> What exactly is BHL's status in France? Somehow I got the impression
> that it was sort of like that of Thomas Friedman's here, but with more
> people sharing Matt Taibbi's views.
I think the Friedman comparison is a good one.
Just looked at his French Wiki page, which has a lot of highlights: "BHL is presented by certain journalists as an intellectual impostor. His detractors judge that his success is due only to a well organized network of contacts."
Deleuze on the "nouveaux philosophes" (including BHL): "I find that their thought is no value...The emptier the content, the more the thinker takes on importance, and the more important the subject of the words becomes relative to the empty words themselves."
SA