Intellectuals

Rating:
Summary: Johnson's books are a waste of good trees
Review: The born-again Catholic Johnson, once a poor editor of the poor journal New Statesman, has written a book which reveals only his own ugly mean-mindedness. Someone remarked to Napoleon, "No man is a hero to his valet." Napoleon replied, "That is not because the hero is no hero, but because the valet is only a valet." Johnson cannot see any virtues, because he has none himself. He is of a piece with the other bullyboys of the right, Bill O'Reilly (the great defender of family values,now on sexual harassment charges), Rush Limbaugh, Kelvin McKenzie, Alistair Campbell, Bernard Ingham, Christopher Hitchens. All pose as iconoclastic, brave and outspoken; but all cravenly repeat the lies of power. All fawn on the rich swine who own the media pulpits from which they bully those who never have a chance to reply.


Rating:
Summary: Rousseau was a jerk? Imagine that.
Review: The first thing worth noting is the silly review by Amazon's Gregory McNamee. His chosen examples of "foibles" noted by Johnson are Ibsens vanity and Sartre's incontinence. McNamee must not have read the book. Or maybe he skimmed the section describing how Rousseau fathered five children by his maid/mistress (whom he used and abused), wanted nothing to do with them so he had the kids sent to their deaths in an orphanage for waifs. Sure Marx avoided contact with the working class but he also lied, misrepresented, twisted and tortured the facts in order to make his case for Communism. And so it goes with many of the founders of the enlightment. This book is must reading for anyone truly interested in how these intellectual pioneers lived their lives and failed to practice what they preached.