The XX Factor: What women really think.

Is Paris Hilton the New Einstein?

You probably wouldn't have known it by looking at him, but your Dunkin' Donuts clerk this morning wasn't thrumming his fingers to the latest Soulja Boy bastardization. According to John Parker's sprawling piece in the Economist's quarterly offspring, Intelligent Life, he was probably pumping a little Pavarotti—maybe a This American Life podcast, a choice bit of Faulkner, or some Sartre on the side.

Or it could have been Soulja Boy, but only if he'd already finished Atlantic.

We know this is true because Parker says, thank God, that we're all getting smarter. It's the age of mass intelligence, where high culture reaches low IQs, transforming the ignorants into erudites—or at least ignorants with erudite taste, as in the piece, intelligence seems to be quantified by cultural consumption:

"Millions more people are going to museums, literary festivals and operas; millions more watch demanding television programmes or download serious-minded podcasts," Parker writes, and a festival director notes that her "audiences increasingly want 'the buzz you get from working that little bit harder.' "

Parker quotes Ira Glass, This American Life creator, to reassure us that it's not as bad as Paris Hilton & Co. have led us to believe. "When people talk and write about culture,” says Glass, “it’s apocalyptic. We tell ourselves that everything is in bad shape. But the opposite is true. There’s an abundance of really interesting things going on all around us.”

Glass lost me when he cited the fact that there are "really interesting things going on" as evidence for the fact that we're all doing just fine, but nonetheless, I'd love to believe Parker. I'd love to side, like he does, with Philippe de Montebello, director of the Met, who apparently "is fond of saying 'the public is a lot smarter than anyone gives it credit for.' ”

Which is why I was willing to stick it out for Parker's reasoning:

"It’s unlikely people are more intelligent than they used to be. [Blogger's note: Yes. Yes, it is.] Perhaps the elites that enjoy high culture are now bigger for some reason? Perhaps popular tastes have changed in such a way as to benefit high culture? Or perhaps it has nothing to do with changes in the audience, and more to do with the artists and institutions, who have become more skilled at attracting people? Answer: all of the above."

Unfortunately, Parker doesn't figure his explanation along the lines of his "all of the above" but instead goes on to note, among other things, that "educational standards have risen appreciably over the past 40 years" and that (shock!) people with degrees are more likely to visit museums than people without degrees.

He does take a paragraph to point out that the smartest among us often make stupid—blissfully stupid—choices when it comes to culture, which explains many of my otherwise brilliant friends' addictions to Gossip Girl, which I totally cannot relate to at all, ever. *cough*  Apparently, Parker's "elite market" is more likely to be nondiscriminating "cultural omnivores," rather than "univores," devouring both high and low culture with unquestioning enthusiasm. "One of the features of the market for mass intelligence," says Parker, "is its heterogeneity.

Which is exactly what de Tocqueville, who basically predicted this entire phenomenon, found so terrifying—that the consumer would begin to consume art produced at the lowest, most consumable level, and that art would deteriorate accordingly. He writes in Democracy in America:

"Many of those who are not yet rich begin to conceive [ a taste for the fine arts ], at least by imitation; and the number of consumers increases, but opulent and fastidious consumers become more scarce.... No longer able to soar to what is great, they cultivate what is pretty and elegant; and appearance is more attended to than reality."

And this is why I don't share Parker's self-described "Pollyanna-ish" outlook on the revitalization of mass intelligence. Yes, I believe that society is consuming more high culture, but why? Is it because we desire to learn, or because we want to appear that we've learned—that we're cultured, intelligent, and eclectic? Since, particularly due the hipster oeuvre, intelligence is the new chic.

Chic, and easy to attain. Learn to pronounce Foucault, drop a well-placed Freaks and Geeks reference, read a few Great Books, subscribe to HBO and the Economist, mix in a little ironic Lil Wayne appreciation, and suddenly, you've got class, intelligence, and culture. And everyone perusing your Facebook knows it. Appearance, not reality.

So, my question to you ladies: Are we, the masses, getting smarter, or are we just omnivorous culture frauds—plain-bellied Sneetches who sewed on our own stars?

Continent First?

Juliet, Melinda, Lauren, and Rachael, I'm perplexed by your certainty that Sarah Palin did indeed know that Africa was a continent not a country. On what are you basing this assumption? Sarah Palin's denials? Forgive me if I find her credibility lacking. This is the same woman who said she never wanted all those expensive clothes purchased for her by the RNC and insisted she would gladly go back to wearing her own clothes. Now we learn that the price tag for those Neiman/Nordstrom's duds was even higher than the $150,000 originally reported and that the RNC had to dispatch someone to Alaska to retrieve the clothing from Palin.

We have no information to indicate or prove that Palin knew the difference between a country and a continent, but we have plenty of well-documented news stories and televisions interviews showing how little she knows about geography and how little interest she has about the rest of the world. Remember that she could not name a newspaper she reads and that she shamelessly revels in a "real America" type of anti-intellectualism. (And by the way, she's not the first person to make this mistake. I've heard other Americans refer to Africa as one country.) I also believe she really did not know the NAFTA signatory countries.

Melinda, you characterized my past criticisms of Palin's intellectual challenges as elitism, but as the New York Times' Judith Warner recently correctly noted, there are plenty of Americans "who respect intelligence and good grammar." They also believe their president and vice president should be smarter, better-informed, and more versed in international affairs than the average American. This does not make them elitists; it makes them pragmatists. I still believe that Palin was woefully unqualified for the job and apparently so did millions of other voters who rejected the McCain-Palin ticket because they were insulted that McCain tried to pass her off as his, and Obama's, intellectual equal. I'm pretty well-informed and well-educated—and I can even speak in full sentences—but I still don't believe I'm qualified to be vice president or president. Knowing one's limitations is a sign of intelligence. That's honesty, not elitism.

I, for one, am very glad to see Palin leave the national stage, at least for now, and heartened that the voting public saw through her fake heartland authenticity. Apparently, I'm not alone. Check out this ode to Sarah.

Conservatives Should Not Cast Out Their Own

Melinda,

I'm so glad you posted on Christopher Buckley leaving the National Review. I was saddened to read his column in the Daily Beast saying he'd left. Also, I had just been conjuring up a post in response to your post and Ellen's from earlier today, in our ongoing discussion about intellectualism and what it is and why it's become a smear, and I think the Buckley story fits in. I especially appreciated Ellen for both calling me out on making intellectual a dirty word and for bringing me into the ranks of great thinkers (even though I spend far more time curled up with Sports Illustrated than with The New Yorker).

It was unwise and unfair of me to group intellectuals as a whole in with the condescending elites that bug me so much, and I admit I was probably thinking of someone like the gentleman Melinda worked for, who constantly reminded others of his genius. Haughtiness drives me batty, and so does what I perceive as intolerance. Which brings me back to Christopher Buckley. It's annoying when smarty-pants liberals say, "Why I don't know anyone who would vote for that imbecile George Bush/John McCain," and it's just as annoying when it comes from the opposite direction, when an angry mob takes on an individual who arrived at a different conclusion from them after much thought. (I've seen Rich Lowry's response, and I find it hard to believe that a great magazine like the National Review doesn't have room for both Christopher Buckley and Mark Steyn, who recently earned a huge victory for free speech in Canada.)

What made me especially sad was Buckley's assertion that the Republican Party was more "yurt" than big tent. The rest of you might laugh at me for thinking so, but I have always felt that GOP was a bigger tent than most outsiders gave it credit for. I know more pro-choice Republicans than I do pro-life Democrats. I know Republicans who are Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and some who are not religious at all. Some of us can't get too worked up about global warming, but that doesn't stop us from recycling and setting the thermostat at 68 in the winter. I've written a lot on this blog about how dismayed I am with our national discourse, about how divisive and bitter some have become. It hurts even more when those within my own party resorts to petty tactics and cruel words against one another.

You Dirty Intellectual!

Rachael, I hate to be the one to have to break it to you, but you are an intellectual. (And I'm not sure when intellectual became such a dirty word.) You were valedictorian of your high-school class. You went to college. You are educated. You are learned. You had to read a few books and understand at least a couple of levels for that to have happened. And you work for the liberal New York media elite! (You don't get off pretending you are "regular folk" just because you live in Ohio!)

But being an intellectual is about more than just reading books or "plowing through studies." It simply means someone who uses their intellect rather than just their emotion. Someone who can think something out and give a reasoned, supported response, rather than simply take an uninformed stance out of fear or ignorance or laziness. (For example, voting the same way their parents do simply because they know of no other way.)

You say,

I've shaped—and reshaped—my beliefs and opinions through years and years of life experience, from debating others and even arguing with myself, from listening to viewpoints both similar to mine and different.

So you've heard other opinions and let them affect you? You've reasoned things out? You've argued with your own points of view? Intellectual!!!

And:

There are times I've struggled with my support for Republicans (though not always for the reasons you might think). I've got a lot of internal conflict about John McCain and Sarah Palin.

You've struggled with your own beliefs? You have internal conflicts? You don't just blindly follow the crowd and follow party lines? Intellectual!!!

I think what thinking people both liberal an conservative object to is not people who believe differently than they do if their beliefs are reasoned, thought out, and supportable, but people whose beliefs come not from the intellect (or even from emotion) but from prejudice, fear, laziness, or ignorance. Not voting for Obama because he is black, because his middle name is Hussein, because he's different, because one believes the rumors that have been spread about him rather than trying to find the truth.

It goes both ways. Not voting for McCain because he's old. There's also been a lot of age discrimination in this campaign that no one has talked about. Not voting for Sarah Palin because she sounds like a bumpkin.

There are plenty of "intellectuals" who aren't book smart, but who debate things: how best to raise their children, which candidate is best, which policy is best, why certain aspects of their religion don't make sense. That's nothing to be ashamed of!

As Proust (and France Gall) Would Say: Ne Soyons Pas Si Bêtes

Rachael, I don't guess I know that many people who think of themselves as intellectuals—or would say so out loud, at any rate, no matter how much they love kicking around ideas. (My mom described me that way once, in anger, and it was soooo not a compliment. "Who died and made you Lionel Trilling, missy?'' was the drift, and doubtless with good reason.)

I did work for an intellectual at one point—and I know this because he spoke of it constantly; in fact, he talked so much about his own heapin' helpin' of smarts that one wondered, as he would have said, how wide-ranging his great thoughts really were.

Public intellectuals in recent political life? Obama would be the first in the White House since ... Woodrow Wilson? (Or can a rip-roaring racist ever qualify as such?) Otherwise, we've had Pat Moynihan, by any standard, Al Gore, as a great prophet and popularizer of science and technology he was quick to grasp the significance of, Bill Bradley in his own mind, thanks to John McPhee, and uh ... not Bill Clinton, though he is definitely 10 kinds of smart. I guess no Republicans spring to mind because they've been running against the Ivory Tower crowd for as long as I can remember.

What does it even mean to be living the life of the mind in this moment of the body/age of the Internet/time of the more, faster, ruder, and right now? I had a French boyfriend—yes, this was after the war—who defined an intellectual as anyone compelled to "passer des nuits blanches'' for the sheer pleasure of it, in the grip of a book. But to then brag about it? Pas sexy, even in France. And in this country, our challenge seems to be to find that middle ground—your favorite spot, Rachael—between pride in mediocrity and pointless showing off. Aspiring to know more should be a given and shared goal rather than, as you say, just another way to divide us into haves and (ha-ha, you down there) have-nots.

Thoughts on Intellectuals and Anti-Intellectuals

I'm just catching up on the Palin-Bush "I.Q." discussion, and there is just one point (OK, maybe two) I wanted to address. Juliet, I don't know anyone who feels a "nearly blood-thirsty anger against people who read books," and I think it's an unfair characterization. What makes people angry, and blood-thirsty, if we must go there, is when elites and intellectuals condescend to everyone else and belittle their views. (A point that Melinda makes astutely in her latest post.) In this democracy of ours, we all get a vote. It doesn't matter if you have read the complete works of James and Faulkner or if the highlight of your week is the latest issue of People magazine.

I think it also creates an us-vs.-them mentality that is neither accurate nor helpful. Me, I would love to be an "intellectual." I would love to find eight layers of meaning in each novel I read and be able to sit down with studies on topics that interest me and just plow through them. But I'm not. My brain doesn't work like that. But that doesn't mean I'm unthinking or lack curiosity. I think the vast, vast majority of us live somewhere in the middle.

I don't doubt that there are some people who proudly call themselves anti-intellectual (and I honestly don't think that "governing from the gut," as you write of President Bush, is the same thing at all). I think most people who fall into the category, whether they'd call themselves that are not, are too consumed by everyday concerns—working hard, paying the bills, maybe raising kids or taking care of elderly parents, and trying to squeeze it all in before collapsing in a heap at the end of the day—to worry about the same things that elites do. And when they're tired or stressed out, they really don't like being told their views are worth less than someone else's.

You also write that you commend conservatives for leaving the GOP but wish they should have done so earlier. I've shaped—and reshaped—my beliefs and opinions through years and years of life experience, from debating others and even arguing with myself, from listening to viewpoints both similar to mine and different. I would suspect that liberals do the same thing, and I can't imagine having suggested four years ago that people abandon their beliefs or their party just because John Kerry was an inferior candidate. I'm not ashamed of my party affiliation. There are times I've struggled with my support for Republicans (though not always for the reasons you might think). I've got a lot of internal conflict about John McCain and Sarah Palin. But if there's anything that steels my resolve, if there's anything that allows me to stride confidently into the voting booth, it's hearing that Republicans should "leave a sinking ship" or reading comments from people (as I read earlier today) who wish that misfortune would befall John McCain and Sarah Palin.