I finally got it-they’re trying to outstupid each other
Barack Obama has been going around wildly trying to make friends out of his enemies and by so doing is making enemies out of his friends. And that’s pretty damn stupid. Obama as we all know has been severely criticized for being an elitist which of course was a code word for smart. And being considered smart has hurt him, So it is not surprising that he is trying to rectify that impression of him. The vote on the FISA bill in of itself was not an indication of stupidity, but his effort to explain the vote certainly was.
John McCain at the very same time is trying desperately to convince everyone that he rarely has a lucid moment, Establishing new records to what some of us use to explain away or excuse our gaffs by falling back on the old standby, “having a senior moment.” With McCain it might be strategy. It is one thing to tell those Pittsburg Steelers fans that he gave the names of the famed Steelers “Steel Curtain” defensive line to bamboozle his North Vietnamese Captors, but not remember he wrote the very same thing in his book, Faith of My Fathers, only this time it was the Green Bay Packers, is a sure sign of stupidity. And with that comment he wins the stupid vote in two important swing states- Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That is stupidity at its finest.
Staking a claim on stupidity is pretty savvy politics. Any reasonable study of the past few presidential elections clearly demonstrates that the stupider of the two won. As soon as Al Gore said lockbox as a solution to some of the problems of Social Security, he was dead meat. He should have thrown in the towel. All George Bush had to say “that is fuzzy Washington math’ and he was home free. He might not have known what a lockbox was but he sure as hell knew how to lock up the stupid vote,
Well in that instance, stupidity was not enough, he did need the help of the Supreme Court and that court has valiantly spoken up for the stupid on more than one occasion, Indelibly seared into our sensorium are the never to be forgotten words of Nebraska Senator, Roman L. Hruska in his stirring defense of Nixon nominee Harrold Carswell for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,“...even if he is mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. Aren’t they entitled to a little representation and a little chance? We can't all be Brandeises and Cardozas and Frankfurters and stuff like that. I doubt we can. I doubt we want to.” Carswell wasn’t confirmed by the Senate and that was probably because he was overpraised. Now if Hruska had flat out called him stupid, we would be talking about the Carswell Court and in terms that would probably be more flattering than terms used to describe the Scalia (OK, Roberts) Court.
Various commentators have commented, because that is what they are paid to do, (and it hasn’t been easy trying to comment on a presidential campaign that has dragged on for well over a year and it i isn’t going to get easier with still a third of a year yet to go), that the first weeks in July have been bad for both candidates. They have blathering on about the mistakes and flip--flops and other dumb things that both candidates or those close to them have done. As one example, Phil Gramm, a prominent McCain advisor, called America a “nation of whiners.” That isn’t going to win over the smart voters, but who knows how that plays out among the stupid, the ones suffering from ”mental depression” because they lost their jobs or their homes, or both.
It should come as no surprise to those among us that have given some thought to the matter that the commentators have again missed the point, No surprise, because Fox, for one, doesn’t look for smartness when it hires its commentators. The Fox commentators think dumbness is going to hurt Obama so they knock themselves out almost orgastically exposing Obama flubs. They don’t comment on McCain’s dumbness because they share so much of it with him. But they simply don’t get it. By revealing Obama’s dumbness they are probably helping him. Not understanding things is the essence of their commentary. Some of them actually have run for office and lost and haven’t yet realized that they probably lost because they weren’t dumb enough. In American politics smart isn’t going to cut it.
It now appears that both candidates have become convinced that American people are not ready for smart and now are in a race to see which of them can outstupid the other.
Hillary, who is pretty damn smart, found out too late that her smartness was a handicap. When she was losing left and right, blue and red, she was trying to out smart Obama. That got her nowhere. But when she got down and dirty and belted down boilermakers and otherwise got immersed into stupidity she suddenly began to win all over the place, I can tell you, having downed a goodly number of boilermakers, that isn’t a very smart thing to do. If she had tried to outstupid Obama from the get-go, she’d be the candidate today.
H. L. Mencken once said, “No one starved to death insulting the intelligence of the American People”. What he actually said was, “No one starved to death insulting the taste of the American people.” But why quibble.
Anyhow, one can find a far more credible source than Mencken for the benefits of stupidity. Su Tung-p'o, you know the 11th century Chinese poet, essayist, artist, and public official, laid it all there for you in the poem he wrote On the Birth of his Son
Families, when a child is born
Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life
By becoming a Cabinet Minister.
That’s how it was then and it isn’t much different now.
If global economics is race to the bottom, what shouldn’t the race to the intellectual bottom determine the presidency.
If dumb is going to win, it doesn’t look too good for Barack Obama.
John McCain at the very same time is trying desperately to convince everyone that he rarely has a lucid moment, Establishing new records to what some of us use to explain away or excuse our gaffs by falling back on the old standby, “having a senior moment.” With McCain it might be strategy. It is one thing to tell those Pittsburg Steelers fans that he gave the names of the famed Steelers “Steel Curtain” defensive line to bamboozle his North Vietnamese Captors, but not remember he wrote the very same thing in his book, Faith of My Fathers, only this time it was the Green Bay Packers, is a sure sign of stupidity. And with that comment he wins the stupid vote in two important swing states- Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That is stupidity at its finest.
Staking a claim on stupidity is pretty savvy politics. Any reasonable study of the past few presidential elections clearly demonstrates that the stupider of the two won. As soon as Al Gore said lockbox as a solution to some of the problems of Social Security, he was dead meat. He should have thrown in the towel. All George Bush had to say “that is fuzzy Washington math’ and he was home free. He might not have known what a lockbox was but he sure as hell knew how to lock up the stupid vote,
Well in that instance, stupidity was not enough, he did need the help of the Supreme Court and that court has valiantly spoken up for the stupid on more than one occasion, Indelibly seared into our sensorium are the never to be forgotten words of Nebraska Senator, Roman L. Hruska in his stirring defense of Nixon nominee Harrold Carswell for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,“...even if he is mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. Aren’t they entitled to a little representation and a little chance? We can't all be Brandeises and Cardozas and Frankfurters and stuff like that. I doubt we can. I doubt we want to.” Carswell wasn’t confirmed by the Senate and that was probably because he was overpraised. Now if Hruska had flat out called him stupid, we would be talking about the Carswell Court and in terms that would probably be more flattering than terms used to describe the Scalia (OK, Roberts) Court.
Various commentators have commented, because that is what they are paid to do, (and it hasn’t been easy trying to comment on a presidential campaign that has dragged on for well over a year and it i isn’t going to get easier with still a third of a year yet to go), that the first weeks in July have been bad for both candidates. They have blathering on about the mistakes and flip--flops and other dumb things that both candidates or those close to them have done. As one example, Phil Gramm, a prominent McCain advisor, called America a “nation of whiners.” That isn’t going to win over the smart voters, but who knows how that plays out among the stupid, the ones suffering from ”mental depression” because they lost their jobs or their homes, or both.
It should come as no surprise to those among us that have given some thought to the matter that the commentators have again missed the point, No surprise, because Fox, for one, doesn’t look for smartness when it hires its commentators. The Fox commentators think dumbness is going to hurt Obama so they knock themselves out almost orgastically exposing Obama flubs. They don’t comment on McCain’s dumbness because they share so much of it with him. But they simply don’t get it. By revealing Obama’s dumbness they are probably helping him. Not understanding things is the essence of their commentary. Some of them actually have run for office and lost and haven’t yet realized that they probably lost because they weren’t dumb enough. In American politics smart isn’t going to cut it.
It now appears that both candidates have become convinced that American people are not ready for smart and now are in a race to see which of them can outstupid the other.
Hillary, who is pretty damn smart, found out too late that her smartness was a handicap. When she was losing left and right, blue and red, she was trying to out smart Obama. That got her nowhere. But when she got down and dirty and belted down boilermakers and otherwise got immersed into stupidity she suddenly began to win all over the place, I can tell you, having downed a goodly number of boilermakers, that isn’t a very smart thing to do. If she had tried to outstupid Obama from the get-go, she’d be the candidate today.
H. L. Mencken once said, “No one starved to death insulting the intelligence of the American People”. What he actually said was, “No one starved to death insulting the taste of the American people.” But why quibble.
Anyhow, one can find a far more credible source than Mencken for the benefits of stupidity. Su Tung-p'o, you know the 11th century Chinese poet, essayist, artist, and public official, laid it all there for you in the poem he wrote On the Birth of his Son
Families, when a child is born
Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life
By becoming a Cabinet Minister.
That’s how it was then and it isn’t much different now.
If global economics is race to the bottom, what shouldn’t the race to the intellectual bottom determine the presidency.
If dumb is going to win, it doesn’t look too good for Barack Obama.
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