the pathetic politics of 'smart people'

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

Kissinger rated No 1 brain

Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Monday January 21, 2002
The Guardian

There are lists of the best films and the best cricketers and the best books. There are even books
of lists of lists. But the latest list to be published might prove to be one too far.

A list of the world's supposed top 100 public intellectuals is provoking very uncerebral rows over
the dinner tables of American academia.

One reason for the debate is that at the top of the list is the former US secretary of state Henry
Kissinger - prominent at the moment as the subject of a Christopher Hitchens book, The Trial of
Henry Kissinger, in which he is accused of crimes against humanity.

Tom Wolfe, the novelist and social commentator, features at number 15, way ahead of Jean-Paul Sartre
(64), Marshal McLuhan (82) and Margaret Mead (94). At number eight is Sidney Blumenthal, the White
House aide during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Antonin Scalia, the member of the US supreme court who helped to ease George Bush into office, is at
number 14, three places ahead of George Bernard Shaw. Camille Paglia, the writer and
controversialist, is at 66, beating out John Kenneth Galbraith (69) and Alexander Solzhenitsyn (72).

Those challenging Kissinger for top place include Salman Rushdie (9), George Orwell (11), Vaclav
Havel (18) and Timothy Leary (28). The feminist theorist Betty Friedan is at number 48 but Germaine
Greer fails to make the cut.

Richard Posner, a US federal judge, compiled the list, entitled Public Intellectuals: A Study in
Decline, using the internet to count the number of media mentions of anyone who expressed themselves
on matters of general public concern between 1995 and 2000. Mr Posner manages to enter the list at a
respectable 70, six ahead of Albert Camus.