Bill Maher on US stupidity

[Tolya]

I received this stuff from my uncle in LA via email and I really can't be bothered to find and provide a link, since author's name, date of publication and the title of the newspaper is really enough. I found it a very interesting reading tho, so here you go:

New Rule: Just because a country elects a smart president doesn't make it a smart country. A few weeks ago I was asked by Wolf Blitzer if I thought Sarah Palin could get elected president, and I said I hope not, but I wouldn't put anything past this stupid country. It was amazing - in the minute or so between my calling America stupid and the end of the Cialis commercial, CNN was flooded with furious emails and the twits hit the fan. And you could tell that these people were really mad because they wrote entirely in CAPITAL LETTERS!!! It's how they get the blood circulating when the Cialis wears off. Worst of all, Bill O'Reilly refuted my contention that this is a stupid country by calling me a pinhead, which A) proves my point, and B) is really funny coming from a doody-face like him.

Now, the hate mail all seemed to have a running theme: that I may live in a stupid country, but they lived in the greatest country on earth, and that perhaps I should move to another country, like Somalia. Well, the joke's on them because I happen to have a summer home in Somalia... and no I can't show you an original copy of my birth certificate because Woody Harrelson spilled bong water on it.

And before I go about demonstrating how, sadly, easy it is to prove the dumbness dragging down our country, let me just say that ignorance has life and death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq War, 69% of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Four years later, 34% still did. Or take the health care debate we're presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and "listen to their constituents." An urge they should resist because their constituents don't know anything. At a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways.
I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket.

Not here. Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only 30% got their wife's name right on the first try.
Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll says 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks. A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen, and a third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which is an absurd sentence because it contains the words "Bush" and "knowledge."
People bitch and moan about taxes and spendin
g, but they have no idea what their government spends money on. The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes 24% of our federal budget. It's actually less than 1%. And don't even ask about cabinet members: seven in ten think Napolitano is a kind of three-flavored ice cream. And last election, a full one-third of voters forgot why they were in the booth, handed out their pants, and asked, "Do you have these in a relaxed-fit?"

And I haven't even brought up America's religious beliefs. But here's one fun fact you can take away: did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first.

And these are the idiots we want to weigh in on the minutia of health care policy? Please, this country is like a college chick after two Long Island Iced Teas: we can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget town halls, and replace them with study halls. There's a lot of populist anger directed towards Washington, but you know who concerned citizens should be most angry at? Their fellow citizens. "Inside the beltway" thinking may be wrong, but at least it's thinking, which is more than you can say for what's going on outside the beltway.

And if you want to call me an elitist for this, I say thank you. Yes, I want decisions made by an elite group of people who know what they're talking about. That means Obama budget director Peter Orszag, not Sarah Palin.

Which is the way our founding fathers wanted it. James Madison wrote that "pure democracy" doesn't work because "there is nothing to check... an obnoxious individual." Then, in the margins, he doodled a picture of Joe the Plumber.

Until we admit there are things we don't know, we can't even start asking the questions to find out. Until we admit that America can make a mistake, we can't stop the next one. A smart guy named Chesterton once said: "My country, right or wrong is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying... It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'" To which most Americans would respond: "Are you calling my mother a drunk?"

Bill Maher is the host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," and will be joined on the show tonight by Arianna Huffington. "Real Time" airs fridays on HBO at 10:00PM Eastern Time.

[Darth Wong]

I've been saying the same thing for years, but it's nice to see a more "mainstream" person say it. Still, Bill Maher is not nearly mainstream enough. People have to be willing to stand up and shout "bullshit" to American populism.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Then you'll probably love to hear him also note that the Democrats are a center-right party.

Still, christ - I can't fucking stomach that this is the guy who throws the words "reason" and "logic" around as regularly as any slacker tard truther nut or what have you, yet does not believe in germs.

[Darth Wong]

Then you'll probably love to hear him also note that the Democrats are a center-right party.

Still, christ - I can't fucking stomach that this is the guy who throws the words "reason" and "logic" around as regularly as any slacker tard truther nut or what have you, yet does not believe in germs.

That's the problem; Bill Maher has his own bullshit opinions. I never forgave him for ranting that the government has no right taking away the car of a DUI driver: an opinion he suddenly decided to express shortly after he himself got caught DUI.

[Simon_Jester]

I've always wondered about the studies that show something like "Xety-X percent of Americans think that the moon is made of cheese." Do they do similar studies in other countries? Do similar studies by very different pollers produce similar results? What's the percentage among people with, say, college degrees?*

*If an American with a college degree tells you that the sun orbits the earth or that the moon is made of cheese, that's probably not evidence for Americans being stupid; that's evidence for Americans liking to screw around with pollers.
___________

I agree that the fact that such surveys ever report anything more than about two percent of the population believing such nonsense is damning, but I'm not sure just how damned America actually is, and how it compares to the level of damnation found in other parts of the world.

[DPDarkPrimus]

You're confusing the British with Americans.

[Stark]

I just want to say that Central Station in Brisbane has a giant sign advertising that the Earth doesn't orbit the sun; it has 4 phases of motion and the sun orbits the Earth, which was ejected from the sun's core when it hit some water. INDEPENDENT COSMOLOGISTS!

So stupid isn't just an American thing. They've just got more money, tanks and stuff.

[tim31]

Stark your example is also a smart one; whoever got the money for allowing such advertising can laugh all the way to the bank. You'd love to believe it goes toward services, improvements to the station/network, but... Yeah.

[Stark]

Well Central now has LCDs instead of the 80s CRTs. Sadly, it's still a poorly lit, dirty, badly maintained gloom bunker.

The Brunswick street station is now awesome bright and modern, so all the methheads and working girls get it pretty sweet. Fucking QR.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Well Central now has LCDs instead of the 80s CRTs. Sadly, it's still a poorly lit, dirty, badly maintained gloom bunker.

So it's got a nice Blade Runner vibe going. Cool.

[LaCroix]

Then you'll probably love to hear him also note that the Democrats are a center-right party.

That nailed it. Basically, the Democrats are anything but leftist. Center right is the most I could agree too. Most of their positions are even to the right of our ultra-right parties.

Where is this guy situated in the media? Is he respectable, hosting a big show, or some late night filler guy?

[Tolya]

Where is this guy situated in the media? Is he respectable, hosting a big show, or some late night filler guy?

Actually, Bill Maher calling anyone stupid is like a pot calling the kettle black. Bill Maher is an anti-vaccinist and I've heard he is also a doubter of the Germ Theory. More on Huffington Post and Bill Maher is in in this thread

[Erik von Nein]

Where is this guy situated in the media? Is he respectable, hosting a big show, or some late night filler guy?

He's a stand-up comedian who has a late night talk/comedy show on HBO. He used to host a similar show on ABC back in the 90s. He also made the movie Religilous.

He's well known enough that if you mention his name most people will recognize it.

But, yeah, as Tolya mentioned he's not exactly intelligent.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Bill Maher and broken clocks, yada yada yada...

[Vympel]

Bah. Bill Maher holds a few nutty views, but watching Real Time is really entertaining, he's quite funny, and his few nutty views (medicine, etc) hardly ever come up, so it's not grating at all. All of Maher's New Rules segments used to be on youtube (only some are now, I think some accounts got pulled because of it) and you can watch 20, 50, 100 of them in a row and never find a single reference to his few nutbar views.

His best one, IMO

He's also a pretty good standup comedian, I saw him in LA back in March, one-time show. Was awesome.