If We Only Had a Brain

"I've never been an intellectual, but I have this look." — Woody Allen

How is it that, in a country founded by intellectuals, it's an insult to call someone an intellectual?

Or, as my friend Wendy put it yesterday, "When did being smart and educated become a bad thing?"

Wendy is college-educated but came from a working-class family, just like me and millions of other Americans. We've talked many times about how, in our families, college was nonnegotiable. Our parents said college was our ticket to a better life, and we believed them.

The deal was that our minds would expand with our vocabularies. We'd work a different kind of hard to carve out a different kind of life, one that never would know the snap of a metal lunch pail or the punch of a time clock. Instead of working with our hands, we would earn the privilege of thinking for a living.

What brought Wendy bee-lining to my desk was an exchange last week between the "Today" show's Meredith Vieira and conservative radio host William Bennett.

Vieira mentioned that some conservative columnists, including David Brooks and George Will, have questioned Sarah Palin's qualifications to be vice president.

"Well," Bennett said. "They are intellectuals."

Vieira poked the bear. "Mr. Bennett, why do you use the word 'intellectual'? It almost sounds like you're using it as a buzzword for 'elite.'"

"Well," Bennett said, "they are elites. I mean … George Will, I don't think, would balk at being called an intellectual, nor would David Brooks. And they have had …"

Vieira interrupted. "Does that make their concerns less valid?"

"Sorry?"

"Does that make their concerns ..."

Bennett stammered: "No, it, no, hey, I'm one myself. I got a Ph.D."

Wendy recounted the exchange to me and shook her head.

"So it's OK to be educated as long as you don't act like it?" she said.

This is not the first time some political conservatives have declared that thinking your way through an election is nothing but a bad habit.

Maybe the problem comes down to how you define an intellectual. There seems to be a lot of confusion over what it means and whether it matters.

Albert Einstein said intellectual growth "should commence at birth and cease only at death." Oh, sure, he was good at math, but using Agnew's measure, I have to say I've seen pictures of Einstein riding a bike but never parking one. Makes you wonder.

Newt Gingrich, who led the conservative revolution in Congress in the 1990s, once complained that he is just too smart for his own good.

"I'm not a natural leader," he said. "I'm too intellectual. I'm too abstract. I think too much."

Writer Aldous Huxley said an intellectual is anyone "who's found one thing that's more interesting than sex." By that standard, there are an awful lot of really educated men who are darn stupid.

This whole argument over the value of intellect strikes me as just plain silly. It's as if having an education means you must divorce yourself from common sense, which is especially insulting to people who don't have a lot of education but understand the potential value of those who do.

People such as Wendy's parents. People such as my parents. People such as Elvis, too.

It was Elvis, after all, who offered this hunka-hunka burning love endorsement of Adlai Stevenson in 1956:

"I'm strictly for Stevenson. I don't dig the intellectual bit, but I'm telling you, man, he knows the most."

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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