Or "No one ever went broke underestimating the American public."
Quoting from memory here, but I think that was P. T. Barnum.
Hal
"The only thing that is not art
is inattention."
--Marcel Duchamp
Halvard Johnson
================
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On Nov 6, 2008, at 11:17 AM, Kenneth Wolman wrote:
> Give that man a see-gar. The proud moron seems to be a peculiarly
> American phenomenon. Wasn't it H. L. Mencken who coined the term
> "booboisie" to refer to the (huge) segment of the population Doug
> describes? And later Richard Hofstader wrote a book called Anti-
> Intellectualism in American Life, which goes pretty much at the same
> population and attitudes, less entertainingly than Mencken, but with
> great depth. We appear to be the only modern nation that has put the
> Rube, Boob, and Stupe on pedestals.
>
> In the same way Sarah Palin made a virtue of professing stupidity,
> so Barack Obama is the first President in years who seems not to go
> out of his way to hide his education and intellectual abilities.
> Clinton made his accent work for him to convince people of his
> booboisie credentials. Ford really was a boob. And Bush the
> younger, despite the bought-and-paid-for degrees, appears to have
> gotten through high school only via the charity of his senior year
> teachers.
>
> Knowledge seems sinister. Right, I'm thinking of Dick Cheney, who
> comes across as godawful bright while he projects (deliberately, I
> believe) being the most calculating sonofabitch on the North
> American continent. He has learned the value of the concept that
> it's better to be feared than loved.
>
> Ken
> -------------- Original message --------------
> From: Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>
>
>> Given the way the two presidential hopefuls ran their races, the real
>> divide in the US seems not so much to be that of race any more but
>> that between those who seek intelligent, curious, learned
>> leadership &
>> those who take pride in their ignorance. That it remains such a close
>> race between those two Americas is still rather frightening. Palin's
>> proud ignorance of what fruit fly experimentation has meant for 80
>> years or so is truly shocking. And she was continually applauded for
>> such a stance.
>>
>> Obama steps into a political Augeian Stable and it will take a long
>> time for even the best person to clean up such a mess. We can only
>> wish him the best. That he has a real version of Jesse Jackson's
>> Rainbow Coalition behind him gives one hope (& did you watch Jackson
>> in the crowd as Obama spoke?)
>>
>> Doug
>> On 5-Nov-08, at 12:29 PM, Roger Day wrote:
>>
>>> I was watching the round-up interviews tonight and Spike Lee said
>>> something interesting: if you look at the audiences for Palin &
>>> McCain, they're all white, but for Obama they're mixed. Sure
>>> enough, I
>>> watched Obama's speech - and boy can he speak - and the audience was
>>> mixed. I then watched McCain's resignation speech - which was quite
>>> graceful btb and at odds with his campaign invective that I've
>>> seen in
>>> the 100 x 150 square - and sure enough, a white audience throughout.
>>> It was almost a different planet.
>>
>> Douglas Barbour
>> [log in to unmask]
>>
>> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
>>
>> Latest books:
>> Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
>> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
>> Wednesdays'
>> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
>>
>> We now know that 95 per cent of the universe is made of the something
>> other than those 12 particles. And we have very little idea what the
>> other 95 per cent is, which is kind of embarrassing.
>>
>> Brian Cox
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