Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free
In his book titled "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free," journalist
Charles P. Pierce bemoans the "dumbing down" of America and a recent national trend toward antiintellectualism. He was inspired to write his book after a visit to the Creation Museum in Kentucky, a
tourist spot that includes models of dinosaurs wearing a saddle. "We are taking the dinosaurs back from
the evolutionists!" cried the proprietor, who believes every word of the Bible is literally true, to a
cheering crowd, many of whom paid $150 each to become charter members of the religious theme park
"museum." Because the Bible claims the world was created 6,000 years ago, they conclude the
dinosaurs must have been around at the same times as humans, whom God appointed to rule all other
animals. Thus, the saddle. Apparently, in addition to all the other pairs of mammals, rodents, reptiles,
snakes, birds, and insects, Noah somehow managed to capture male and female pairs of every kind of
dinosaur for carriage in his relatively small 300 by 30 by 50 cubit ark. Never mind that even if by some
miracle Noah had managed to fit them all inside such a small space, and kept them from killing and
eating one another, the weight of the pairs of brontosaurus, triceratops, mastodons, and several
hundred other species of dinosaur alone probably would have sunk his ship. Political satirist Bill Maher
mocks such creationists by asking his audience to conjure up the ridiculous mental picture of old man
Noah meticulously capturing, sorting, and somehow matching up male and female pairs of every insect,
housefly, mosquito, and butterfly for storage in separate, isolated sections of his homemade barge.
Some people don't like it when you give them facts. That just confuses them and makes them angry.
Still, City Council members in Oklahoma voted to put up a display based on the book of Genesis (a
walkway tracing the entire creation story) in their city zoo, to give "equal time" to Fundamentalists who
disagree with Darwin's theories of evolution. Didn't we already have this discussion during the Scopes
trial in 1925 when William Jennings Bryant, the Klu Klux Klan, and the fundamentalists of rural
Tennessee were humiliated nationally for prosecuting a teacher for the "crime" of teaching evolution?
Just recently, even President George W. Bush openly pushed for teaching "intelligent design," which is
code for teaching the Genesis story of creation in public schools on an equal footing with evolution.
Those who claim the Bible condemns homosexuality as an unnatural form of family often have difficulty
explaining how the characters in the book of Genesis could have propagated the Earth without the sons
of Adam and Eve having sex with their own mother, or alternatively (I presume) without impregnating
their Biblically-unmentioned sisters. Or, perhaps Cain and Abel had sex with female animals?
In his book, Charles Pierce quotes a Creationist pastor in Dover Delaware who Pierce says succinctly
sums up modern anti-intellectualism when he complained "We've been attacked by the intelligent,
educated segment of our culture." Pierce says "And there you have it." People who eschew rationality
and logic seem to get upset when someone "attacks" them for using, of all things, logic and reason.
It is disrespect for actual expertise and a breakdown of the consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a
good thing. Pierce says it is "the ascendency of the notion that people we should trust the least are the
people who know the best what they're talking about. In the new media, everybody is a historian, or a
scientist, or a preacher, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you
can be in a society where everybody is an expert is well, an actual expert."
Pierce says many Americans now believe that because there are two sides to every question, both sides
must be right, both deserve respect, or at the very least, both are not wrong. According to this way of
thinking, "the words of a biologist carry no more weight on the subject of biology than the
thunderations of some turkeyneck preacher…" In fact, to many idiotic people today, anyone who is
intelligent and articulate is condemned as "an elitist."
Pierce remind his readers that Congress intervened in the Terry Schiavo case (a spectacle over the
prolonged death of a woman in Florida) and that the majority leader of the House of Representatives
called upon his vast expertise as a former insect exterminator, to declare that "an embryo is a person."
After Rev. James Dobson, a prominent Christian conservative preacher compared the Supreme Court to
the Klu Klux Klan and claimed that federal judges were a greater threat to America than Al Queda,
Dobson was not denounced by his many friends among top Republican leaders for saying that. Yet,
recently some of these same Republicans condemned President Obama for saying he felt certain the
Supreme Court would not "overreach" in its review of the healthcare bill passed by Congress.
Republican leaders also did not criticize Rev. Pat Robertson when he called upon the U.S. government to
"snuff out" (assassinate) the president of Venezuela. It seems anything goes as long as you can connect
yourself to Christian philosophy, no matter how much you might have to reverse or twist the true
messages of Jesus Christ in the process.
The Creation museum patrons and religious fundamentalists are not just an isolated group of extremists
who can safely be ignored. It seems an increasing number of people today fervently believe things that
have no basis in fact. In 2004, nearly 70% of Americans believed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was
personally involved in the 9- 11 attacks, and even after George W. Bush himself finally admitted it, and
also acknowledged that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, almost 40% of conservatives
today still believe these myths. Sadly, at the polls, many of these same folks often vote against their own
interests, completely unaware (or in total denial) of their having been swayed by political propaganda.
At one time, way back in history, we used to admire intelligence in our leaders. That was until people
like Adlai Stevenson and Al Gore ran for the Presidency. Pierce says Gore was "earnest to the point of
being screamingly dull… and had the rhetorical gifts of a tack hammer… but he was beaten, ultimately,
by nonsense. He was accused of saying things he didn’t say ... and his very earnestness became a
liability. His depth of knowledge was a millstone." According to Pirece, George W. Bush was light and
breezy and even forgot during one debate that Social Security was a federal program. "In fact, his lack of
depth and his unfamiliarity with the complexities of the issues, to say nothing of the complexities of a
simple declarative sentence, worked remarkably to his advantage." Bush boasted that he didn't read
newspapers and admitted he rarely even skimmed the detailed briefing binders his White House staff
prepared for him. Bush claimed he listened to his gut and that he prayed every morning for God's
guidance. Given Bush's penchant for anti-intellectualism, it's no wonder he left the country embroiled in
two military stalemates (wars he never put into the federal budget) and a nation in the worst economic
crisis since the Great Depression. While in office, he certainly took good care of his rich friends and
fellow Texas oilmen, but many ordinary Americans (57% of the undecided voters) said they voted for
him because he seemed like the kind of guy they'd like to have a beer with or because he shared their
"family values." Pierce asks us to "be honest. Consider all the people with whom you've tossed back a
beer. How many of them would you trust with the nuclear1 launch codes?" Pierce jokes that drinking
that beer with "W" gave the country a major hangover four years after they reelected him. "That is the
moment in which you discover your keys are in your hat, the cat is in the sink, and you attempted last
night to make stew out of a potholder. Things are in the wrong place. Religion is in the box where
science used to be. Politics is on the shelf where you thought you left science the previous afternoon.
Entertainment seems to have been knocked over and spilled on everything. We have rummaged
ourselves into disorder."
Going with one's gut means relying on common sense, which Pierce says "rarely is common and even
more rarely makes sense…. Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves
units."
Today it seems, anyone on television is an expert, even if the only skill "the talking head" has is the
ability to read a teleprompter. Reporters interview other reporters as if they were experts. Worse, they
widely publicize biased political pundits' and highly-biased campaign spokesmen's biased remarks as if
they were offering objective or informed expert analysis.
Pierce says "It is of course television that has enabled idiot America to run riot within modern politics
and all forms of public discourse. It's not that there is less information on television than there once
was. In fact, there's so much information that 'fact' is defined as something believed by so many people
that television notices their belief… Just don't be boring. And keep the ratings up because Idiot America
wants to be entertained." Meet the Press? Boring. PBS news hour? Dull. Read a newspaper? God forbid.
Aren't the Kardashians on tonight? Let's watch those "real" housewives talk trash about one another.
Pierce says: "Anything can be true if it is said loudly enough; and, fact is that which enough people
believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it."
The reality is "Intelligent Design" is not science, it is religion disguised as science. What is disturbing is
that so many people, including President Bush, think that all ideas are equal and all ideas deserve equal
debate even if they lack evidence. This intellectually-lazy attitude appeals to some people's basic sense
of fairness rather than their search for an objective reality (which is more challenging). Bush claimed
"Intelligent Design" deserved to be taught in public schools in order to teach students what the debate
was about. But this makes no sense. There cannot be a legitimate debate when there is only one
rational side to engage. Surveys show a higher percentage of Americans believes that a government
conspiracy killed Kennedy than believes in intelligent design, but there is no great push to "teach the
debate" about what happened in Dallas in the nation's history classes.
1
(Say it out loud as "noo-cue-luhr" as W always mispronounced the word).
America has always had its cranks, even in the early days when the founding fathers first created this
nation. Cranks have a place in society. They offer the opportunity for ordinary people to hear oddly
divergent views and creative ideas. Perhaps 1 out of 500 such ideas are worthy of merit and that one
crazy idea might be the seed for the next great innovation. But the trick is being able to sort out the
pearl from the piles of oyster shells. One cannot accept the 499 whacko ideas just because the one in
500 might have some potential value. Piece says: "There is nothing wrong with a country that has
people who put saddles on their dinosaurs. It's a wonderful show and we should watch them and
applaud. [But] we have no obligation to climb aboard and ride."
Talk radio versus intelligent debate and discourse
Talk radio was born in the 1950s when it competed with air time on the AM band with Elvis Presley and
Rock and Roll music. When popular music migrated to FM, talk radio expanded to fill the AM gap. Then
in 1987, President Reagan repealed the Fairness Act that once required all broadcasters to air both sides
of any controversial topic, and got rid of the rule that no single individual or business could own more
than one media outlet in any major market. This allowed wealthy Conservatives to take over the AM
radio band and replace balanced debate with their highly one-sided Conservative bias to counteract
what they claimed was a liberal bias in the media. But the media has never really been liberal-biased. To
many Conservatives, anything that isn't as far to the right as something the Klu Klux Klan would approve
of is considered "liberal," even if it is straight-down-the-middle moderate or completely and objectively
balanced media coverage.
Conservative dominance of radio and certain channels on cable television (such as Fox) which claims to
be fair and balanced "news" organization, or even the quite Conservative CNN, are a long way from the
kind of professionally-objective and balanced journalism of the Walter Cronkite era. Conservative
pundits and opinion-givers have largely replaced the nonpartisan news anchors of the earlier eras who
had always prided themselves on their objectivity by daring anyone to try to figure out which political
party or values they privately subscribed to.
Today, four rules apply to talk radio and pundit-based television:
1. Never be dull.
2. Embrace ignorant simplicity in everything
3. Always remember that the American public is stupid, so treat them that way.
4. Always ignore the facts and the public record when it is convenient to do so.
Right-wing populism has an "anti-elitist" distrust of expertise and an abhorrence of fact-based
information. Some liberals on the far left do it too, but not to the same degree as the far right. The trend
has changed intelligent thoughtful debate into rabid emotional argument. Name-calling on the air has
become acceptable today, and apparently the best way to challenge the truth an opponent mentions or
any logical argument raised is to mock or label the opponent with a clever epithet. Talk show hosts like
Bill O'Reilly, for example, frequently and rudely tell their guests to "shut-up" if they say anything with
which the host disagrees. Rush Limbuagh's popularity rose when he made chauvinistic and sexist
comments about Hillary Clinton's posterior or when he argued that a woman's monthly period
precluded her from being emotionally capable of handling the nation's nuclear defense systems. Yet,
hypocritically, Limbaugh quickly defended Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin's candidacy after she
was embarrassed by interviewer Katie Couric for being unable to cite any newspaper she read.
Objectivity, it seems is a thing of the past.
Not only is talk radio anathema to facts and balance, it has puts inexpertise on a pedestal, whereby the
someone is deemed more of an authority the less he is demonstrably polluted by actual knowledge.
"Television is an emotional medium," says Professor Andrew Cline of Missouri State University. "It
doesn't do reason well. This is entertainment, not analysis or reasoned discourse. Never employ a tightly
reasoned argument where a flaming sound bite will do. The argument of the academic is sort of dull, but
a good pissing match is fun to watch. To admit to anything more complicated is to invite the suggestion
that you may be wrong, and that can never be. Nuance is almost a pejorative term -- as if nuance means
we're trying to obfuscate." Simple-minded people look for simple answers to complex problems.
Expertise in one area does not make one an expert in another, and being a reporter or a radio host
actually offers very little in the category of expertise of say botany, cellular biology, mathematics,
science, history, or nuclear physics. However, in today's media, lack of expertise does not deter talk
show hosts from expounding on almost any topic, regardless of their lack of knowledge or expertise in
the subject matter. Rush Limbaugh's expertise is pretty well limited to one thing: ratings. "As long as you
say enough outrageous things on the air to keep listeners tuned in to the sponsor's advertisements, you
move units." And moving units - selling things, or making money - is what it's about. Who cares if truth
and reason are lost in the process? Talk show hosts' raw opinions are listened to and the radio station
owners, who are almost exclusively conservatives, know that rantings get ratings and that's all that
matters.
Frighteningly, 22% of Americans said talk radio was their primary source of news.2 When the only voices
someone hears are of biased pundits who tell you who to be afraid of, and who tell you to distrust
educated people or experts who really do know the facts, and who expect you to mimic their raw
opinions without analysis or balanced debate, it is small wonder people today are susceptible to the
same kinds of propaganda techniques perfected by Goebels during WWII. And rather than accept that
they might be being brainwashed by their favorite pundits who tell them what they want to hear (and
who to blame for their problems), in a classic example of a psychological projection, they blame liberals
and "elitist" experts and dull scholars for propagandizing them when in reality the experts are simply
trying to offer facts that happen to contradict what idiot America already believes to be true.
"Talk radio is the biggest con to be perpetuated ever," said one talk show host. "We create the veneer
that we know what we are talking about, a veneer of expertise. We pontificate on TV. This TV guy called
2
Gallup poll, 2003
me and asked 'What do your listener think?' I don't know. We talk to people who have nothing better to
do than listen to us."3
Who are some of these people who shape our national discourse? What expertise do they really have
and why should we listen to them? Conservative and liberal talk show hosts include some fairly
unconventional examples. Keith Olbermann was a sportscaster. Michael Savage and Laura Schlesinger's
credentials make them an authority on exactly what? Rush Limbaugh is a convicted drug abuser,
something his listeners seemed quick to forgive. Oliver North was a convicted felon in the Iran Contra
scandal. G. Gordon Liddy was a campaign operative in the Nixon White House and was deeply
embroiled in the Watergate scandals. From inside the White House, Liddy proposed firebombing the
Brookings Institution, murdering the news columnist Jack Anderson, and hiring yachts as floating
brothels for the purposes of blackmailing delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Even
Nixon's Attorney General John Mitchell who himself was a convicted felon, labeled Liddy a dangerous
lunatic. But after serving in prison Liddy went on to become a popular conservative radio talk show host,
who toured college campuses with LSD guru Timothy Leary. No country serious about its national
dialogue would allow a guy like Liddy anywhere near a microphone for the same reason we would keep
Charles Manson away from your kitchen knife drawer. But Westwood One, a huge conservative radio
syndicator gave Liddy a national platform and Liddy blended right in with other radio pundits like Mark
Levin, Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity, Jay Severin, and Glenn Beck, preaching the same hatred and biased
opinions that now blanket the AM airwaves and the 24-hour Fox TV channel.
The bottom line is that if you are getting your "news" from talk radio or from a TV channel biased in
either direction - liberal or conservative, Fox or MSNBC, Clear Channel or Air America, you aren't getting
the straight unbaised information intelligent people need to make up their minds on important issues or
to decide how to vote. For most Americans, the only way to get objective news that still abides by the
ethics of nonpartisan objectivity is to get it from sources outside the United States. Foreign news outlets
like the BBC or the Canadian CBC present the information in a more factual way, although that too may
soon be threatened by the predatory take-overs of foreign media outlets by American Conservative
networks like Rupert Murdock's News Corp. Probably the only source within the U.S. that can still be
counted on for objective journalism is Jim Lehrer's News Hour on public television because it still
subscribes to the old Walter Cronkite style of journalistic ethics and still voluntarily abides by the
fairness doctrine of showing both sides of every issue in a nonpartisan way.4
3
This quote is from Michael Lebron, a liberal talk show host speaking to his fellow talk show hosts at a national
convention of hosts from all political persuasions. It shows that even the small percentage of radio talks show
hosts who are liberal resort to the same techniques as the 97% who are conservative.
4
Naturally, lovers of talk radio and the Fox channel will chafe at my assertion of public televisions' objectivity
because they fail to recognize Fox as the mouthpiece of the Republican party and they conclude therefore that any
outlet that does not espouse Fox's conservative bias has to be "liberal." In way they are correct because compared
to Fox, just about everything else, even outlets in the dead center are liberal by comparison. If an extremist moves
far enough to one side or the other, he leaves so many ordinary Americans behind, he starts to realize the other
95% of America disagrees with him, and his paranoia starts telling him everyone else is his enemy.