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The Times – Intellectual property Why isn’t Britain as brazen as France in celebrating its greatest thinkers?

No other country has quite this same cadre of men and women who can be introduced as “intellectuals” without making everyone else struggle to contain a smirk. In Britain, “intellectual” is almost a term of abuse, rarely used in polite company. Instead, we use euphemisms, like “too clever by half”, as if to voice a stupider opinion would be worthier. And we are the poorer for it.

In France, thinkers like Lévi-Strauss, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Raymond Aron are so confident about flaunting their opinions that they never beg forgiveness; they beg only to differ. What’s more they are just as famous as Johnny Hallyday. Bernard Henri-Lévy fills as many gossip columns as Catherine Deneuve — even if he is an intellectual poseur who is known as much for the hairy chest that peeps from his white shirt as for his views on existentialism… Their Left Bank cafés are well known to Parisians. Their views are craved and courted on chat shows. Our chat shows court soap stars.

Yes, Britain has scholars and pundits. But on the intellectual spectrum they enjoy a status somewhere between being and nothingness.

Oh Lord Melvyn, you’re doing yeoman’s work!

No but seriously, it’s true. Meanwhile, what do we have in the US? Not soap stars, not even movie stars, really. Journalists, I suppose.

Oh gawd, journalists are America’s intellectual class!