Cue mad Somerby rant in 3… 2… 1…
In his column today, Eugene Robinson sez (my emphasis):
Al Gore has been in town launching his new book, “The Assault on Reason,” and you could have predicted the buzz: Is he about to jump into the race? What you probably wouldn’t have predicted is the counter-buzz that Gore, poor fellow, is just too ostentatiously smart to be elected president.
In the book, you see, Gore betrays familiarity with history, economics, even science. He uses big words, often several in the same sentence. And in public appearances he doesn’t even try to disguise his erudition. These supposedly are glaring shortcomings that should keep Gore on the sidelines, rereading Gibbon and exchanging ideas about the structure of the cosmos with Stephen Hawking. […]
The conventional wisdom says that voters are turned off when candidates put on showy displays of highfalutin brilliance. I hope that’s wrong. I hope people understand how complicated and difficult the next president’s job will be, and how much of a difference some real candlepower would make.
Coupla things:
1.) Of course you could have predicted the counter-buzz. Our elite mainstream pundits hate, hate, hate Al Gore, and they’ve been trashing him since he ran for president in 2000.
2.) Our elite mainstream pundits hate, hate, hate talking about intelligent things. They find Bill Clinton’s dick and John Edwards’ haircuts to be much more interesting.
3.) The reason “conventional wisdom says that voters are turned off” by smart candidates is because the press has been hammering it into their brains since Reagan got elected.
Eugene, you seem like a bright enough guy, but please- you need to start reading Bob Somerby, and you need to start reading him every day.
Errrr, yeah.
This is one of those times when we look to the intertubes and find it wanting. I mean, Somerby criticizes a journalist for taking notes while watching a debate rather than relying on the post-debate transcript? And, he thought Eugene Robinson really expected to see Satan’s face in Wal-Mart?
Anyway, the conventional wisdom that voters are turned off by intelligence is supported by the notion that people like George Bush because they think they could sit down and have a beer with him.
Anyway, the conventional wisdom that voters are turned off by intelligence is supported by the notion that people like George Bush because they think they could sit down and have a beer with him.
And who’s responsible for repeating that stupid-ass narrative again and again and again? Our mainstream pundits.
What makes my head explode is how well the spin machine has convinced the press that a pampered, ivy league elite from a super rich northeastern family is really the type of guy who goes to little out of the way honky tonk bars in texas, orders a Bud, and sits with his John Deere capped friends and talks about the hog reports. The fucker wouldn’t go near one of those places unless he was on a road trip with his frat buddies, and even then he’d get his ass kicked and thrown out of the joint in under 10 minutes if the locals got a glimpse of him holding hands with that Saudi dude.
I got into this with the yahoos over at “Alarming News.” According to Karol, the blogger there, Gore is the beneficiary of great PR–he’s not really an intelligent guy, but he plays one on TV. Fred Thompson, on the other hand, is “whip smart.”
I’ve listened to Gore talk about a wide array of topics for about fifteen years now. It’s my judgment that he’s one of the smarter guys in the room. Boring, yes, but smart.
Let us remember, though, the way the Rightmind works: their candidates are hunky, while all opponents are hideous; their candidates are whip-smart, while everyone else is a moron (or, to use a favorite word in Right Blogistan, a “retard”); every Republican decision is correct in every way, while every DemocRAT decision is wrong in every way.
On the Right, there is no “While it may be true that…” component to any argument. You don’t need to concede anything. The other side is always wrong, and compromise is for losers.
Has this been the secret to their success? It will be interesting to see when, as seems to be happening now, the wall begins to crumble a little.
Robinson gets it precisely wrong. The problem isn’t that Gore is “ostentatiously smart” – it’s that he isn’t ostentatiously dumb, the latter being the kind of behavior big media types prefer in politicians.
And given that most people, unfortunately, seem to prefer to mouth only one of the “correct,” in-the-headlines, “part-of-the-national-conversation” opinions , when the media gives them only the most superficial and idiotic of choices, a lot of otherwise not-dumb people are going to go around sounding, well, idiotic. Mob mentality.
One good bit of evidence of this (oddly enough, in the media) was how, soon after the election, it suddenly became OK to sorta criticize the Prez, and CNN started covering antiwar rallies, and not everyone accused you of BDS all the time, and even conservatives like my dad started griping about Bush —in some instances, from the LEFT, such as on immigration (!!) and socialized health care (it’s good for business).
Yes, we’re still wiping out in a riptide of conservative backwash. And we’ve probably lost the surfboard. But at least we’ve finally figured out where the surface is…
Our elite mainstream pundits hate, hate, hate talking about intelligent things.
There’s a pretty simple reason why: many/most of them are just not that smart. Not just pundits, neither – it’s kind of amazing how dim and uninterested in the world many journalists are (even now I’m amazed, yes). I blame the last 20-30 years’ fat salaries at the NYT, WaPo and other conduits of elite journalism – rather than guaranteeing a life as an ink-stained wretch that attracts, e.g., hard-working schlubs with dedication to sticking it to the moneyed elites, journalism has become a road to the upper-middle class. And so it’s attracted those from the upper-middle class – just often not the particularly bright ones – who use it as a way of holding onto their class status. They see, then, the concerns of working people as being below them and trust implicitly what they’re told by “their” tribe, the upper-middle and upper classes, who knew them first as Ivy league mediocrities. And if they’re told not to worry their pretty little heads about smart stuff, they won’t.
Everyday, pundits like Robinson validate Al Gore’s book, The Assault On Reason…
JKD just nailed it. Bravo. Freakin weenie circuit wanabees.
I’ve listened to Gore talk about a wide array of topics for about fifteen years now. It’s my judgment that he’s one of the smarter guys in the room. Boring, yes, but smart.
I think it’s worth remembering that last bit when evaluating Gore as a candidate. Yes, the media hate him. But they hated Bill Clinton (who is also very smart), too. The difference is that Clinton is extremely charismatic and Gore really isn’t. And much as we’d like to have a reason-based politics, charisma does matter, and Gore’s difficulties in communicating with voters–while they are not the result of his intelligence and they are exacerbated by his unfair press–have an objective basis. The guy is dull as dishwater. And it’s very hard for such a candidate to win, regardless of what the media does or doesn’t say about him.
Anyway, the conventional wisdom that voters are turned off by intelligence is supported by the notion that people like George Bush because they think they could sit down and have a beer with him.
Personally, I’d rather have a beer with Bill Clinton. I think he would be much less likely to get snot-flying drunk than George Bush.
I dunno that it’s the pundits and newsmen/women that are stupid. They might be, I don’t know any of them. But the people who run media operations are likely not stupid. And they know that only a single-digit percentage of Americans read books and try to understand economics, geopolitics and the underlying arguments for and against the various issues of the day. They want those people to watch their news shows, read their newspapers and magazines and buy shit from their advertisers. They have determined that the surest way to drive those barely literate, uninterested short-attention-span American consumers to a competitor’s product is to bore them or try to force them to read or think.
I know lots of people who won’t read the links I send to them if the text is longer than a paragraph. They just see it as too much effort. And these are NOT lettuce pickers or auto mechanics. Knowledge has fallen out of favor due to the time, effort and energy required to acquire it. It’s self-reinforcing.
And another reason why we’re all doomed…
mikey
And like clockwork, here’s the review of the book in the Washington Post (copied in the Seattle Times): http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2003728429_gore01.html
The intro paragraph:
“Al Gore possesses a skill that no other American politician can match — or would want to. He has a consistent ability to express fundamentally reasonable sentiments — often important ones — in ways that annoy the maximum possible number of people.”
The review is about the fact that the book is, I shit you not, too smart. Read it and weep.
Mikey said
“Knowledge has fallen out of favor due to the time, effort and energy required to acquire it. It’s self-reinforcing.
And another reason why we’re all doomed…”
This has been my observation as well, and it gives me shivers.
when the husband and i were in college, during the bush-gore debacle, all his wingnut classmates were talking about how “down-to-earth” and “real” the decider was. he said to them, “well, you’ve got your regular ‘salt of the earth’ guy, but what in god’s name is going to happen if something seriously wrong goes down?” sure enough, seven years later, his prediction came true.
unsurprisingly, a lot of those wingnuts got real disenchanted with the decider, and a lot of them voted for kerry in ’04. i wish more people had followed their leads.
what the hell is wrong with people? don’t they want the guy in charge to be the absolute best at being in charge? they want the best doctor, the best mechanic, the best everything else, but the presidential elections comes around and it’s all about who’s folksier. damn, it makes me crazy.
Having a beer with an alcoholic is so much fun!
re: jkd’s observations
this dynamic was obvious during my stint in college in the 90s. “communications major” was shorthand for “blithering idiot”. marketing, too.
and these are now the people that control the national discourse.
Bradrocket: Bingo.
I don’t share ALL of that man’s obsessions — but he’s nailed the press corps in every way you can. He has their number and his thesis has been proven over and over again.
Gene Robinson is either disingenuous or an idiot. That’s really all that’s left to say.
Refusing to vote for anyone with a modicum of brain-power is one thing, but taxing people with more money? That’s “punishing success!!!” if you’re a conservative.
The next administration may very well be even worse than this one for all we know, but if it’s at least headed by a guy who doesn’t believe we’ve “had an enduring friendship with Japan for the past 150 years”, there’s still hope.
“He uses big words, often in the same sentence…”
Wouldn’t want those literate types running things.
All those big words and the facts they represent…thinkin’s hard.
Having the pomposity-stuffed Tennessee Blimp run for Prez would be a windfall for the GOP. Run, Gore, run!
Sarah Vowell wrote about Gore being derided as a nerd back in… well, a long time ago.
Do you remember one of Bush’s main reasons for running for Prez in the first place? He read a profile on Gore in the New Yorker. In one paragraph, Gore wrestled with the reasoning behind a French philosopher’s assertion (or something like that). That pissed Bush off to no end and now we’re in dum dum land.
but what in god’s name is going to happen if something seriously wrong goes down?� sure enough, seven years later, his prediction came true.
In fairness, liberalsouth, it didn’t take him nearly that long.
a lot of them voted for kerry in ‘04. i wish more people had followed their leads.
Actually, I think they did. But the GOP operatives really proved their mettle in terms of suppressing or fixing the vote in key states. Yeah, yeah, just go ahead and file me away under “conspiracy theorist.”
Robinson gets it precisely wrong. The problem isn’t that Gore is “ostentatiously smartâ€? – it’s that he isn’t ostentatiously dumb, the latter being the kind of behavior big media types prefer in politicians.
More precisely, Gore absolutely infuriates Teh Pundit Clarses because he completely blows their secret Sidney Carten fantasy. The current Pundits are mostly upper-middle-class white men who ended up as journalists because the college courses didn’t require any math and they had the “networking skills” to suck up to the “publishing magnates” their dads met on the nineteenth hole. Plenty of them started off as liberals, even maybe progressives, as long as that allegiance didn’t require that they actually do anything harder than sign a petition or maybe show up at a demonstration if they had that weekend free. But they all harbor the belief that, if it hadn’t been for their trick knee/student loans/car payments/other priorities, they would SO have been Clarence Darrow or Tom Paine, bravely stepping up when all other cowered to Resist Tyranny and Fight the Power for truth, justice, and the ‘merkin way…
So here’s dumb ol’ Al Gore, privileged white firstborn male son of a senator, who ploddingly goes out and does all those brave, principled, hard jobs that Teh Pundits have spent their adult lives making excuses for avoiding. He opposed the war, but he went to Vietnam anyway, because not going would have ended his father’s political career. And he went as a journalist, but not the swashbuckling Roland Headley getting soused in every brothel in Saigon, just as the tie-wearing puke trying to get some modicum of truth past his military superiors. Then he came back, and instead of “networking” into some venture-capital firm where he could make a ton of money and still take a lot of four-day weekends, he spent more time on the donkeywork end of local journalism before doggedly running for office. And running again. And again. And again. One step at a time, one boring committee meeting after another.
Even then, Teh Pundits might forgive Gore if only he looked like he were enjoying himself… rather, if he behaved like the stereotypical politician who’s incapable of *not* pressing the flesh, grinning & gripping, working the room, getting the crowd’s validation. It would be okay if they could tell each other that Gore just couldn’t help himself, fella just had some kinda psychological disorder where the rewards of public attention outweighed the sheer physical unpleasantness of New Hampshire diners, Iowa pig farms, and close contact with Teh Pundit Clarse in all their bow-tied smirking glory. But Albert Gore Jr. is the anti-politician, a man who’s spent the last 40 years being… dutiful. Doing stuff he’s not enjoying, that he knows in advance he’s not going to enjoy, even though he has enough money that he could find less personally onerous ways of spending his energies. Al Gore works hard for… what, the ‘public good’? The ‘fate of the planet’? Against ‘the assault on reason’? Who is this sadsack Willy Loman, and why does he keep trying to make Teh Pundits look like bloviating slackers?!?
How many boring, Oscar-winning, best-selling authors do you know?
Yeah, Lex Luthor is so boring!!!!11!!
for truth, justice, and the ‘merkin way…
Anne, not sure whether you know this, but merkin has a meaning all its own.
And, for added hilariosity, the above link contains the original definition of the word “Malkin”. I wonder whether that’s why Michelle chose that for her surname…
It’s high school all over again, isn’t it? It’s the jocks and cheerleaders and party kids vs. the nerds and the smart kids and the serious kids.
I’m sorry, but I want the guy in charge to be smarter and more knowledgeable and more experienced than I am. I want a judge or a legislator or a president who can say, “This goes against my personal philosophy, but it’s the right thing to do.” Or “This is going to hurt my party, but it’s best for the country.”
But Albert Gore Jr. is the anti-politician, a man who’s spent the last 40 years being… dutiful. Doing stuff he’s not enjoying, that he knows in advance he’s not going to enjoy, even though he has enough money that he could find less personally onerous ways of spending his energies. Al Gore works hard for… what, the ‘public good’? The ‘fate of the planet’? Against ‘the assault on reason’?
This became pretty obvious when he continued to work on the global warming issue as a private citizen. I saw the same attitude in Kerry, too–and your summary of Gore’s background is very similar to what I know of Kerry’s. And, surprise, surprise: Kerry got the Gore treatment by the media. A coincidence, I’m sure.
This is one of those times when we look to the intertubes and find it wanting. I mean, Somerby criticizes a journalist for taking notes while watching a debate rather than relying on the post-debate transcript? And, he thought Eugene Robinson really expected to see Satan’s face in Wal-Mart?
Read it again. He doesn’t criticize Robinson for taking notes. He nails him for relying on notes to report events inaccurately, to tell a pleasing tale (as Sommerby might put it), when he could have used the transcript and reported accurately. Is it too much to demand credibility from major-league pundits writing for the Washington Post?
Anne, not sure whether you know this, but merkin has a meaning all its own.
And, for added hilariosity, the above link contains the original definition of the word “Malkin�. I wonder whether that’s why Michelle chose that for her surname…
Qetesh, I assure you the original meaning is *precisely* why I use that abbreviation… as R.A. Lafferty once said, “tongue so far in cheek it protrudes from the vulgar bodily orifice.” Although as I understand it, Michelle didn’t exactly ‘choose’ the name Malkin, she just married it; I’d have kept my own surname but I never planned a career as a Wingnut Wurlitzer Welfare recipient!
Oh, and as much as I admire Somerby, I think he’s a little harsh on Robinson, who’s probably as close to our sector of the Shrill Dirty Hippie progressive axis of the political sphere as is possible for someone getting paid by the Washington Post. I mean, saying that the next president should be a smart person who believes in hard work and science over cheating and appeals to our lizard brains is TRUE. It’s the same thing we’re saying. Maybe Robinson should have said it louder or sooner, but one reason the Reichtards have succeeded in warping our public discourse over the last 30 years is that they don’t mind repeating the same lies, in the simplest possible words, over and over and over until there’s a dim public concensus that “everybody must think this way ‘cuz we see & hear it everywhere”. It’s not enough that everyone with a triple-digit IQ and an eighth-grade reading comprehension understands the Reichtards have screwed things up so badly we’re thisclose to a disaster that will look a lot like the Rapture only without the happy ending. We have to get the message across to e*v*e*r*y*b*o*d*y, even that portion of the Base (such an apt noun) that would rather eat live bugs than vote not-Repub, because they may not change their worst habits but they need to have it hammered home that they’re not going to be allowed to pretend they’re a majority any more.
I did. Reread it, and came away with the same impression. Somerby was complaining that Eugene Robinson took notes and used them. Heck, if he just relied on the transcript, why bother watching the debate?
Speaking from experience, one of the reasons you take notes is to record impressions and thoughts (the kind Robinson made … how do you get the notion that the entire slate of candidates isn’t diverse, and that “country club” would be a good way to describe them from a transcript?) about the speaker or interviewee, things you can’t get through transcripts. That’s why good reporters might record an interview, but also take notes. A seasoned reporter like Somerby knows this.
But, really, you get the impression that Somerby’s big problem is that Eugene Robinson says things that Somerby probably agrees with, but only in different words.
Isn’t it about goddamn time we had a fucking smart president? Why is that so hard for someone in the press to say? Do they prefer imbecilic man-boys?
And in both elections in the 1950’s the rap on Adlai Stevenson was that he was too smart to be President. He lost to D.D. Eisenhower twice.