Public intellectual. The phrase vibrates through my ears and my brain interprets the noise, but, in turn, doesn’t make much sense of it. Not because I don’t know phonics, but because it’s not a phrase thrown around too much nowadays.
Thinking a bit harder, my mind drifts to high school history and literature classes, when I learned about famous politicians and philosophers and the like. John Locke. Henry Thoreau. Now those guys are classic public intellectuals. And it’s easy to say now, looking back, because we have had the time to discuss and assess their contributions to society. But how do you correctly define a public intellectual in our present era, when we don’t know the outcome of one’s influence quite yet? How are we supposed to deem one person a true public intellectual when they have probably just as many enemies as followers? How can we, as a society, agree on a public intellectual when our population has conflicting ideologies, and both sides will go to extreme lengths to prove theirs right?
I’m not saying this hasn’t been a problem since the beginning of forever. And I’m not talking down on the intellectuals who have dedicated their lives to improving our world, either—it’s just that they are out of date. Had we listened to the theories of the thousands of “public intellectuals” before our time, wouldn’t the answers be obvious? Haven’t they bestowed upon us enough knowledge that by now, we should all occupy our own personal Utopia? No. Instead, we “occupy” Wall Street. We “occupy” LA. We “occupy” Springfield. (And guess what—there’s a Springfield in every state of the US.) We “occupy” every city, town, and street where the people feel they are being mistreated by the group that claims superiority—which, if you haven’t noticed, is almost everywhere nowadays.
So rather than define “public intellectuals” as the people who have studied human behavior, politics, history, and philosophy, and written the books we are required to read throughout our lives which hardly make any sense without twice as many footnotes as content, and who preach very brilliant, revolutionary ideas that sound great in theory but have proven to not work for hundreds and even thousands of years, I am going to define the “public intellectual” as the average Joe. Someone who is very normal, someone you and I can relate to, someone who knows how to get his point across in a way people actually respond to, and lastly someone whose ideas aren’t revolutionary, but subtle enough that they could actually be put into effect and make a difference. Ladies and gentleworms, I present to you, Rob Delaney.
You don’t have to have your name out there to be a public intellectual. In fact, I argue that with the right amount of exposure, you and I have the potential to become public intellectuals. Rather than nominating the elite for the position, I nominate normal people who have an extraordinary influence on those around them. I like the way Stephen Mack explains it in his blog post:
Now, are some people ill-equipped for self-government? Of course. But the strongest alternative argument, the best argument for democracy, is not that the people are “naturally” equipped for self-government—but that they need to become so, and, moreover, experience is the only teacher. So here’s the point: Any argument for the public intellectual that rests the assumption that common citizens are forever childlike and must be led by a class of experts is politically corrosive and historically dangerous.
If “common” people are the ones that need to be guided, who better than one of them—a “commoner” if you must, be the one to do it?
Rob Delaney is a normal guy. According to an interview, he’s from a small fishing village in Massachusetts and is now married with a kid. I’m not sure what happened in between because he doesn’t have a Wikipedia page (yet), but from experience I know that he’s a comedian currently touring the country and has a show coming out on Comedy Central. Putting his beginning and end together, I assume a lot must have happened in between. Not sure what it was, but I do know he made a living for himself doing something he’s passionate about—something we can all admire.
If you already know who he is, or if you didn’t and just googled him and came across an array of his sexual fantasies about women and food (at least he’s honest), you’re probably questioning why I consider him a public intellectual. But don’t worry, that’s just his normal side. You might think he’s inappropriate and sometimes strange, but I think he provides a dead-on satirical commentary on our society. And this is my blog—so I’m right and you’re wrong.
Just kidding. But besides his nonsensical tweets, he has a column in a popular culture magazine where he talks about mostly serious things. But even the not-so-serious-stuff is ingeniously crafted to make people realize how ridiculous our culture can be at times. But before I discuss his intellectual side, I want to emphasize how public he really is.
I learned about Rob Delaney from Twitter. When I first made my account, the little blue bird kindly reminded me that I should probably follow more people. Like when most little blue birds tell me what to do, I took the advice unconditionally and sifted through the different categories Twitter has organized. When going through “Comedy” I saw Delaney’s picture and quietly laughed to myself and thought that alone deserved a follow.
He currently has about 300,000 followers, 6,000 tweets, and averages around 1,000 retweets per tweet. (I’m shocked to say there were no red squiggly lines under any of the words in that sentence.) So if most of his followers see his tweets, and then about 1,000 of them decide to retweet each one, some kind of magical algorithm which includes the number of retweeters’ followers, etcetera, tells me that each on of his witticisms reaches a lot, and mean a lot, of people. Given this fact, he’s very different from a public intellectual in the traditional sense. Instead of the inner-workings of his brain being read in books, heard at lectures, and reserved for the minds of the elite who even give the time of day to contemplate what defines a public intellectual at all, what he has to say can be accessed by anyone with internet, easily, without actively making the decision to enrich themselves. His knowledge is spread online, to the bored students in lectures, to the people waiting in line at the grocery story, and to everyone catching up on their social media while sittin’ on the john. I think I just covered most people in America—especially with that last one. Point being, he’s easily accessible to millions of people at any given moment.
Now that you know quite how public Delaney is, I want to discuss why he should be considered an intellectual. Rob Delaney has a column called “Take a Stroll…With Rob Delaney” in a culture mag-and-web-a-zine popular with the younger crowd called Vice, where he writes about socially relevant and topical events. He covers everything from the upcoming election and debt ceilings to Kim Kardashian’s divorce and Katy Perry’s song “Last Friday Night.” But no matter how newsworthy his articles may or may not seem, they all have a clear take-away message.
I’ll start with his piece called “A Voter’s Guide” about the upcoming election. He starts with explanations for every candidate he’s voted for since he was 19 and why. He admits his naivety in his first few political decisions but reveals the finer-tuned strategies he employed as he grew older. Discussing the 2008 election, he says:
In 2008 I voted for Ralph Nader again. This will upset some people, and that’s fantastic. Please channel your angry energy into the outlet you feel will effect the most change. In the Democratic Primary, however, I voted for Barack Obama. But get this! I would’ve voted for John Edwards had he not already bowed out. The reason for my decision was that he had a better health care plan than Hilary Clinton or Obama. In fact, Clinton and Obama liked it so much they copied it for their campaigns! Thank the good Lord he deprived me of that opportunity. It is popular (and appropriate) to denounce Edwards now for his mind-shattering and mythic hubris, but at the time we didn’t know that he was secretly stinking, suppurating human garbage with a hot, gooey center or selfishness that could implode stars.
I placed so much stock in Edwards’ health plan because I am unable to shake the belief that there is anything more important to our nation’s future than A. access to affordable healthcare and B. education. Make it easier for your citizens to be healthy and smart and they will save you in ways you have yet to imagine. Make it difficult and your nation will swirl history’s toilet on its way to hell. When a person spends energy worrying about access to affordable healthcare they don’t have the energy to dream up the next Google. I’m sorry that this is a newsflash to some of you, but we are born dying and will each of us have “problems” that need medical intervention; it is not something to be ashamed of or afraid to experience. It is a condition of being alive and I am shocked that ANYONE WITH A HUMAN BODY would place obstacles in the way of their brothers and sisters getting a pill or a procedure that could help them.
The same goes for education. When your citizens’ minds aren’t stimulated by an excellent education, they don’t have the tools to think up the next life-saving vaccine. A country that doesn’t invest in education cannot claim for one second to be interested in its future. There are plenty of words to describe politicians who don’t make their constituents’ health and education their top priority, but for now I’ll let you pick one somewhere on the spectrum between “misguided” and “evil.” I will insist you tack on the word “shortsighted” as well.
These ideas aren’t novel. They aren’t revolutionary. But they are things too many people ignore in elections and he presents them in a forward and entertaining way. They are a reminder of how we should, but don’t, think. It’s simple advice, and if more people subscribed to this school of thought our country would be in the hands of someone that cares about its people and its future. What’s more important than that?
A presidential election is something most public intellectuals frequently discuss. But lets talk about something they probably ignore and might not even know about. In a recent article, Rob wrote about Kim Kardashian’s divorce. No, it wasn’t a gossip column in a tabloid, but rather an inspiring piece about divorce, a disease that currently infects 50% of marriages in America. As you learned from the previous article, Delaney is an advocate of education and healthcare, so he obviously rants about her over-the-top publically aired wedding how that money could have been better spent. But the real meat of the article is in his own rant about marriage, how it sucks, and how he’s wanted to end his plenty of times. But he doesn’t, and that’s what the sanctity of marriage is all about: overcoming the problem at hand and becoming that much closer. He says it much more, er, eloquently, than I do:
I’ve been married for five years. To the same woman. I’ve wanted to divorce her at times. She’s wanted to divorce me at times. But one great thing about marriage, when it’s entered by regular folks, in good faith, is that it’s hard to exit. It costs money. You have to talk to lawyers during business hours except whoops—you have a job that you need to earn money to buy food and pants—so when are you going to both take the time to do that? By the time you’d have gotten around to it, you’ve forgiven each other and maybe even reached a new appreciation for each other as you worked through whatever seemingly insurmountable problem made you hate each other for 20 minutes while you sat in your shitty car outside a CVS yelling at each other and crying. Because guess what, Kim? That’s a huge ingredient in a SUCCESSFUL marriage. Sometimes it sucks. And I don’t mean lower-case “s” sucks. I mean it SUCKS so fucking hard you’re POSITIVE you’ll give yourself stomach cancer or an embolism as you try to make your spouse explode through telekinesis. When you relax, however, and remember that you’re a bigger asshole than they are, with enough neuroses and calcified bad habits to warrant their own card catalog, you realize that they’re struggling through life’s shit storm just like you. Then you take a shower together and fuck while laughing.
Personally, I think that quote should be tattooed on the forehead of every divorce lawyer, and his or her clients be forced to trace it with their fingers before they even look at any paper work. Again, he isn’t presenting a revolutionary idea, but he is presenting a simple idea well. A concept, if adopted by more people, would make them bite their tongues and think once—twice—maybe even THREE times before racing to closest divorce lawyer and/or butcher shop to end their marriage prematurely. It’s not about making the whole world a better place, but making each individual a better person so that they, in turn, can work together to solve the bigger issues.
Those still against the idea of Rob Delaney as a public intellectual, perhaps claiming he isn’t decorated enough, doesn’t write for any noteworthy publications, or will have no impact on the world: are you happy? If not, do you want to be happy? Positive advice that is relevant to our everyday lives has more power and potential than fluffed up jabber about things that don’t influence your wellbeing on a daily basis that is far too often the musings provided by your typical “public intellectual.” If you can’t relate to his opinion on marriage, maybe you can relate to what he has to say about racism, homosexuality, mental illness, alcoholism, feminism, or Anti-Semitism. Or maybe some of his jokes will make you laugh.
That brings me to my last point. Most people reared as public intellectuals are well-versed in a variety of fields and they’ll make sure you know it within the first 30 seconds of listening to them speak and/or reading their publications. Designer vocabulary plus a “breadth and depth” of knowledge usually makes their language hard to decipher. And I don’t want to break a sweat doing so. It isn’t easy to both present your idea clearly and to engage people. There are many ways to achieve this, but Delaney does it through comedy—a medium much harder to master than most think. After all, when was the last time you met someone who both claims to be an intellectual and has you hyperventilating with laughter? People always have and always will love laughing, because it makes us happy, and isn’t that the ultimate goal? Humor isn’t a trait you can teach, and the power of another’s sense of humor is often underestimated.
I’ve heard the quote “comedians are the philosophers of our era” several times, and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. It’s kind of like they both watch society from a bird’s eye point of view. Each has an eerily accurate understanding of how humans work but the difference is how they communicate their knowledge. Philosophers use their unique knowledge to make guidelines for how people should function in society. Comedians use their unique understanding of how people work to make them laugh. That’s why we laugh at comedians, because they point out things so obvious that once they say it, we hit ourselves on the head for not realizing it first. I don’t think either the philosopher or the comedian is right or wrong, just different. In our current times, I think satire is a better tool to point out our flaws and inspire us to correct them than academic essays. Referring back to Mack’s article on the public intellectual, Jean Bethke Elshtain seems to agree with me:
So the public intellectual needs, it seems to me, to puncture the myth-makers of any era, including his own, whether it's those who promise that utopia is just around the corner if we see the total victory of free markets worldwide, or communism worldwide or positive genetic enhancement worldwide, or mouse-maneuvering democracy worldwide, or any other run-amok enthusiasm. Public intellectuals, much of the time at least, should be party poopers.
So if the public intellectual, a party pooper, a wet blanket, a bearer of bad news, is going to criticize us, how better than to do it through humor? If someone is going to point out my flaws, I’d rather them do in a joking manner that makes me laugh than in a solemn academic essay that will probably make me feel dumb. Isn’t that the biggest concern in the long run—happiness? If everybody was happy, they wouldn’t complain. If everybody was happy, our society wouldn’t be so screwed up. But it is screwed up, because not everyone is happy. So if we must be told what we’re doing wrong, I’d rather hear it from a comedian than a politician or philosopher or someone of equal “importance,” because I’d rather laugh at myself with others than feel humiliated alone.
ROB DELANEY FOR PRESIDENT!
