Intelligence

I am, frankly, a fairly intelligent guy. When I was given an IQ test in grade school, I scored in the top five percent nationally. I'm probably smarter than the president, but not as smart as the actress Sharon Stone, who is a member of Mensa.

The only person I know personally who is in Mensa has loud, voluble arguments with himself and once showed up at the coffee shop dressed as Zorro. But he's almost certainly smarter than I am.

But what bothers me is the people who tell me that being intelligent is offensive. I've heard this several times over the past twenty years or so. During the last two years I was in television, I was scolded by management for making my coanchor 'feel stupid'. I did this by knowing answers to questions that she didn't.

If an intern asked me who Queen Noor was, for example, I would make my coanchor 'feel stupid' by knowing the answer. So, I was obliged towards the end of my career to protect my coanchor's ego by pretending to not know the answers to fairly straightforward questions about news and current events. My silence allowed inaccurate news stories to get on the air, but I didn't care, anymore, and I knew my coanchor and my supervisors didn't care, either.

In another workplace, I deeply offended and hurt the feelings of a coworker by using the word 'profligate' in a sentence. (Have I told this story before?) She didn't know what 'profligate' meant, and was pretty sure I knew she didn't know. She thought I had deliberately chosen that word to make her 'feel stupid'. After thinking about it a minute, she also began to suspect that 'profligate' was a profanity that I had chosen because I knew I could sneak it past her moral outrage radar.

That intelligence or awareness of the world is now considered a character flaw should come as no surprise to anyone watching the Republican presidential nominating process. Good god, what a bunch of dim bulbs (and bright candidates pretending to be dim bulbs to avoid offending the base).

This began, I guess, when someone asked then-candidate Ronald Reagan to name the leader of some foreign nation. "I don't know his name," Reagan replied, "but if I'm elected, I guarantee you he'll know mine." Thunderous applause erupted from the Republicans in the audience as Reagan offered swagger and bluster as a substitute for knowledge – a practice George W. Bush would make the basis of an entire political career.

Rick Perry may have pushed institutionalized dumbassery so far even the base can't accept it, but I'm not sure about that, yet.

Corollary to this uplifting and celebrating of fundamental ignorance is the notion that all opinions are the same and all opinions have equal weight and validity. Under this line of 'reasoning', your opinion, based on your knowledge of science and current events, is no more valid or valuable than my opinion based on Bible numerology or the teachings of a Melchizedek Cosmic Shaman or something I think I heard on Alex Jones's show.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but that doesn't mean opinions based on paranoia or superstition are just as worthy as opinions based on facts and sound reasoning.

Sorry if I made you feel stupid by posting this.