bq. It is the fashion, as much in France as in Britain, to focus on Bernard-Henri Levy’s celebrity lifestyle and friends, his designer clothes, his “sumptuous” apartment in Paris, his palace in Marrakech, his celebrity, his beautiful girlfriends, even the immortal headline to an article about him which began “God is dead but my hair is perfect” – and so endlessly on, because neither country (how different from the US) can tolerate anyone who is simultaneously too clever, too successful and too good-looking.
The author of these words? “A.C. Grayling”:http://www.acgrayling.com/ in the “Financial Times”:http://news.ft.com/cms/s/2d3cef2e-7dc4-11da-8ef9-0000779e2340.html (behind a subscription firewall).
{ 12 comments }
dave heasman 01.14.06 at 11:32 am
“too clever, too successful and too good-looking”
You mean like that nice Mr Trump?
yabonn 01.14.06 at 11:39 am
But Grayling has at least some courage to even use touch the subject of hair.
I don’t really understand how BHL has ever been taken seriously. Neither his obnoxious pintade (babelfish gives me “guinea fowl” for this one, i hope the meaning follows). Think “Johnny Hallyday”, people.
Good point is that he’s specially good at receiving cream pies in the face. Gloup gloup!
Adam Kotsko 01.14.06 at 10:12 pm
His recent attempt to redo de Tocqueville in Atlantic Monthly struck me as fairly uninteresting and uninsightful. Perhaps if I’d known he has impeccable hair, I would have enjoyed the articles more.
SqueakyRat 01.15.06 at 7:50 am
I have to admit that that headline is one of the funniest things I have ever read.
novakant 01.15.06 at 9:28 am
hmm, he’s ugly (try Damasio instead)
otto 01.15.06 at 5:35 pm
“neither country (how different from the US) can tolerate anyone who is simultaneously too clever, too successful and too good-looking”
Are there any serious candidates for all three of these criteria even in the US?
(Present company excepted, of course).
Catherine Liu 01.15.06 at 6:31 pm
In US academia, we try not to be good looking as it would be a form of sexual harassment with regard to both colleagues and students.
snuh 01.16.06 at 2:28 am
http://www.nybooks.com/gallery/1931
Chris Bertram 01.16.06 at 10:09 am
My god! He’s Gaston from Beauty and the Beast.
Tad Brennan 01.16.06 at 10:18 am
I don’t get this post. Are you taking pot-shots at Levy? Or Grayling? Or both? The structural emphasis falls on Grayling, but I can’t see why.
Chris Bertram 01.16.06 at 10:24 am
Sorry, Tad, there’s history here (a bit of an in-joke). See
http://tinyurl.com/den2n
Tad Brennan 01.16.06 at 11:23 am
Right. Thanks for the explanation. From what I knew of Grayling in the mid-90’s when we were colleagues in London philosophy, the charge of vanity does not strike me as especially apt.
Vanity about appearance is not among the leading vices of the profession, so far as I can tell (though other vanities, and other vices, there certainly are). On punctiliousness in dress, most philosophers seem to share Johnson’s view:
Concerning this unfortunate poet, Christopher Smart, who was confined in a mad-house, he [said]… “I did not think he ought to be shut up. His infirmities were not noxious to society. He insisted on people praying with him; and I’d as lief pray with Kit Smart as any one else. Another charge was, that he did not love clean linen; and I have no passion for it.”
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