The author is a federal appellate judge who, unlike the majority
of
his brethren, is quite the polymath. He has written books on
economics
and law, legal theory, and on the disputed presidential election
of 2000,
among other topics. I know his to be a conservative stemming
from,
if not completely in agreement with, the Friedman/Straus school at
the
University of Chicago, so
I fully expected his discourse on public intellectuals to be full
of
invective against the left-liberal political correctness of our
increasingly
multicultural democracy. On this count, Posner does not
disappoint,
but he raises other, deeper, issues with the sheer force of his
intellectual
honesty.
Posner asks what it means today to be a public intellectual, effectively demonstrating how a noble idea during the times of Socrates and Voltaire has morphed into a circus of superficiality where celebrity reputation is more likely to influence a citizen/voter than well-reasoned persuasiveness. The neverending need for instant commentary and original spin has changed the identity of public intellectuals from people like Socrates and Voltaire to the shriller voices of people like Rush Limbaugh or Al Sharpton. The surprise is that Posner provides examples of this vapidity all across the political spectrum, and by so doing, raises an even more disturbing question: Is it the distorting nature of the new media (cable television and the Internet)that has created the circus? How does the deceptive quality of media telegenicity catapault a previously-obscure academic into the popular culture not judged on the quality of his scholarship but on his personality appeal?
Some of the most interesting information in the book is contained
in
about 25 pages of tables that name the most prominent public
intellectuals
measured by their media mentions, their Internet traffic, and
their scholarly
citations. What emerges is a popularity index of public
intellectuals
and a framework for analyzing this phenomenon empirically.
Not surprisingly,
after establishing the empirical nature of the study, Posner
proceeds to
analyze the phenomenon through a kind of market analysis,
ending with an intriguing poser: Does the decline in the quality
of
public intellectuals represent a market failure within the warp
and weave
of democratic capitalism? This is a bravura performance by
Posner,
displaying an unusual range of vision.
Dialogue on favorite books with Deane Rink before and during his latest trek to Antarctica, with a note from Bill Ransom and a digression about Frank Herbert (a.k.a Bookbabble 101) -- a very long and rapidly growing document:
Book reviews by Richard Seltzer |
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