Let's talk stupider

A few more thoughts on our national dumbing down.

My friend Bawb the Revelator sent me an editorial by my new hero Susan Jacoby the other day. (By the way--Bawb is new to blogging, so go check out his place.) The piece appeared in the Washington Post on Sunday:

The Dumbing of America

Here's a taste:

The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his words echo with painful prescience in today's very different United States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble -- in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

This is the last subject that any candidate would dare raise on the long and winding road to the White House. It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an "elitist," one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office. Instead, our politicians repeatedly assure Americans that they are just "folks," a patronizing term that you will search for in vain in important presidential speeches before 1980. (Just imagine: "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain . . . and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth.") Such exaltations of ordinariness are among the distinguishing traits of anti-intellectualism in any era. (*Note from Bubs: Think of Ms. Pickler's performance on Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?)

She identifies three issues:

• The decline of reading and the rise of video
• The erosion of general knowledge
• Arrogance about our lack of knowledge

There's a lot to work with in Jacoby's opinion piece. Did you know that, between 1968 and 1988, the average sound bite for a presidential candidate declined from 42.3 seconds to 9.8 seconds? And by 2000 it dropped even more, to an average 7.8 seconds! There's a sad contrast between the presidencies (and the citizenry who elected them) of "I'm the decider" Bush and FDR, who encouraged Americans to buy maps so that they could understand the geography of war in the early, frightening days of WWII.

Go read this thing.

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Speaking of George W. Bush, did you know he's explained why our economy is a little rocky right now? My mom called me yesterday to tell me about this and asked if I could find the clip on the interwebs.

During an interview with Ann Curry on the Today Show, Bush was asked about the economy. The first thing that got me was his dismissive "yeah, well" when Curry said some Americans believe they're suffering economically because of the war. It's right at the beginning of the video.

The POTUS goes on to say that he thinks war spending is creating jobs. So, Mr. President, what's wrong with the economy?

"I think this economy is down because we built too many houses."

Yep. That's what he said:

Let's talk stupid

The first thing to catch my eye over coffee this morning (other than the NIU shooting--I'll get to that later) was this story in the NY Times, titled "Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?" The article focuses on author Susan Jacoby, who has a new book out this month titled "The Age of American Unreason". Jacoby is one of several authors with new books lamenting the state of American culture. She focuses on what she describes as a "generalized hostility to knowledge." Here's a brief quote from the article:

The author of seven other books, she was a fellow at the library when she first got the idea for this book back in 2001, on 9/11.

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.

The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”

“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.

At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”

I think I'll ask MizBubs, girl genius, to grab this for me from the library.

As if to prove Jacoby's point, this article recently appeared in the Orlando Sentinel: "Clash Over Teaching Evolution Hits Orlando". Here's the opener:

Evolution has been a cornerstone of biology for more than 100 years, but don't try to tell that to many of the thousands of people who posted comments on Florida's Department of Education Web site.

"The last time I went to the zoo, the monkeys weren't evolving into man," read one comment.

"Evolution is not proven and we should not brainwash our children with this concept," stated another.

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This video was mentioned in the opening paragraph of that NY Times article. Boy howdy, there's some hilariously disturbing elements to this. Like Pickler's apparent lack of embarrassment when confronted with her own ignorance ("Buda...Budapest? I never even heard of that...I know they speak French there, don't they?") That's followed closely by this retro gender exchange between Pickler and the host, Jeff Foxworthy:

Foxworthy: Kell...focus.

Pickler: I am. Like, I'm listening to what you're saying, but I only hear what I want to.

Foxworthy: That's just called being a woman.

Audience: Woooooooo...

Pickler: Well we could just call this show "are you smarter than a man?" I'd win that.

Foxworthy: Women don't really want to hear a man's opinion, they just want to hear their opinion in a deeper voice...

Yuk yuk yuk yuk, ain't that the truth? Har. Here's the video:



I found this next video bit while looking for Ms. Pickler's performance. It's one of those Jay Leno man-in-the-street bits, set in Las Vegas. In all fairness, at least some of this stupid is alcohol-induced.

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The shooting at Northern Illinois University. Tragic and horrifying. Normally I don't start contemplating the nature of human evil this early in the morning; that's better saved for darkness, and strong drink.

For now my questions are:

• What was the background of the shooter?
• Where did he get the guns?

I have a professional interest in the police response. By now nearly every department in the country has abandoned the old model of responding to these incidents (aid the wounded, set up a perimeter, contain the threat and wait for a SWAT team) and has adopted rapid deployment/active shooter tactics.

Most police are now trained that the first officers on the scene should go directly towards the gunfire and engage the shooter as quickly as possible, even if it means stepping over the bodies of the wounded to do so. According to this article in the NY Times the police arrived within 2 minutes of the first 911 call. The Chicago Tribune reports that police arrived 29 seconds after receiving a 911 call at 3:06 pm.

The reason I'm including this at the end of a post about stupidity is that, over the past 14 hours, I've heard some really stupid stuff come out of the mouths of radio news people and some NIU kids who have been interviewed. I heard one radio interviewer ask a kid who was present at the shooting "when the shooter's eyes locked onto yours, what did you read in his expression?" Seriously, what kind of asshole asks a 19 year old kid, who's just seen a bunch of people killed, a question like that?

What really got me angry were the questions prompting kids and parents to find fault with the school's security. I heard two different young women interviewed, students who were not present at the shooting. Both of them felt that the school could have done more to keep them safer. Both of the women had those voices? You know? The kind where every sentence sounds like it's ending in a question? And they just thought, that, um, the school didn't do as much as they could have? To keep them safe? As if 18 people shot isn't newsworthy enough, the reporters are already trolling for the next angle--that someone, some institution, failed and must be blamed.

Yes, NIU could have kept all those kids safe. All you have to do to prevent school shootings is turn every school into a prison: locked doors, search everyone entering, metal detectors, total video surveillance and armed guards everywhere.

Thinking like this got Bush reelected in 2004, and if the dumbing-down continues lord knows what lies ahead.

Onward, Kristian Soldiers...

I've used the Coaster Punchman spelling because I can't bear to think that the three assholes I'm going to talk about should in any way be thought of as "Christian" the way I was brought up.

Here's the deal:

For the first time ever, a Hindu was going to deliver the morning invocation in the United States Senate. Pretty cool, seeing as how there are about a billion Hindus in the world. Why not? And he seemed like a nice, mild-mannered guy. He started his prayer, and then the self-appointed REAL KRISTIANS started yelling. They continued their blasphemous bullshit as they were dragged from the floor of the Senate.

The ejected crackpots were all members of Operation Save America, which issued a crowing press release after the event. What kind of asshole does this? The Hindu preacher wasn't up there advocating human sacrifice, or proclaiming Hinduism to be the One True Faith. He was offering up what sounded like a thoroughly decent, ecumenical prayer. And the mere fact of his Hinduism was enough to send these three people into fits. Listen to what this chaplain says--you could hear these same words at many mainstream Christian churches on any given Sunday. What kind of backwards-ass jerkwater reactionary do you have to be to be offended by this?

God forbid these people ever get real power. The mind reels.

Here's a video of the event: