word
concentrated evil, a failure, and deemed
“the superior intellect.” LOLerz!!
It’s been obvious, ever since war-loving Theodore Roosevelt won the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize, that folks in the geopolitics business are comedy geniuses, and it’s in this laff-riot tradition that the jokesters at Foreign Policy have come up with their list of the 100 top “public intellectuals.”
Now, before I point out the punchline, let me show you how to appreciate their sense of fun. See, they are subtle. No simple inclusion of George Bush or Doug Feith on the FP list; no, that would be too easy. Instead, and like any good comic, they set up the straight man by listing a few completely sensible choices: Habermas, Eco, Lovelock, and Žižek are examples. (No, I’m not basing all this on whom I particularly agree with; for instance, from what I’ve read of Steven Pinker’s, which is admittedly little, I think it sucks, but understand why he’d be legitimately chosen for the list.) They even put Chomsky on there — a beautiful touch, that; better to give the illusion of even-handedness and good faith. Why, you might think dreamily, this most reasonable list alludes to better days, back when Pauling and Russell and Montagu and the Trillings might have gathered at some party and discussed issues of cosmic import. Then the sensible reverie ends, sardonic hilarity inherits its assets and takes up business at the old stand. Many of the “intellectuals” are actually something between “stupid” and “clueless fucktard stupid.” Get a load of this (I’ve inserted links to provide proper context to the terse yet grandiose FP bios):
A regular columnist for the Washington Post, Applebaum is a veteran journalist and author of Gulag: A History, a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Soviet prison system.
The Laurence A. Tisch professor of history at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, Ferguson is a prolific author best known for The Pity of War, his counterintuitive take on the British role in World War I.
Thomas Friedman, United States
Friedman—New York Times foreign affairs commentator, three–time Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, and author of The World Is Flat and From Beirut to Jerusalem—is one of the world’s most popular and influential syndicated columnists.
And that’s not to mention neoliberal hawk Fareed “Socialist and Populist Democracies Don’t Count” Zakaria. And Brad DeLong’s buddy, the gender theorist and scourge of black academics, Lawrence Summers (or Summers’s fellow traveler in “shock therapy,” Yegor Gaidar). And neocon nutbar Robert Kagan. And wingnutien Michael Ignatieff. See, it’s not just that political scientists and pundits are shamelessly over-represented; it’s not even that contributors to Foriegn Policy seem to be “intellectuals” by definition (and thus “earn” inclusion to the list); it’s that “intellectualism,” for the list-makers, seems to often mean, “the capacity to fuck-up hugely and be praised for it.” As Miguel would say, it’s “to funny forever!!!” Even if the joke is ultimately at our expense.
[Via.]
KHAAAAAAAN!!
Ann Althouse is going to be pissed today.
Petraeus is on the list? Seriously, WTF?
Shit, I meant to say something about him, too, and then completely forgot.
Nial Fergie says the British Empire was totally cool, and even though it killed several thousand Indians, they built railways and stuff. It was awesome, and FP has made note of said awesomeness.
Now, is there some reason I was not on the list? I think the U.S. military is equally awesome.
Oh, come on! Of course little Tommy Friedman belongs on the list – his inclusion provides hope and inspiration to incoherent babblers the world over.
Also Niall Ferguson. What could be more beneficial than promoting the revival of 19th century-style empires? We’ll all get to wear jodhpurs and pith helmets again, and we can relax on the verandah while outlandish foreigners do all the work… they won’t mind.
Another Day, Another List Designed to Generate Outrage, Online Traffic…
Hmmm. What do General Petraeus, Lawrence Lessig, Noam Chomsky, Frances Fukayama, Umberto Eco, Chirstopher Hitchens and Malcolm Gladwell have in common?…
Maybe they meant “Pubic.”
Pith helmets can be ripping fun, Snorghagen.
I know what Petraeus, Hitchens, and Chomsky have in common.
So do the Iraqis.
What a disgrace.
I’m only outraged by their exclusion of Grant Swank. What were they thinking?!
Tony Zirkle should have owned this list.
Grogan wuz robbed! She completely redefined the English language! And what about the Ace O Spades?!? Could Chomsky have come up with “Playdough and Bacon?” I don’t think so!
Friedman, huh? I’m guessing “top” modifies “public” rather than “intellectuals.” Of course, a press organ determining who is most covered by press organs, and pretending it signifies, seems a bit ouroboric.
What about Pulitzer nomineer and intellectual giant Jonah Goldberg, the man who went from quoting Bart Simpson to becoming the leader he is today?
I would also like to note that for a very reasonable fee, I too will demand that people die so I can pontificate on teevee.
Of course, a press organ determining who is most covered by press organs, and pretending it signifies, seems a bit ouroboric.
See, this is what I was telling those nice, clean-cut fellas in the brown shirts the other day. The global Zionihadist conspiracy has filthied up the mind of this goodly woman until all she can talk about is pressing organs and ouro-somethin-or-other…which is obviously code for butt sex.
Close, but, as historical figure and early Jewish Porn Dragon Sigmund Freud would say, no cigar: it’s all about the oral.
In regard to Niall Ferguson one is tempted to say that to be an ‘intellectual’ you don’t necessarily have to be right, just significantly advance the public discourse. Of course, one is also not sure if hoots of derisive laughter from the public counts.
And as for Dear Jonah, he is the reason for ‘write-in’ candidates. Raptor Jesus and Uwe Boll are inked in for me, but you can add Goldberg if you don’t want this poll to become a list of genuine intellectual heavyweights.
(has no-one photoshopped a Porn Dragon yet? Geeze people, you’re slacking this week).
has no-one photoshopped a Porn Dragon yet?
The Editors gave us this.
Pith helmets can be ripping fun, Snorghagen.
😀
has no-one photoshopped a Porn Dragon yet?
Well, there are penisauruses out there. (NSFW, duh.)
Close, but, as historical figure and early Jewish Porn Dragon Sigmund Freud would say, no cigar: it’s all about the oral.
That was…um…a test….YES, A TEST!!!! And you have demon-strated my point with your deliciously decadent knowledge of Jewish Porn Dragonography! I beseech you dear besmirched sister, before its too late, to trade me any divorce aids you might have, no matter how sinful, or vibrating, or large and ripply…dang its warm in here…what was I saying? Oh yes, trade in any of the Tyrant King Porn Dragon’s hand-tools in return for this shiny new Christian gun.
They have a write in option for the poll. The urgent question before us is whether we marshal our islamosecularcommiefascist forces to nominate Tony Zirkle or Adam Yoshida. If Atrios and the like get behind the campaign our wingnut can’t lose.
The fact is, take a straight and stronger course to the corner of your life. Make the white queen run so fast she hasn’t got time to make you wise.
‘Cause it’s time, is time in time with your time and its news it captured for the queen to use.
Shalom, gentlemen.
Why was I not on the list? Did I not explain my theory of genetic superiority and world domination? Kneel before me, lesser sophisticated thinkers!
What he said.
Alas, Mr. Zirkle, my only divorce/marital aid is called a “Husband,” and I wouldn’t trade that in for any old craptacular gun like Derringer. If you’ve got a biathlon-standard .22 however…
then I can hide him in the kitchen until you’re gone, you’ll never look for a man in there! Bwahaha**hack cough cough**
Malcolm Gladwell?
Where’s Bruce Schneier?
Heh, nice one Brandi. Though I was expecting something a little more… boobified (?).
*ahem*… Public Intellectuals.. erm, yeah. Any thoughts? New ones that is.
I said it at Crooked Timber and I’ll say it here:
Pinker AND Dennett AND Wilson AND Dawkins? Damn, I miss Stephen J. Gould. Sigh.
To paraphrase Woody Allen: If Darwin were alive today, he’d never stop throwing up.
As a native of these British Isles I sincerely apologise for Niall Ferguson and all of his works.
The always excellent HTML also missed the presence of that noxious fucker Bernard Lewis. Edward Said will be revolving in his grave.
fardels bear – Just be glad they left Sam ‘The Muslims are coming! The Muslims are coming!’ off the list.
and Hitch, Lee Kuan Yew & Ayaan Hirsi Ali made the list for fucks sake, how heavily were they drinking over there……
and the absolutely unreadable Salman Rushdie, Im surprised they didn’t include Steyn, but there was already one Canadian nutter on the list, Count Ignattief………
The Muslim-worrying sam was of course Sam Harris.
What is the point of the ligature between the c & t in Prospect? Is it supposed to provide some sort of street cred? “Ben Franklin used ligatures, and we do too! We are Ben Franklin!”
And plus, the inventor of the steampunk orgasmatron isn’t on the list. What’s up with that?
I don’t even particularly dislike Ayaan Hirsi Ali. What pisses me off is the way that her courage to speak freely is taken as blanket permission to hate other brown people. It is like ending a long racist rant against black people with, “And Bill Cosby agrees with me”. You never hear about her opposition to Christian fundamentalists, or her support for gay rights, drug legalization, and absolute seperation of church and state.
Uh…so? If one particular issue effects you enough, why is it unthinkable that this is all you’d really write about? Unless I’m not mistaken, Christian fundamentalists aren’t exactly a threat in the Netherlands.
Don’t forget Fukuyama. He was once Bill “William the Bloody” Kristol’s butt boy. He signed on to PNAC at the beginning. If Niall Ferguson is on this list, why not Victor Davis Hanson?
Uh…”Unless I’m mistaken,” that is.
Mercy. “Affects” you enough. “Dumbing” in the thread title really has me for a loop.
Thanks for this – whoa, that’s a LOT of linkage.
Hmm – these FP folks have some, er, UNIQUE taste in brainiacs.
Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew – “national patriarch” – oh, man, must be some rockin’ groupie-action with THAT job-title, eh? Don’t know what his “Laissez-Faire Procreation” is but it doesn’t sound good. Mayhap not so different from the “breed ourselves into extinction for Jesus” line still being pitched by another “intellectual” – the Pope. Sure, throw him in – why not? Just think of it as yet another version of kissing his ring! Those uber-pimp glamrock outfits of his just SCREAM “towering intellect” … n’est-ce pas?
Putting Francis “Die History Die” Fukuyama on there looks like the intellectual equivalent of a pity fuck. Just as wrong as Bubba Kristol, but with 40% bigger words!
Michael Ignatieff? Oh, PLEASE – deputy leader of a Liberal party so lacking in stones OR savvy that even a greasy nonentity like Stephen Harper makes them look like the Keystone Kops? The ghosts of Pearson & Trudeau are blowing chunks right now.
Christopher Hitchens? Giving atheists a bad rep since 2003 – for money. Throw a few extra rounds of Glenfiddich in his piehole & watch the hilarity ensue!
Naomi Klein? OOPSIES. Too lucid & influential – redacted.
This, ladies & germs, is the lot the REAL elite cocks their ears to when they want premium-grade advice on how to keep the Bread & Circuses Road-Show on tour for another few years. Pitiful.
Christ, they may as well have included Jet Li, Metroid Prime & Chuck Norris while they were at it. Wankers.
No, I mean that she does actively oppose Christian fundamentalism. She has voted to have a rightwing Dutch party stripped of public funding for discrimination against gay people and wants tax dollars to be taken out of religious schools. I meant that American conservatives who pretend to respect her as a serious intellectual only parade her out to denounce Islam and then feel free to ignore whatever else she might have to say.
“Why not Victor David Hanson?”
Now there’s a question for the ages 😉
Ah, OK. Agreed, then.
Free speech casts a large shadow.
What a half-assed job. It’s a facile attempt at virtue by association and they should go all the way. C’mon – throwing in the likes of Friedman and Hitchens with Dennett, Chomsky et. al. is patently inane and transparently deceptive.
Sheeeit, you should gofrit people – toss BayPat Buchanan, Michelle Malkin and Ben Stein into the mix. George Will, Cal Thomas. They’re all in serious need of aurafication.
I keep trying to come up with something clever about these “intellectuals”, but I have been hypnotized by Ricardo Montalban’s prosthetic chest!
I have been hypnotized by Ricardo Montalban’s prosthetic chest!
It’s made from soft Corinthian leather!
Et tu ? Jet Li ? sigh …
Which is why I choose our own favorite St. George as a write-in candidate in their ridiculous poll.
Not one astrologer.
These people are unserious.
Thanks for the post to your Miguel treatment. I missed that the first time. Hilarious.
I recommend HTML Mencken for membership in the FP 100. Thank you for the term fucktard. Hadn’t heard it before.
Steven Pinker is teh awesome!
Right on! Zirkle’s got my vote. When you’re talkin’ intellectual, you’re talkin’ Tony Z.
I can’t believe this guy didn’t make the list.
Is Ben Stein on the list?
Or, after “Expelled,” was that just too obvious?
I don’t even particularly dislike Ayaan Hirsi Ali. What pisses me off is the way that her courage to speak freely is taken as blanket permission to hate other brown people. It is like ending a long racist rant against black people with, “And Bill Cosby agrees with me”. You never hear about her opposition to Christian fundamentalists, or her support for gay rights, drug legalization, and absolute seperation of church and state.
I really don’t give a shit about her one way or the other, to tell you the truth, its just that not in a million years would I call her a ‘public intellectual’. At best she swings with the prevailing wind with respect to where the cash is coming from and recently she is just incoherent. If she qualifies as a ‘public intellectual’, then so do most my mates at 9pm on a Friday night.
Ann Althouse is going to be pissed today.
It seems she’s pissed (in the British colloquial sense, meaning drunk) just about all the time.
[/delurk]
CTRL-F type “Gaydar”.
WTF?!?!
One of the snarkiest venues on the whole of the internets and no-one yet cracking on the third to last Intellectual on the list? Cracking on his unfortunately humorous last name that is……
BTW I read somewhere that Ricardo Montalban’s chest was his own as he prepared for the movie role the same way he did for the TV show.
I was going to make a crack about the ‘Friedman Unit’ seeming smaller every year, if that counts.
But Gaydar… now that’s just a cheap shot.
BTW I read somewhere that Ricardo Montalban’s chest was his own as he prepared for the movie role the same way he did for the TV show.
By having silicone implants sewn into his pectorals?
Ignatieff is a deputy leader of the federal Liberals, so ‘wingnutien’ is probably off.
Savant idiot is nice. ‘Smug liberal hawk careerist carpetbagging fuckwad’ will do.
The hoots of derisive laughter from historians probably mean that you’ve graduated from the field of history into that of intellectualology.
On the subject of Ayaan Hirsi Ali I’m very much with Mr. Lobbey. As traumatic as her early life was her career in Dutch politics was an almost perfect illustration of the ‘I’m alright Jack, pull up the ladder’ principle.
Pheh. If they were looking for REAL historians and REAL intellectuals with REAL credentials as REAL public thingies then Newt Gingrich would have been listed.
And to WordPress: You task me! I’ll chase you round the outer nebula and round the Antares maelstrom and round perdition’s flames before I give up!
[…] Really, these guys made the list? Sadly so from Sadly No! […]
then I can hide him in the kitchen until you’re gone, you’ll never look for a man in there!
That’s cruel, Tigrismus. Very cruel.
Objectively, pro-rape?
…Finally, we should openly discuss the question, and examine our prejudices to the contrary: is it truly so egregious and damaging for a teenage girl to marry a 40-year-old man, that the state is justified in tearing families apart and causing trauma to prevent it from happening? I have the same cultural distaste for it that everyone else reading this has, but objectively, I’m not convinced. If the girls are happy and their children are thriving, what is the law protecting them from?…
http://www.plumbbobblog.com/?p=327#comments
Yeap, I bet those preteen girls just loved marrying old men! It’s not like they had no choice and were told it was the only way to get to heaven. Free consent is over-rated in marriages.
On the subject of Ignatieff, go read David Rees’ takedown from last August.
An intert00bs classic.
Bill Cosby has a
posseSblog?Their “pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking”, as Spock said of Khan when he was whirling around in the nebula looking for The Enterprise. Rather, “Two-party Thinking” as I grew to call it in honor of that exact quote. Ahhh….quien es mas macho? Senor Hanson, o Senor Montalban? Senor Kristol o Montalban?
Senor Hanson is too busy marketing his mugs and mousepads to busy himself with this business, ya know?