think tank – noun

1. A laundering operation for corporate propaganda.

2. A union of like-minded writers who aspire to the intellectual authority of the professoriat, but who dislike reading, research, teaching, and peer-review.

“To a Wall Streeter, intellectuals are pretty cheap,” said Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of “God and Gold: Britain, America and the Making of the Modern World.” “There are wedding rings that cost more than I do.”