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The Role of the Public Intellectual By Joseph Conlan

"It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the 'truth' and to expose 'lies.'" Noam Chomsky

Intro The word Intellectual often frightens people as thy see it as something intimidating. The pointy headed intellectual, brain box and smart boy all derive from intellectual, all dervice some impression of cleverness that you are smarter than us and therefore harder to understand and therefore do not belong to the masses or ordinary person on the street. Completely untrue! I believe everyone has the ability to be an intellectual for to be an intellectual one uses the intellect. The intellect is something that we use everyday, maybe more for some and less for others but none the less each and everyone oo of us has an intellect. Intellectualism is often associated with books and being bookish, another connotation that puts people off but with books we read language and learn from the written word and from this we can use this in our everyday speech. Why should a intellectual be a Public One? More and more television is consumed than ever before, we are constantly logged into our machines we watch more programs then ever and on every news channel every topic is breaking news then we have someone to explain to the audience just what is going on, simplifying to the audience and sometimes slanted but we always have a person explaining to us the complex matters and conflicts of the world. Television has evolved since the birth of the Internet and now we watch television on computers not like the old TV set we ha in bygone days. Video on demand we watch when we want, at any time.

[The] . . . real or true intellectual is, therefore, always an outsider, living in self-imposed exile, and on the margins of society Edward Said

I think public intellectuals are needed more than ever because if we are always plugged into our machines then we are constantly bombarded with information and messages from advertisers and television programs influencing our subconscious therefore it would be great to counter act this with well informed, articulate opinions about the truth of the matter coming from an intellectual.

WE as a people are sick to the teeth of politicians speaking to us as a if we are stupid, public intellectuals can cut straight to the point, with no newspeak or political talk. Of course intellectualism can come from many different forms, journalism, arts, literature review but the bottom line is that it is analytic, reasonable and objective. A public intellectual is now needed more than ever. We have an encroachment on our civil liberties and need a voice to criticise the orders and directives of the government. The masses need to hear common sense and not this popular culture crap that is perpetuated around society. I would encourage anyone with a voice or a well-informed opinion to speak up and out. They should not be demonised or thought low of.

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