Daniel Bell did not get a proper obituary in your mighty newspaper, but he still got a full page (“Ahead of the Curve,” February 5, 2011). You laud him for his many books, including The End of Ideology (1960), The Coming Post-Industrial Society (1973), and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1978). As you report, his ideas were subjects of “passionate debate” in the pages of the Public Interest, which he co-founded in 1965 with another poor-boy-made-good, Irving Kristol of the neoconservatism fame. For better or worse, Kristol was lucky enough to get a proper obituary in your pages (September 26, 2009). Regardless of their many differences, the two are American “public intellectuals” of note. Both were specialists in generalizations, as Bell boasted to be. And both exploited the mass media to their greatest advantage. Which means that they avoided boring scholarship of any kind. Ideologues both, they defied scholarly criticism by sticking to vapid generalizations. Of course, Bell and Kristol occasionally hit a nail on its head. Given the scope of their oeuvres, though, it would be hard not to come up with a few memorable tricks. Sadly, the two have spawned a whole bunch of public intellectuals who also specialize in generalizations. And not only in America.