Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Public Intellectuals Ain't What They Used to Be

Alternative Title: Damned with Faint Praise.

Ross is late-twenties-year-old public intellectual with the sensibility of a 60-year eminence grise, the range of a Hitchens, the pitch of a conservative AJP Taylor, the conscience of a Neibuhr and the intellectual honesty of his frequent sparring partner, Andrew Sullivan.

Wow all that in one sweet, sweet, white boy package! Does all this boil down to "A jumped up college republican poseur who wears a mental sweater, drops obscure literary quotes, hacks away at historical references, pretends to a religious conscience and has zero intellectual courage or consistency other than the purely self interested?" Because that's how I'd translate it.