If you weren’t put off by the slightly silly questions on More4 News’s feature about the Prospect/Foreign Policy top 100 global public intellectuals poll last night (which consisted largely of a reporter asking Prospect editor David Goodhart why we’d left off “influential” people like Jeremy Clarkson and Osama bin Laden; you can see the report by following a link on this page), then please take the opportunity to vote for your top five here if you haven’t done so already.
Voting has been brisk in the first week—around 7,000 ballots cast—and while voting patterns so far bear a fair resemblance to the results from the 2005 poll, there are a few surprises (as well as a few obvious national vote-rigging campaigns).
More4 News was mildly sniffy about Prospect’s intellectuals wheeze, comparing it to FHM’s top 100 sexiest women reader’s poll. And insofar as both publications have asked their readers to express a preference on a matter that their choice of reading material suggests they may have strong feelings about, the programme was right. The obvious next step, not suggested by the report, is for the two magazines to combine forces to find out who the world’s top 100 sexiest intellectuals are. This time, I imagine Chomsky might find the competition a bit tougher. Do feel free to leave your suggestions below.
Hmmm, I have a bit of a thing about clever women, and apart from my wife (who is very sharp indeed) Amita Baviskar has to qualify as having a certain something…
You can see her in action at:
http://realaudio.cc.utexas.edu:8080/asxgen/law/depts/media/Reels/Baviskar.wmv
Brain Idol Goodhart himself could easily win a sexiest intellectual Oscar ; albeit, depending on the lighting cameraman, he might need to swap the Causabonesque Goth for Abercombie & Fitch or Speedos ?
Point taken about the daft line of questioning. On the bright side, the More4 News item was another opportunity to show-case the gentle Goodhart’s trademark magnanimity ( Boris is not the only babe ); where a less intellectually secure editor might have sneered at the pop intellectual questions, which in turn could have deterred any potential new Prospect fans ?
Perhaps Boris might persuade the 2012 Olympics to include Prospect and FHM as indoor sports