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The Virtue of Idiocy

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Couldn't resist the cover.  Book sounds pretty good too,

Charles Pierce’s Idiot America is a lively and, dare I say, intelligent study of this ongoing assault on gray matter. “We’ve chosen up sides on everything,” he asserts, “fashioning our public lives as though we were making up a fantasy baseball team.” This new civil war almost always boils down to a clash between intellect and feeling, or what Mr. Pierce labels the Gut. “The Gut is a moron, as anyone who’s ever tossed a golf club, punched a wall, or kicked a lawn mower knows,” he writes. “The Gut is the roiling repository of dark and ancient fears.” The problem is, it currently has a stranglehold on a hefty slice of our major media—talk radio—as well as that traveling circus known as the G.O.P.

It starts with a trip to the Creation Museum in Kentucky.

Comments

  1. Rick DiguetteMarch 31, 2011 at 8:01 PM

    "Biblical history is the key to understanding dinosaurs."

    That just about says it all.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonMarch 31, 2011 at 8:45 PM

    It would seem that dinosaurs are a major part of this museum. Go figure?

    ReplyDelete
  3. avrdsMarch 31, 2011 at 9:24 PM

    If the world is only a few thousand years old, how do you explain away all those really old fossils? And your kids' fascination with dinosaurs generally? My favorite explanation is that the devil planted them to test your faith.

    There is a lot of really a-historical and wacky scientific thinking out there. It's scary though because these people vote, too.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rick DiguetteMarch 31, 2011 at 9:48 PM

    A guy once said to me that if dinosaur fossils were real, why hadn't he ever dug any up? Talk about a loaded question.

    ReplyDelete
  5. James FergusonApril 1, 2011 at 8:56 AM

    "My favorite explanation is that the devil planted them to test your faith."

    ... or your imagination. I'll have to see this Creation Museum sometime. It must be a real flight of fancy, kind of like "Mr Toad's Wild Ride."

    ReplyDelete
  6. avrdsApril 1, 2011 at 3:37 PM

    I am on a paleontology listserv -- that place drives the scientists nuts.

    ReplyDelete
  7. James FergusonApril 8, 2011 at 6:24 AM

    Here we go again,

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thecutline/20110407/ts_yblog_thecutline/trump-brings-media-blitz-to-nbc-steamrolls-meredith-vieira-on-birther-issue

    Trump sounding off on Obama's "birth," with Meredith Vieira taking a backseat to his tirade. It just appalls me that this stupid argument is allowed to fester in the public imagination.

    ReplyDelete

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