The public intellectual begins to seem like nothing more than a person who is smart in public. The result is a hatchet job of the first water. Even more disturbing, however, is the suspicion that he is frying much bigger fish-namely, the very enterprise of the public intellectual itself. By contrast, Robert S. Boynton's profile of Glenn Loury is less interested in Loury's ideas than in the gap between his public pronouncements and what was once a very troubled personal life. Because, simply put, many of those interested in academic celebrities are not, at bottom, much interested in their ideas.
Intellectuals have good reasons to fear the glare of the public spotlight.
It was unseemly, he would declare, and then go on to list everything that was wrong with lusting after fame. One day he received a letter from the devil himself, inviting him to appear on a radio show devoted to his specialty and taking some pains to assure him that he would be treated with the respect his donhood deserved. The don in question immediately penned his acceptance, and, badly confused about who was to pay whom, included a check for fifty Big Ones in the bargain. So much for the vagaries of anti-vanity. But what matters is that neither of these public intellectuals was treated well, which is to say, fairly, by magazines that ought to know better.