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Stupidity

“I’m never going to be out-dumbed, again.” – George W. Bush, after losing his run for a Texas Congressional seat.

There are moments, I just want to shake my head. A recent survey out of Ohio State University found that conservatives believe that Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert, a parody of Fox News blowhard, Bill O’Reilly, is really a fellow traveler of theirs. As Kristen Landreville, a co-author of the report states, “If you’re a conservative, you think the joke’s on liberals, because he’s openly making fun of liberals.” Which came as a surprise to Colbert who tells every guest before they go out to do the show, "You know I play an idiot, right?” This comes as no shock, according to another survey out of the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), Fox News watchers and dittoheads, tend to believe more misinformation than those not watching or listening to these sources of information. I know what you are thinking, just give them the right information and they will correct themselves. Not so fast. Here is the problem, when proper information is provided, the narrative they live out is debunked. There is a knee-jerk reaction to cling to one’s previous beliefs in spite of the facts. Facts be damned. There is a rigidness that cannot be overcome. Political scientist Brendan Nyhan has found in a recent study that there is a Pavlovian response among the right to stick to their guns, dig their heels in, no matter what the truth is. Stupid.

I do not know if you have been noticing what I have noticed lately, but there seems to be a celebration in our society of stupidity. A few generations ago, people like Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson, Playboy’s “The Girls Next Door,” or any of the hundreds of reality television spin-off stars would have been embarrassed to show the world their lack of intelligence. Now millions of viewers tune in to find out what the real whores, (I mean housewives of Orange County), or bar slut Tila Tequila, think, or what stunt a Jackass is going to next, or who is smarter than a fifth grader. Circus freaks like Howard Stern’s Wack Pack take on pornstars and lesbians in basic knowledge contests to see who is dumber. These are people who our grandparent’s generation would have publically shunned or at least shook their heads and whispered “poor dear.” It is not just in Hollywood. Being stupid is ruling the roost. Let’s be honest, if you put your ear next to Sarah Palin’s head you can hear the ocean. If my representative was Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe or Minnesota’s Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann I would wear a brown paper bag out of embarrassment, like the fans of the old New Orleans Saints football team, after some of the ignorant things they have uttered. Now Americans have always had a healthy distrust of the educated and celebrated the knowledge that comes from the school of hard knocks or the frontier, but lately, the celebration of stupidity has become more flamboyant than a parade of drag queens, and it is getting worse.

It is why a documentary like Albert Nerenberg’s Stupidity is needed. The problem with a documentary on stupidity is, much like pornography, we have trouble defining it. Everyday, we probably think someone is a moron, we mutter it under our breath as we deal with some bureaucrat, we know it when we see it. Partially, it is because, in some area of our life, we all ride the short bus. Drop any American in the middle of a New Guinea rainforest, ask them to survive, and a five-year-old indigenous tribal child is going to turn to his father, and say in their language, “Look at the idiot.” A really hot chick might not know who the Vice-President of the United States is, but ask her what shoes look best with her fingernail polish and she is suddenly Stephen Hawking. While I can give you the yearly statistics of every player who has ever put on a major league baseball uniform, ask me to repair my car or build a porch, and I am Alfred E. Newman, dumb as a box of rocks, a punch line to the latest blonde joke.

Surprisingly, stupidity is a subject matter that there are very few books on. There are all kinds of anecdote books out there, books and websites that give examples of stupid, but they are designed to make us feel superior and maybe get a laugh or two like “The World’s Dumbest Criminal” or “The Darwin Awards,” but they are not critical examinations of the subject matter.

Most of us do not even know where the words we use for being dumb come from. Most of them come from academic or medical usage that is now defunct, where the popular meaning no longer corresponds to the original usage. The term, “idiot”, was coined in the early 1900s by Dr. Henry H. Goddard from Vineland, New Jersey to describe someone with a mental age of below three years of age, or who tests below 30 on an IQ test. In other words, it is someone with extremely severe mental retardation who is almost non-functional. An imbecile is someone with less extreme disabilities and a mental age between three and seven years of age, covering people who today might be known as moderately mentally retarded. Goddard used the term “moron” to describe those who were highly functioning mentally retarded, with a mental age of between eight and twelve, those who the community might describe as dull or slow. In the nineteenth century a medical doctor might classify these three categories as someone who is “feeble-minded.” It was a catch-all phrase that also included people with learning disabilities and dyslexia. Because most of these terms were connected to the eugenics movement and came to have a negative connation, those in the medical and psychological field have stopped using the terms long ago. No one with a special needs child wants to hear a doctor call their child a moron and be told it is a good thing because they are not an idiot or an imbecile. So, under a strict usage of the terms, George W. Bush is not a moron, imbecile or idiot… okay, maybe I am wrong. [Please, go easy, Trevor’s “special”! – Pub.]

When I was younger, living in Atlanta, Georgia, I was hired one afternoon to carry boxes of books and personal items from the office of a retiring professor named Theodore Webber to his car. He noticed my Ronald Reagan t-shirt, asked if I was fan, and I replied that he was the greatest President in the latter half of the twentieth century. I remember him shutting the door of his office behind me and what happened over the next couple of hours is a blur. He simply asked me why I thought the Gipper was so great and with each answer he made me feel like the white guy taking the charge, in a photo of Michael Jordan slamming a basketball, embarrassed and humiliated. As I stumbled out of the office, pale and beaten, I realized I had never really thought about what I claimed to believe and vowed never to loose an argument again.

That is what this column is at times. I try to get people to truly think about what they claim. It is called the Socratic Method and I believe it is the only path to true knowledge. The great track star, Jesse Owens, once said that if two people walk a little bit and talk a little bit they can generally work things out. I have faith in that but you have to be open enough to walk a little and talk a little. The problem is, most of us are closed in our world viewpoint and it is why conservatives disregard any new information and do not listen to an argument or point. That is the root of real stupidity. Be a skeptic, ask questions, be open to the answers, and do not take the words others use for granted, challenge them at times.

Verdict: Fails Because Subject Is Hard To Define