I was listening to the radio the other day. No, this is not another song-themed post. I was actually listening to talk radio, which I do from time to time.
They played a quote from David Carr, who writes for Time magazine or the New York Times or something like that. He said, "...but if it's Missouri or Kansas, or you know, it's the dance of the low-sloping foreheads you know? The middle places..."
He said this on Bill Mar's show. I know I spelled his name wrong, I just like it when the name is appropriate, like Anthony Weiner. I also like it when the name is ironically inappropriate, as in the case of Barney Frank.
At first I giggled a little. It was a good line. Funny, creative, rolled off the tongue nicely. It had a certain melody to it. Then I thouight, "Hey, he's talking about me." No, I don't live in Missouri or Kansas, but I do live in flyover country. I actually refer to people from Indiana as swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool, but it's okay if I say it. I'm not a liberal elitist snob. I just say it because it's funny to me.
This Carr character, who later apologized for the comment, not accepted by the way, is also originally from flyover country. He took great pains to explain this fact as he made his apology. He may have forgotten his roots because he was educated in the finest institutions in the land. I don't know squat about him, but I'd guess Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown, something like that.
One thing I've learned is that it doesn't matter where you went to school. What matters is what you learn while you're there. The most important thing, in my opinion, is to learn the ability to think for yourself. To form your own opinions based on what seems right to you, after researching both sides of the issue. That's why I slog through crap like Krugman and Zakaria and Chomsky (actually, Chomsky pretty much a genius, and I like him, and I hate him for it because he's still an elitist snob).
I want to be able to argue either side of any issue intelligently, depending on who I want to piss off at any particular time. The only way to do that is to learn the arguments that both sides make, think about them just a little bit, and come up with some ideas of your own on the subject.
This is what the idealogues on the left and the right will never understand. It's like they all think with one brain. They yell and shout out the same tired old talking points to the same tired audience, time after time, and then wonder why no one listens to them.
The dance of the low sloping foreheads comment makes me want to hunt this knucklehead down, beat him over the head with a club, drag him by his silver ponytail back to my cave, and feed him to my pet dinosaur. Instead I will point out to him, and to others like him, that there are universities outside of the Ivy League. There are places that, while they may not have the same manners, traditions, and social customs as yours, are inhabited by intelligent, thoughtful people that may just happen to disagree with your vision for the future of humanity.
In the words of Richard from Tommy Boy, "There are 2 kinds of smart. Book smart, which waved bye-bye to you a long time ago, and then there's street smart, the ability to read people..." If I'm looking for someone to theorize about the best possible solutions to problems in order to create a utopian society, I'll go with book smart. If I'm looking for someone that I can actually trust to implement public policy that will affect all of us, something that may not be the best solution, but at least takes everyone's ideas into account, I'll go with street smart every time.