Oh dear, my accommodationist friends aren't gonna like this.From the amazon.com site ....
The Culture Wars Are Over and the Idiots Have WonI can't wait for the sequel—Idiot Canada.
A veteran journalist's acidically funny, righteously angry lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States.
In the midst of a career-long quest to separate the smart from the pap, Charles Pierce had a defining moment at the Creation Museum in Kentucky, where he observed a dinosaur. Wearing a saddle.... But worse than this was when the proprietor exclaimed to a cheering crowd, “We are taking the dinosaurs back from the evolutionists!” He knew then and there it was time to try and salvage the Land of the Enlightened, buried somewhere in this new Home of the Uninformed.
With his razor-sharp wit and erudite reasoning, Pierce delivers a gut-wrenching, side-splitting lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States, and how a country founded on intellectual curiosity has somehow deteriorated into a nation of simpletons more apt to vote for an American Idol contestant than a presidential candidate.
With Idiot America, Pierce's thunderous denunciation is also a secret call to action, as he hopes that somehow, being intelligent will stop being a stigma, and that pinheads will once again be pitied, not celebrated.
[Hat Tip: Canadian Cynic]
That is not funny, that is sad. Sad that our world - politicians, religions, the news media, corporations, all of them contribute to the stupidity for their own narrow short term benefit.
ReplyDeleteNo one who earns their living in the United States by teaching undergraduates would dispute this.
ReplyDeleteAnother book: Susan Jacoby: Age of American Unreason.
My guess is that this got a huge head of steam during the Ronald Reagan era.
I am hoping that Barack Obama will make being smart "cool".
"how a country founded on intellectual curiosity"
ReplyDeleteHuh?
Déjà vu:
ReplyDeleteCultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know by E.D. Hirsch (1987)
Closing of the American Mind Allan Bloom (1987)
Like the song says:
ReplyDeleteWelcome to a new kind of tension,
All across the alienation,
Everything isn't meant to be OK ... -- Green Day, American Idiot.
This is both sad and funny...http://tinyurl.com/dxdam3
ReplyDeleteWatch the movie "Idiocracy".
ReplyDelete