My comment at http://www.truthout.org/on-pop-clarity-public-intellectuals-and-crisis-l\ anguage57950#comment-186954 with regard to Pop Clarity and James Baldwin's dis-engaged(and I think satisfied to be right versus wrong, instead of demonstrably for real people some way today) intellectual mturbation:
Absolutely right. Levy and Peart, Vanity of the Philosopher, speak in accessible terms until their final chapter, where they make the same case on another level, in inaccessible symbolic math. Cornel West (quoting Baldwin and Said and others recommended here!) makes an accessible case in Democracy Matters, while I would have to function as interpreter for some other of his books, though they would take the reader far and fast to the heart of all of history and the history of intellectual thought. I note that James Baldwin, quoted here at the outset, also defined "intellectual masturbation" and that Giroux here reflects on as not only "solipsistic gratification that too often comes with blogging" but the ping and pong of anti and counter and hermetic if not at all engaged. I say there that some are entertained to no end by ending up satisfied to be correct against the Becks and Kristols and neocons but not constructively and ably for people by organizing or acting or facilitating the same. As far as socially engaged yet one layer removed from the common understanding, certainly teaching cadre by using big words is not dis-engaged if I can then go out and interpet untonsured "Latin" to the plowman.
