Intellectuals in America part 6

Michael Tomasky’s submission for Dissent’s symposium on Intellectuals and Their America is ultimately disappointing - I feel like too many intellectuals misunderstand their role in American society (as in - they over-estimate their ultimate impact) and over-estimate the importance/role/significance of popular media and its connection to popular culture.

In fact, I would say that most intellectuals would say that popular media defines/creates popular culture, rather than seeing it as a feedback loop wherein popular culture defines popular media which re-emphasizes/redefines popular culture (all of which cuts out the role of the intellectual and disempowers cultural criticism more broadly).

More specifically I am disappointed with Tomasky’s response to question 2 (Does the academy further or retard the engagement of intellectuals with American society?). I mean, as an intellectual I don’t see how you can’t have a take on this question, which means Tomasky (and other commentators) is being disingenuous when he says that he is unqualified to answer the question, which means that he is failing at the number one role of the intellectual, which is to search out and tell the Truth about one’s take on the world. Tomasky’s dissembling is a total violation. I would guess that he is a member of the academy that recognizes that the academy hurts the role of the intellectual because it means that the intellectual has become part of the system; however he doesn’t want to admit it because to admit it means that he has to admit to himself that he has compromised the values that he claims to uphold.

Much of the rest of Tomasky’s reflection doesn’t hold much water for me either. First he suggests that we embrace popular culture/technology as inherently liberating, where it seems obvious to me that culture and technology are tools and not inherently anything - the Internet and the culture spawned by the internet are only as liberating as the people who use it. Guns don’t kill people; people kill people. And Tomasky’s embrace of the Internet because of the information that can be accessed ignores the fact that disinformation is also easily (perhaps more easily) accessed. Furthermore, there’s the problem of source material that circles back on itself - a self-reinforcing loop that limits the perspectives to which people are exposed.

Where Tomasky and I tend to agree is when he urges intellectuals to engage with popular culture: to go to Home Depot, Applebees, etc. I agree, since one has to have actual experience in the culture in order to have a basis from which to critique it and be taken seriously. On the other hand, engagement with popular culture cannot be merely consumerist. There are good television shows, but merely because something is on television, doesn’t make it good. And furthermore, we should recognize that the medium has had profound impacts on the way that human beings relate to each other - not all of which are positive.