Anti-Intellectualism article

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2008-08-14 11:43am

I liked the book version better. There Gump is an idiot savant, got good grades in physics but had his ass kicked out of college because he kept failing things like physical education and english. He also wasn't quite that mindlessly good hearted.

ray245 · Post by **ray245** » 2008-08-14 12:14pm

Alyrium Denryle wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:If you want to invoke pop culture, I would suggest the Forrest Gump Effect, where intelligence and goodness of heart are assumed to be inversely proportional.

Watch movies; retards in movies are always simple-minded but good-hearted. Compare that to retards in real-life, who are generally assholes who routinely do inconsiderate or harmful things because they don't know any better.
Lets be fair, Gump was not retarded. He was 5 IQ points too high for that.. Poor guy. To smart to be a retard, and too dumb for his mom to avoid sleeping with the principle to get him into school.

On the other hand, this quite irritated the shit out of me, and I think it was intended as social commentary

"After only four years of playing football, I got a college degree"

yeah, and I bet your GPA was exactly 2.0....

WHAT? You can get into college with a GPA of 2.0?

We need at the least 3.0 to get in.

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2008-08-14 12:17pm

Adrian Laguna wrote:That's funny, in the versions I've heard, Henry loses.

There is a similar one, but with a lumberjack. I think his name is Paul Bunyan, some version also include a bull or ox as a side-kick. He competes with a machine that can cut trees faster than Bunyan and haul them away faster than his bull.

Yeah, that's Paul Bunyun, whom there are alot of tall tales about.

I'm not surprised, because there is a sense of futility in the John Henry story. The steam jenny ends up replacing him anyway, in the end, in alot of versions I've heard because he always ends up working himself to death.

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2008-08-14 12:25pm

ray245 wrote:
Alyrium Denryle wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:If you want to invoke pop culture, I would suggest the Forrest Gump Effect, where intelligence and goodness of heart are assumed to be inversely proportional.

Watch movies; retards in movies are always simple-minded but good-hearted. Compare that to retards in real-life, who are generally assholes who routinely do inconsiderate or harmful things because they don't know any better.
Lets be fair, Gump was not retarded. He was 5 IQ points too high for that.. Poor guy. To smart to be a retard, and too dumb for his mom to avoid sleeping with the principle to get him into school.

On the other hand, this quite irritated the shit out of me, and I think it was intended as social commentary

"After only four years of playing football, I got a college degree"

yeah, and I bet your GPA was exactly 2.0....
WHAT? You can get into college with a GPA of 2.0?

We need at the least 3.0 to get in.

No, when he graduated from college. I was implying that because he was an idiot who could play sports, his professors gave him a passing grade despite what we would call miserable failure

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-08-14 12:33pm

Yeah, that leads to a question: how many times have valuable star college athletes flunked their classes and been kicked off the team as a result, as per the on-paper requirements? I'm guessing it's never happened.

Mind you, the low-IQ athletes just take useless courses for mentally handicapped people like "Communication", so it's almost impossible to fail anyway.