When and why did America stop having public intellectuals? It

It's not like public intellectualism was ever actually good. People parrot the opinions of those presented to them as experts. France has less right to lecture the Anglosphere about politics and philosophy than the average Francophone thinks.

>>496952
mass culture, late capitalism, McLuhan

>public debate was between intellectuals who could talk in depth about political and philosophical issues, the way debate still works in France today.
As a citizen of the french republic I have to say this : lol.

>>496952
>the way debate still works in France today
lolno

that said, there has been a significant problem caused by American 24 hour news which is that they only go for short soundbites rather than actually playing a whole speech.

American tv news is just dreadful, idk how anyone can watch that shit.

>>497033
desu even the shittiest French talkshows are miles above American standup showbiz crap. If you're French I'm sure you can name a dozen well-known French intellectuals who regularly appear on TV, but can you name any Americans?

Most countries I know are somewhere in between, I just mentioned France because I think it's where public intellectualism is the most preserved.

>>497044
My mom never turns off MSNBC
It's awful

>>497070
French here, there is the intellectual on tv has been replaced by the "expert" who is actually just a "journalist" that developped that persona and never says anything controversial to make sure he can keep being invited on TV. It's just as BS as in America.

>>496952

the Marxist terrorist has transformed intellectual debate into a fast food meal for proles.

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>>496952
>why did America stop having public intellectuals?
Because it's best for the government that the citizenry don't question why they should fear a group of black clad men whom were originally called "freedom fighters" just two years earlier.

>>499078
>ISIS=muj from the 80's
lol

>>499092
>just two years earlier
>the 80's were two years ago

money. the TV stations do it for money. one of them has a hit with a 'witty satire political talk show' and the others follow suit. independent internet-based entertainment is young, and still pretty much mirrors what you would find on television, just more condensed

its because people arent generally keen on going out and learning anything

and its convenient, anyway, for the massive television corporations and the political interests that head them to let the public consume garbage

>>496952
TED Talks sort of have this

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>>496952
>>The difference between a phonograph and the human voice is that the phonograph must sing the song which is stamped upon it. Now there are days--I suspect the vast majority of them in most of our lives--when we grind out the thing that is stamped upon us. It may be the governing of a city, or teaching school, or running a business. We do not get out of bed in the morning because we are eager for the day; something external--we often call it our duty--throws off the bed-clothes, complains that the shaving water isn't hot, puts us into the subway and lands us at our office in season for punching the time-check. We revolve with the business for three or four hours, signing letters, answering telephones, checking up lists, and perhaps towards twelve o'clock the prospect of lunch puts a touch of romance upon life. Then because our days are so unutterably the same, we turn to the newspapers, we go to the magazines and read only the "stuff with punch," we seek out a "show" and drive serious playwrights into the poorhouse.

>>497109
>someone out there actually watches msnbc

What the fuck

>>499190
>money
It's okay to say the JOOZ anon

>>499112
>FSA = ISIS
wew lad

>>499646
>TED Talks sort of have this
All TED Talks are identical bourgeois ideology.

>>499882
That's a hell of a paragraph. Who wrote it?

>>500557
Walter Lippmann

>>500612
Cheers mate

>>498987
Have you even been to France? There's plenty of people like Zemmour, Onfray, Houellebecq, or Finkielkraut who cause tons of controversy.

>>500963
I live in France. These aren't more intellectual than Richard Dawkins. Sure, they got degrees and careers, but their stances are shit or shackled by the media to be dumbed down.

>>499646
example? they have 2 people sit and discuss something without either side getting too emotional and talking over the other or filibustering like a piece of shit

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What about America's foremost public intellectual™?

>>496952
We still have Le Sniffy Man.

>>496952
In the past the target audience was middle or old aged white men who for 100% environmental reasons enjoy logical point by point progression in a debate.

Not sure about France but East Asia is a place where you can see this, here the target audience is asian men.

Here's a random example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JukboDGbrIw

Note the difference between the dogmatic one sided political shrieking by the Americans and the conciliatory explanation by the Japanese.

>>496952
first question OP, have you ever witnessed this first hand?

>>502622
I wish frogs would leave this board.

>>496952
Alan Bloom blames the sixties and its feels culture.

>>502999
I wish dumb memeposter Americans would.
Not even French.

Bill O' Reilly and Donald Trump are America's public intellectuals.

>>496952

These intellectuals are still around. You've just got much more choices of media outlets, so they get less public attention.

Et bon, ne te laisse pas avoir par l'eloquence. Le niveau de débat politique en France n'a pas beaucoup évolué depuis les années 80.

>>503161
Worse. Tom Friedman.

>>503163
>Et bon, ne te laisse pas avoir par l'eloquence. Le niveau de débat politique en France n'a pas beaucoup évolué depuis les années 80.

BHL est un con peh (pour être honnête)

>>496952
There has to be some genuine thinkers out there, they would be relegated to left and right aligned media targeted at a more specific audience though.

>>496952
Do you not get NPR where you're from?

>>496952
I suppose non-profit programming like PBS still features coverage of smart people occasionally. I don't know, man, did we ever really have public intellectuals? I'm probably too young to remember, if such a thing was truly the case at one time.

>>505177
NPR is admittedly much more stimulating than broadcast journalism, but I'm inclined to be turned off by just how far left their staff leans.

>>502662

>muh reparations

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>>499190
>its because people arent generally keen on going out and learning anything

>"Now listen you queer - you call me a crypto-nazi one more time and I'll sock you in your goddamn face and you'll stay plastered"

god bless Buckley - could you imagine the atomic detonation that would go of had such a public figure said the same thing today?

>>496952
God damn this was a great documentary. I'm a lefty but this film really made me appreciate Buckley and wish someone like him was still around.

>>502646
not that guy, but debates don't have to be emotional and maybe even preferable that way senpai

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>>500546

>>503163
>These intellectuals are still around.
name 14

>>505703
>being chummy = being the same thing

>>505663
He said it while smiling though, so it's ok.

the advent of television

>>506116
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nODxF4jOjCs

>>506411
this, the 50s and 60s were just an aftertaste of the radio era.
Back then, you had to be calm and clear instead of just shrieking and dazzling people with infographs, tits and 5000$ teeth

>>506426
Again, no matter how similar they aren't the same thing, ISIS was born out of the Iraqi insurgency.

>>497109
>>500459
Morning Joe is good shit

>>506513
No it was explicitly created by Obama and Hillary Clinton.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/03/hillary-clinton-and-barack-obama-created-isis-says-donald-trump

>>506665
>http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/03/hillary-clinton-and-barack-obama-created-isis-says-donald-trump
>says-donald-trump
ebin
b
i
n

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>>496952
Generally speaking, America promotes a lot of anti-intellectualism.

You're more likely to find parents pushing their children towards a fledgling sports career, rather than an academic or artistic one. Not to say there aren't parents out there who don't push their children towards academia, it's just more uncommon.

As a result of this anti-intellectualism, most children grow up into dysfunctional adults, who's main priority is to obtain as much money as possible. Money and fame are the two driving factors in the modern American society. I've visited the U.S. many times, and have been to many other countries. In general, Americans lack very basic and common general knowledge.

Again, not saying the entire country is like that, for example, the main userbase of this site is American and you do get a lot of smart people coming by. But in general, when talking about the social conventions and hierarchy, ignorance reigns supreme.

Because the winning strategy in academic debate has become "quote the most lefty/idpol philosophers before time runs out", which is completely useless for a public audience

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fmO-ziHU_D8

I was watching some old Bill Maher shows on YouTube, the ones with Camille Paglia, completely different from the late stuff.

>>506513
They might as well be considered the same if they have the same goals and are using violence to pursue those goals.

>>507459
It's quite interesting to think of this culture even before 'America' existed as it does today. The planter classes who inhabited Virginia were renowned amongst English travellers for being more concerned with appearance and outward wealth rather than refinement or lineage.

Largely due to the fact that they were ancestors of the middling sort, who had travelled with, largely, ambitious and aviricious aims at wealth and power. I'm maybe thinking aloud but I supposed there could be a connection with this elite culture and aversion to 'intellectualism'

>>499078

>that picture

fucking badass desu.

>>497070

The only ones I can think of who (semi)regularly appear on American T.V., mostly in news interviews:

Thomas Sowell
Reza Aslan
Sam Harris
Noam Chomsky

Can't think of anyone else. I've seen these guys maybe once or twice.

>Teddy Roosevelt was teh man cuz he wrestled bears and shit
>Thomas Jefferson was a big fag cuz he read books and spoke French and shit

Yeah we're fucking idiots that treasure idiocy and always have been.

>>500546

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military

Choice quote:

>The document showed, the adviser said, ‘that what was started as a covert US programme to arm and support the moderate rebels fighting Assad had been co-opted by Turkey, and had morphed into an across-the-board technical, arms and logistical programme for all of the opposition, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State. The so-called moderates had evaporated and the Free Syrian Army was a rump group stationed at an airbase in Turkey.’ The assessment was bleak: there was no viable ‘moderate’ opposition to Assad, and the US was arming extremists.

For the life of my I have no idea why this isn't huge fucking news in the USA. This is from the same guy who uncovered Abu Ghraib, Watergate, Pakistan lying about not knowing where Bin Laden was, and a bunch of other heavy shit.

Since the leftists took over in academics.

>>507716
He has a reputation for making shit up.

>>502662

Can anyone name a single black intellectual in the US who isn't fucking meme-tier? Excluding Sowell.

>>507725
There are next to none.

I don't think Euros and lefties realize how anti-intellectual Black society is.

>>507725
Do you count black science guy?

Because he actually does have a PHD in astrophysics.

>>507744
le black science man doesnt count

>>505192

>NPR is admittedly much more stimulating than broadcast journalism, but I'm inclined to be turned off by just how far left their staff leans.

This desu. I was also pretty fucking pissed off at their coverage of the Paris attacks as well. I was listening on the night that it happened, they constantly kept cutting to their 'correspondent' in Paris who was sitting in her apartment watching the news, and every other word out of her mouth was 'fear', 'panic' or 'afraid'. 'There's absolute panic on the street in Paris, everyone is afraid and staying indoors. You can almost feel the fear coming off of the streets'. All she did the entire time was sensationalize everything because she had nothing of substance to say, was extremely disappointing.

Also, their coverage of the migrant crisis is just hilarious.

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>>507744

>Black science guy
>not a meme

pic related. Also him spending half an episode of Cosmos jacking it to Giordano Bruno, was hilarious.

>we must empirically evaluate everything and question our beliefs in order to progress as a human species
>this garden variety religious heretic who happened to correctly guess at the nature of the universe with no proof, at all, whatsoever, and who was executed like all the others though is a hero and a martyr for science

tip top kek

>>507778

I absolutely do not understand his gripe with the Bible. All the shit that goes down in it is a consequence of people going "fuck you, I know better" and then making stuff worse for everybody.

>>507778
>martyr for science
this is why i cant stand the black science memer. he espouses science as a religion.

>>507725
>Sowell
>not meme-tier

>>502664

Who?

>>510264
zizek

>>507459
Intellectualism, as it seems, thrives in cultures with strong aristocratic & theological traditions, both of which are absent and even consciously rejected in American society.