Waaaaay back in 1999, while America was drunk on the peace and prosperity of the Clinton Era, and none too worried about the future, the release of George W. Bush's college transcript had approximately zero effect on his Presidential campaign.
At the time, The Nation wrote breezily wrote:
Obliviously on he sails,
With marks not quite as good as Quayle's.
?Only 30 percent of 13-year-olds read almost every day.?The number of 17-year-olds who never read for pleasure increased from 9 percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004.
?Almost half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 never read books for pleasure.
?The average person between ages 15 and 24 spends 2 to 2 -+ hours a day watching TV and seven minutes reading.
The result should fill us all with horror:
Only about a third of high school seniors read at a proficient level, a 13 percent decline since 1992. "And proficiency is not a high standard," NEA Chairman Dana Gioia said. "We're not asking them to be able to read Proust in the original. We're talking about reading the daily newspaper."
The NYT adds:
At the same time, performance in other academic disciplines like math and science is dipping for students whose access to books is limited, and employers are rating workers deficient in basic writing skills.
Much more on this here, here, here, here, here and here.
The danger from this age is not in the image of Bush the ignorant, or even in the brown-shirted, anti-intellectuals at FOX opinion media. The danger is inherent in the reactionary, right-wing ideology of extreme conservatism that now completely controls the Republican party (Henceforth, RepubliCON Party?). Bush is not an abberation, but the fulfillment of the worldview that demands free-thinking Americans bend their knee to the aristocrats of the upper class.
It's not just the stupidity that has put the nation in jeopardy, it's the willful and conscious rejection of the pursuit of knowledge. It's an overt hatred for the informed, and a jealous derision of the educated, that threatens to cost America her competitive position in the 21st century world.
Tim Kaine is doing his part to combat the politically motivated, willful, ignorance here in the Old Dominion, and today, Senator Obama put forward his engaging and pragmatic national education plan.
The famous ONION headline touting a fake Bush promise to end the "nightmare" of peace and prosperity seemed like comedy, but now it seems more like prophecy. Earlier this year, the President lied about his grade, claiming a "B" in Econ, when actually those transcripts revealed him to be the "C-"-student he remains today. In that incident you can see the jealousy and hatred towards the informed, and the willful disregard for facts. Facts have always had a liberal bias, for a bias towards ignorance, you must pursue a conservative agena.
In 2007 we are asked to take seriously the idiocy of Republican candidates for the Presidency--the Presidency!-- who do not believe in evolution, preferring rather to imagine in their minds a blonde-haired homo erectus saddling up a dinosaur, since both trod the earth together, according to the deep thinkers of the churches these candidates love.
This is the public that swallowed the garbage spewed by Bush supporters who couldn't stand intelligence and prosperity, i.e., the Clinton years, and preferred to dump Gore, the logical successor because he supposedly stated that he had (1) invented the internet, (2) provided with Tipper the basis for the plot of Love Story, the book by Segal and the popular movie, and (3) broken the story on the scandal of Love Canal, that poisonous creek from which the inhabitants fled. Never mind that if you read you'd know how phony were the allegations that Gore made any such claims, and I won't go into detail. The details were written about, with quotes provided in profusion to show the true story of what Gore said.
Yet, and here I'm totally pissed, the other night on Hardball, despite all that has been printed in every worthwhile publication in the U.S. of A., here was Mencken's prime example of boobus Americanus, Chris Matthews, that blonde haired, empty headed, shouting example of what every intelligent American believes is the perfect candidate for daily injections of a shot of Ritalin-Prozac and electroshock therapy, there he was telling us that Kerry didn't deserve the treatment he got from the Swift Boater's ads because he was really a hero, but Gore deserved the ridicule he got because he "boasted that he invented the internet, that he was the example for Love Story, and claimed he outed the Love Canal scandal." Sorry for the Faulknerian sentence and the rough quote but this assault from that unhearing idiot raises my blood pressure to levels beyond any diuretic's cure capacity, and I can't stop typing. We should demand an apology for the slur.
People still buy into that garbage, of course, but I expect better from Goldilocks. He's supposed to be informed and not let his hatred of Hillary and Bill and his idolatry of JFK overcome facts. But I'm not surprised at all by the public's acceptance of Bush over Gore, having spoken to many, many people who voted for Bush, some even for a second term, and were SO surprised at what God hath wrought. Even the Sierra Club stated at a late date that they were making up their minds about who, Bush or Gore, would be better for the environment. The lesson is read a newspaper--not the Washington Times--and use your common sense. Don't vote for the guy you'd rather have a beer with because he's like you (out of it). Vote on a guy's record, not his/her promises. Look at Bush. He killed how many in Texas by legal execution (150, including a woman he made fun of)? Based on that record, as President we should have seen he would act on a much grander scale: 4,000 dead troops, over 100,000 Iraqi civilians (a.k.a., collateral damage), and unjust jailings. Just an extension of his record, old chum.
To those who chose Dubbwa I would quote the Bard: "He who sups with the Devil should use a long spoon."
;)
Seriously... Your Chris Matthews example is why I have to take a "news fast", every couple of weeks. The morons who dispense information to the masses in this country are content to lie for entertainment value regardless of the damage it does Democracy and the Republic.
An ignorant populace is in the interest of the Corporate Oligarchs who run this country. An ignorant and submissive populace is all that's necessary for the theo-aristocrats to gain control. One thing I'm grateful for - If Bush had been halfway competent, the people could have been fooled forever, and Jefferson's America lost for good.
I know they stuff an hour full of commercials and have shortened the programming to disgusting minimum lengths, but this is ridiculous. I also know that today's generation have shorter and shorter attention spans, but this kind of pre-digested pap only reinforces the inattention of viewers. It appears to be a deliberate effort to siphon away any ability of the public to carry a thought more than a couple of minutes, and makes them incapable of in-depth analysis or consideration of any problem. Thus, the elite can tell the voters what to believe, what the problem is, and how the elite is going to deal with it, okay?