Harsh pretension

I read this mockery

My latest book is an account of old American popular culture. I am writing it because I think for an American citizen there is nothing more important than to lecture Americans on something I see and assume no one else does. The idiots. I am not anti-American. I cannot stand the American prejudice against America. I consider myself a scanneur terrible – a man who digitizes pictures at much higher resolution than required. I like to think I manage to change things, like the sheets, which come to think of it are still damp. Like any successful scanner, I’m 99% someone else’s work and 1% photoshop tweaking. That’s enough.

And thought "Wow - that's pretty harsh. No way Bernard-Henri Levy is that pretentious."

My latest book, American Vertigo, is an account of a journey I took through the US. I wrote it because I thought that for a European intellectual there was nothing more important than to understand what was happening in America, to go and tell the Americans what was wrong with their society.

I’m not anti-American — I can’t stand the French prejudice against America.

I consider myself a philosophe engagé — a philosopher who gets involved. I like to think I manage to change things. Like any successful intellectual, I reckon I’m 99% misunderstood and 1% understood. That’s quite good. For instance, I think I helped to persuade Jacques Chirac to bomb the Serb positions around Sarajevo and thus stop a massacre.

I was wrong!

Via.