Comments on: Airmiles?

By: dave heasman

dave heasman — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 00:37:42 +0000

No Arsene Wenger?

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:46:26 +0000

Why aren’t Anne Coulter and Michael Moore on the list?

By: Dog's New Clothes

Dog's New Clothes — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:25:21 +0000

Wow. One of my professors is on that list! It’s not so bad after all.

By: Josh in Philly

Josh in Philly — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:05:47 +0000

Gladwell? Huh?

By: Dan Nexon

Dan Nexon — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:41:44 +0000

As someone pointed out to me: notice that its a bit heavy on people with some sort of connection to Foreign Policy. Indeed, many of the more puzzling people on the list seem to either have recently published in FP or are attached to Carnegie in some way.

By: abb1

abb1 — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 22:14:21 +0000

Well, they have Tariq Ramadan, who, I understand, is neither lionizing nor demonizing.

By: Laleh

Laleh — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 22:02:49 +0000

The list is really about US punditry. Of the Middle Eastern choices, the only names chosen are those familiar to Americans, not the ones that actually matter. Nor the ones that are actually considered intellectuals (Qardawi? Amr Khaled?). And as always the preponderance of people having to do with Islam (either lionising it or demonising it) in the Arab world totally occludes all the amazing others who just don’t get any press in the US.

As for Ayan Hirsi Ali, or Rushdie, or Amos Oz, or Petreaus, oh my god. Really? Ali an intellectual? Don’t make me laugh!

By: engels

engels — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:40:47 +0000

Oh God, not another one of these stupid lists…

By: Doctor Slack

Doctor Slack — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:29:11 +0000

Given the relative prominence of art film and literary fiction as means of global public communication I’m puzzled.

Not that puzzling. Relative intellectual prestige, justified or not, counts and is different from raw movement of units. I know a lot of Stan Lee and Sam Raimi fans, for instance, but I don’t know a lot of them who would look to either one for intellectual guidance.

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:20:38 +0000

Erm, ‘doesn’t count’ obviously . . .

By: Zippy the Comment Frog

Zippy the Comment Frog — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:20:11 +0000

Follow up to 5: When Charles Taylor came to speak at the American Academy of Religion, all the promotional material listed him as “Charles Taylor, Ph.D.”—one of my friends suggested that they specified “the Charles Taylor with a Ph.D.” to distinguish him from the dictator of Liberia.

My favorite book spine is that of a secondary work on Taylor by someone named Smith—the spine just says, “Smith. Taylor.”

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:19:07 +0000

Five novelists (all of the hi-falutin’ international literary bestseller genre). No cineastes (Al Gore deson’t count). Given the relative prominence of art film and literary fiction as means of global public communication I’m puzzled.

By: AlanM

AlanM — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:14:22 +0000

Gunter Grass’s days of influence have been pretty much squelched by the autobiography, I should have thought.

Only if you haven’t read it. Or don’t actually think, as opposed to renting off-the-shelf opinions.

By: will u.

will u. — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:11:58 +0000

I gave my ballot the five seconds of serious consideration it deserved.

By: Doctor Slack

Doctor Slack — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:40:10 +0000

There are a pretty significant number of people on that list whom I either don’t recognize or know only vaguely from their being regular quote-mongerers for the media. There are a few ridiculous names on there (Ignatieff, Llosa, Hitchens, Friedman), somewhat dubious ones (Huntington, Hirsi Ali, Ferguson, Fukuyama, Rushdie—what has he done in the “public intellectual” sphere lately beyond perpetually see-sawing in his personal relationship to Islam?—and to a lesser extent Habermas and Zizek) and some just plain confusing choices (Pope Benedict? Samantha Power?). But still some good choices left for all that.