WTF? Christopher Hitchens is World's 5th Greatest Intellectual?

[McCamy Taylor]

Here is the List:

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/intellectuals/results.htm

Now here is some stuff about HItchens:

http://www.counterpunch.org/snitch.html

"Hitchens always could cobble up a moral posture out of the most unpromising material"

Here is some stuff Hitchens wrote about Cindy Sheehan and the Bring Our Troops Home movement :

http://slate.com/id/2124500/nav/tap1/

"What dreary sentimental nonsense this all is, and how much space has been wasted on it."

Oooo! What an intellectual!

Do not forget that John Stewart mopped up the floor with Hitchens on the Daily Show. Does this mean that Stewart was over looked as the world's 4th greatest intellectual? Or that the makers of the list were blinded by Hitchens own hype and his William F. Buckley Jr.esque drawl?

:wtf:

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. misprint. They meant 5th Rate.

[smirkymonkey]

33. Touche!

[NYCGirl]

2. Wow. 5th Greatest Intellectual. That and $2 will get you on the subway. NT

[Straight Shooter]

3. You can be an intellectual and still not make any worthwhile sense.

I agree with above poster. "5th rate" is more like it :)

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

4. This list is BS, biased heavily in favor of politics/economics with

poor representation of brilliant scientists from "hard science" fields.

[SteppingRazor]

5. That's kind of a glass-half-empty response, though, isn't it?

After all, Noam Chomsky was No. 1 and Vaclav Havel was above Hitchens. Hitch seems like the token conservative, along with Wolfowitz at No. 19.

And the "who should have been on the list" list is filled with people from our side. So why get upset about Hitchens.

On the other hand, this list is obviously bunk. After all, I'm not on it :evilgrin:

[McCamy Taylor]

7. Conservatives, by definition, cant be intellectuals, cause they stagnate.

And where are the scientists and artists? Where is Leonardo Boff? Ill bet Hitchens hasnt written anything as good as "St. Francis"

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

6. Paul Wolfowitz at number 19?

Ranking intellectuals like supermodels is a ridiculous notion to begin with.

[ET Awful]

8. Shouldn't that read 5th greates drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay?

:evilgrin:

[SlavesandBulldozers]

21. yes.

a brilliant line spoken by Galloway, who himself is a pure white dove. In fact did you know that Galloway is made of pure light? ;)

[ET Awful]

22. LMAO . . . No, I wasn't aware of that fact. I was aware that he had

an extremely sharp and piercing wit that was spot on much of the time.

As to his being a "pure white dove," I doubt that seriously.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

28. It's true.

Galloway is as pure as the driven snow. :dunce:

[McCamy Taylor]

23. Galloway has it easier 'cause the left has better ideas to work with

so you sound smarter when you espouse them. It is really hard to make Conservative Dogma sound like anything other than total BS, which is why people like Hitchen mumble a lot, and why George Will writes nearly unintelligible prose when he doing the conservative talking points.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

27. in my opinion Galloway and Hitchens make a great pair

two guys who, in their own diseased minds were right all along - with amazing accents - babbling incoherently at one another about colonialism and empire.

You can cut the arrogance in the room with a knife, a very British knife with silver leaves and acorns sculpted on it.

[enlightenment]

9. "Public intellectuals" are strange birds to begin with --

if you aren't familiar with Richard Posner's book on the subject, you might enjoy this review of the same!

http://www.complete-review.com/quarterly/vol3/issue2/posner.htm

[McCamy Taylor]

11. He excludes those with other careers that overshadows intellectual

this means that scientists, artists, politicians get excluded, and yet these are the greatest intellectuals because they actually do something.

No wonder the pickings are so slim for "Public Intellectual". It is like comparing a list of Literary Critics to Writers. YOu would get a handfull of great critics and a hundred great writers in the 20th century. Because most people want to do, not to talk.

[enlightenment]

24. I don't disagree that those that "do" often

offer much more than those who "think" -- but the term "public intellectual" is a pretty specific one, in my understanding. I don't really agree with Posner, but I do think the idea that there is a difference between working in academia or the arts and being able to transmit those ideas to the public in an understandable way.

Artists are very public, of course -- but often the general public is confused by the art; they don't 'get it'. Does the artist explain (simplify, use analogy, whatever it takes) his/her ideas? If they do (and many do), then they become the 'public intellectual.' If they don't, it doesn't make their work any less important -- but it removes them from the public sphere of understanding. Same thing with scientists. How often do scientists publish their findings for public consumption? When they do, it usually makes the news; but they frequently do not -- it's easier to share with those who already understand your language.

**And based on the paragraph above, I clearly don't rate as an intellectual -- public or otherwise! :-)

I absolutely agree that the list was biased. Lists are always biased in some way.

There is an interesting article about the process of choosing the names that were on this list, here:
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7067&AuthKey=759349e325586f2018b7e632986b77c4&issue=512

[neoteric lefty]

10. The Pope is above Daniel C. Dennett! OK, this is totally

about name recognition. Nothing else.

[Roland99]

12. Well, you have to be quite intelligent in order to...

spew complete and utter bullshit so often and for so long and get people to actually believe you.

[McCamy Taylor]

15. Shrub is an intellectual?

[NoPasaran]

13. Who's #6? Ted Nugent? n/t

[muriel_volestrangler]

30. Paul Krugman, actually (n/t)

[leftofthedial]

14. he is rarely the 5th greatest intellectual in any room he is in

much less the world

he's a besotted idiot

but the RW loves him and fools who mistake "British" and "drunk" for "intellectual" think he knows something they don't.

[McCamy Taylor]

16. I want to put him in a room with Alan Moore. See who walks out alive.

:headbang:

I already know who will win.

[ComerPerro]

17. Hitchens is like a drunk Dennis Miller

They both project the illusion of high intelligence by insisting on using big words, so they can condescendingly talk down to "plain folk".

Its just part of their arrogance.

But nothing they say is really of any substance.

And you're right, Jon Stewart took him to pieces on the Daily Show.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

20. damn that's cold.

ouch. A drunk Dennis Miller.

Dennis Miller idolizes Hitchens.

[funflower]

18. Who made up the list of candidates, and where are the women?

:wtf:

[tomg]

19. David Herman's analysis of

the standings is quite interesting, and really puts it in perspective:

"I said last month in my commentary on the original Prospect/Foreign Policy list of 100 names that it seemed to represent the death of that grand tradition of oppositional intellectuals. The overwhelming victory for Noam Chomsky suggests that we still yearn for such figures—we just don’t seem to be able to find any under the age of 70." http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7078

And more the pity of it. In a sense, there really is no concept of the public intellectual (at least in the United States).

The list itself is quite interesting. Sort of reminds me of one of those MTV, VH1 or E-channel top 100 moments/ people/ diasters for academics. Take out Hitchens, and while one can easily argue the rankings of all 100 ( and, for that matter some presences), all of the other top six are heavyweights. I wish I knew more about the criteria for selection of the 100 ( some - not many, but some - strange folks on the list).

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

laughing, rolling on floor trying to keep my ass on

[1932]

25. That guarantees Galloway a place no lower than 4th.

Actually, there aren't enough places above Hitchens to include all the people who have humiliated him in public debates.

[William Bloode]

26. 5th greatest drunk, or

5th greatest liquored up boob. But never the 5th greatest intellectual.

[Orrin_73]

29. Beg to differ

Hitch the snitch is an ignorant biggot and a darling of the neocon right.

[muriel_volestrangler]

31. What part of "internet poll" don't you understand?

Have you never seen "DU this poll!" here? Don't you think that Free Republic doesn't have "Freep this poll!" too? You don't think you get meaningful results from those, do you?

This just indicates that some Iraq war supporters heard about the poll, and a lot of them voted for Hitchens.

It's tempting to vote for people like that in future polls, just to see the over-reaction on DU. :evilgrin:

[RethugAssKicker]

32. Is Cornell West on it?

I read his book; Race Matters... absolutely brilliant