I Like the Old Hitch Better

When a genuine intellectual becomes a celebrity, there is usually some misunderstanding somewhere. The arbiters of celebrityâ??magazine and network executives, top editors and columnists, producers and talk show hosts, major grant-makers and prize-giversâ??are, by and large, as incapable of sponsoring difficulty and depth as they are of resisting glibness and facility. They may themselves appreciate intellectual distinction, but audiences must be reliably sold to advertisers, or investors will go elsewhere. Difficulty is, by definition, a hard sell.