Saturday, January 08, 2005
How can 55 million people be so smart?
We are familiar with the headline in the Daily Mirror of London, following our November presidential election: "How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb?"
Given the actual distribution of real smarts it should not come as a surprise that at least 59 million are actually pretty dumb; the correct figure is probably closer to 250 million - and includes everyone except the self-righteous.
James Bowman is a fine writer and a great critic, and each month his sharp and astute media criticism can be found in The New Criterion magazine. In his December piece, "Cutting Moral Corners", Bowman explains that the all-powerful "media consensus" is really just a shell that allows journalists "to be wrong, even absurd, with impunity."
A perfect example is the media consensus that simple-minded, bible worshipping moralizers voted for Bush, while the tolerant and nuanced, who espouse a live and let live philosophy, voted for Kerry. The problem with this lazy "consensus" is that it is the essence of simple-mindedness itself; and, as Bowman makes great sport in showing, has really got it all wrong.
"Anyone attending to the electoral dialogue in the weeks and months running up to the election could not have been unaware that all, or nearly all, the moral fervor was on the Kerry side, which numbered among its more fervent adherents the thoughtful graffitist who inscribed on a public refuse bin near my office the elegant equation: "Bush = Hitler" This was not, by the way, the first time I had been involuntarily made aware of this sentiment’s being abroad, but I don’t remember a single conservative writing Kerry = Hitler. Or even Kerry = Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, take your choice. Even among the more rhetorically restrained Democratic faction, charges of "bigotry" against Bush/Cheney were almost routine. Those who liked Bush did not, for the most part hate Kerry or consider him a wicked or immoral man, whereas large numbers of those who liked Kerry did have just such thoughts and feelings about the President. I suppose it would have been too much to expect that those who were the victims of it should have been able to spot the irony that the party of "nuance," of insisting that all was not black and white, professed to find it all black and white when it came to the Bush administration. At least Bush’s with-us-or-against-us moment was vis á vis an evil dictator; theirs was against their own government."
Bowman observes that our country isn't really as divided as the media would have us believe. The deep divide is really between most Americans and the media culture itself. The essay concludes with a gem of Bowman-esque illumination:
"For in fact there is no dichotomy between the moral and the intellectual of the type suggested by [the media]. Those who think of themselves as intellectually superior also think of themselves as morally superior — as we saw most vividly in the reaction of so many of the smart people’s faction to their unexpected defeat. "
Given the actual distribution of real smarts it should not come as a surprise that at least 59 million are actually pretty dumb; the correct figure is probably closer to 250 million - and includes everyone except the self-righteous.
James Bowman is a fine writer and a great critic, and each month his sharp and astute media criticism can be found in The New Criterion magazine. In his December piece, "Cutting Moral Corners", Bowman explains that the all-powerful "media consensus" is really just a shell that allows journalists "to be wrong, even absurd, with impunity."
A perfect example is the media consensus that simple-minded, bible worshipping moralizers voted for Bush, while the tolerant and nuanced, who espouse a live and let live philosophy, voted for Kerry. The problem with this lazy "consensus" is that it is the essence of simple-mindedness itself; and, as Bowman makes great sport in showing, has really got it all wrong.
"Anyone attending to the electoral dialogue in the weeks and months running up to the election could not have been unaware that all, or nearly all, the moral fervor was on the Kerry side, which numbered among its more fervent adherents the thoughtful graffitist who inscribed on a public refuse bin near my office the elegant equation: "Bush = Hitler" This was not, by the way, the first time I had been involuntarily made aware of this sentiment’s being abroad, but I don’t remember a single conservative writing Kerry = Hitler. Or even Kerry = Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, take your choice. Even among the more rhetorically restrained Democratic faction, charges of "bigotry" against Bush/Cheney were almost routine. Those who liked Bush did not, for the most part hate Kerry or consider him a wicked or immoral man, whereas large numbers of those who liked Kerry did have just such thoughts and feelings about the President. I suppose it would have been too much to expect that those who were the victims of it should have been able to spot the irony that the party of "nuance," of insisting that all was not black and white, professed to find it all black and white when it came to the Bush administration. At least Bush’s with-us-or-against-us moment was vis á vis an evil dictator; theirs was against their own government."
Bowman observes that our country isn't really as divided as the media would have us believe. The deep divide is really between most Americans and the media culture itself. The essay concludes with a gem of Bowman-esque illumination:
"For in fact there is no dichotomy between the moral and the intellectual of the type suggested by [the media]. Those who think of themselves as intellectually superior also think of themselves as morally superior — as we saw most vividly in the reaction of so many of the smart people’s faction to their unexpected defeat. "
# posted by mds : 9:45 PM
