Mark Liberman is being nasty to our beloved intellectuals, most of whom we manage to ignore most of the time. His frustration may arise from a misunderstanding of the role of the intellectual in European society, which is something like that of a Catholic bishop in the States. I think somewhere in Campo cerrado Max Aub has his Falangist say contemptuously that an intellectual is someone for whom all political problems are fundamentally moral problems. That on this basis George W Bush emerges as the greatest intellectual of our time has naturally led to some jealousy over here.
(Why on earth didn’t M Chirac get M Arbuste over to preach either for or against the European Constipation? They are friends, aren’t they? Will the victory of the little man over the French state tomorrow count as a triumph for common cents? Why haven’t I gone to a party yet?)
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