Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard has died. The result is newspaper journalists trying to explain why he was important. I have a feeling he would have enjoyed this, I hope so at least. On a more serious level, these moments when the academic world collides with the media can be interesting, and a little bit unsettling. You would expect journalists, who ought at least to have spent 3 years at a half-decent university, to have at least SOME idea of what academics are doing (or trying to do). I wonder if obituaries of figures like Baudrillard, and similar pieces of journalism, were any better in the pre-Wikipedia universe.
The worst piece I have come across so far is, predictably enough, from The Guardian. Most newspaper journalists would be happy enough admitting they have no idea what Baudrillard was on about - but the Guardian seems to be exactly the sort of place to foster journalists who feel that people expect them to know about things like this, and try to live up to the expectation. The result: utter nonsense.
Edward Said died the week I began university, which I remember producing a strange feeling - aside from some sadness - that the previously rigid distinction between 'dead thinkers' (who did not exist, except for the traces they left behind) and 'living thinkers' (real human subjects, people with whom one can engage) had been totally disrupted.
I've always liked this snippet from a 1993 interview with Said, and it seems, in a sense, to be a nice way to remember these two:
A:"[The 1991 Gulf War] was a television war."
Q:"In Baudrillard's terms?"
A:"What did he say? Probably not."
Q:"Baudrillard said it was a hyper-real non-event"
A: "Good old Baudrillard! For that I think he should be sent there. WIth a toothbrush and a can of Evian or whatever it is he drinks."
(Power, Politics and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said ed. Gauri Viswanthan, 2001) p. 232.