I don’t think any of the examples you give were polemicists though. They weren’t trying to be opinion forming, they were trying to open the universe with their minds and so they interacted with the academic community, not the world at large. There are still writers and philosophers doing that, just not in the national dailies.

Heh. Heheh. Sin City had the most named female characters I’d seen in a single film for a long, long time. In fact, screen presence was a lot closer to the 50/50 I sometimes dream of, in wild moments. It also passes Alison Bechdel’s Rule (that a film should contain at least two female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man). The author of the piece argues that because thong-wearing lesbians and pole-dancing law students are out of their experience of/expectation of what women are, that these were not portrayals of women at all, but sexist caricatures, and therefore intrinsically wrong –itself a sexist position, sorry.

Sin City knows it’s sexist, and uses this to say something about sexism. The Times fantasises that it isn’t — and uses its imagined moral superiority to brush the issues raised under a smug and patronising carpet.

I really should read that stuff again. It’s quite brilliant and amazingly easy to read. If you’re interested look for the early Socratic dialogues by Plato (Socrates never wrote anything down so we only have Plato’s word to go on. The early stuff is probably accurate while in later works, such as Republic, Socrates is just a character with Plato’s words in his mouth and it all gets a little bit turgid, though not as turgid as the bloody Enlightenment dudes…). There are, of course, free versions at Project Guttenburg though I can’t off hand remember which are which…

”…and some smell better than others” I believe is the full expression. Don’t ask me who coined it though.

”Gone are the days when someone would sit and meditate on ‘Mu’ or ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping’, or meditate for 9 years in front of a wall.”

ah….those were the days, eh? ;) someone was asking the other day why they don’t teach rhetoric in schools (anymore)? I think opinions are worthless when they’re presented as isolated rant.

btw, (and I never studied philosophy at all) but isn’t socrates point more about not being an expert on anything – and owning up to that? So, his profound insight was to realise he had no profound insight. Not refuting what you know about socrates, because I know next to nothing.:)

This is a soundbite obsessed, instant gratification culture, and the media plays to that. I don’t really know who is spinning who any more. Maybe we do get the politicians we deserve.

Gone are the days when someone would sit and meditate on ‘Mu’ or ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping’, or meditate for 9 years in front of a wall. The best ideas are not writen down, they are experienced. This, in my opinion, is where intellectualism falls flat, it fails to connect to the human experience. But as you said, my opinion is worth shit :)