If the people of a landlocked, snow-covered land, maybe a mythical place, the glorious Republic of Slobobia, say, were really stupid, the world could say, So what? There are no consequences, outside Slobobia's borders, stemming from the stupidity of their lumpy populace.
Say the Slobobians were brutal, warlike, lacked compassion and knowledge. Unless you were that rarest of birds, a smart Slobobian, what's the diff? ... as teenage girls used to say way back when I was a teenage boy.
But when the citizens of the allegedly most powerful nation on earth are determinedly stupid and fanatically self-interested on the (sadly) most trivial levels, the entire world suffers.
Bachelor friends desperately seeking that first or second marital connection I've already had always react angrily to my scoffing dismissal of yet another Internet dating failure. "Yeah, but you have a rich social life," they say. "So you haven't had to go online yet."
Most of the folks I socialize with, some older than moi, many younger, some straight, some gay, some Caucasoid and many not, all share one trait: they are smart.
At least none of them has admitted any desire to see "Jackass Number Two," the commodity that led movie grosses in its first week two weeks ago, pulling in $29 million.
I am no snob. When "Jackass" first appeared on the American "cultural" horizon a few years back, I tuned into it like those ghouls amongst us who stop at every car wreck, even if the ambulance folk and the police are already there. Not helpers, gawkers. You know the type.
Well, for a few weeks, I was a couch potato version of same. I couldn't wait to see what crazy thing Johnny Knoxville would do next. Or from what structure Bam would jump next.
But within weeks I had seen enough. "This s--- is stupid," I remember saying to a friend. My opinion of the show, or my fellow countrymen, didn't improve when I read multiple news items about teenagers maiming themselves and setting themselves afire after watching some of the show's more demented stunts.
I thought of my mother: "If Denny Maher [my first wild friend] jumped off a bridge, would you follow him?" She'd asked me that after he fell out of an apple tree and broke his arm. It's too late now, but I wish she would ask me again.
"No, Mommy," I would yell. "I am too smart to jump."
But my fellow Americans five years down the pike still ponied up $29 million, in one week, to watch Bam jump off buildings.
Dude!
IN A RELATED VEIN, a recent Newsweek poll of young folks sharing our breathing space here on Planet X were asked to find Iraq on a map within five minutes. Five minutes!
Sixty-three percent of these cellphone-using, SUV-wannabe-driving, surfacey young Americans could not accomplish the task.
Fifty percent of the same youth could not locate New York City on the map either.
Go Seahawks!
IN ANOTHER lovely news item, results are in from the latest Nielsen study.
The average American home has reached a new milestone. There are now more television sets than people inside.
That landmark was achieved within the past two years, according to Nielsen Media Research, those poor folks who spend their lives finding out who is watching Dr. Phil and who is watching Judge Judy. There are now 2.73 television sets in the average American home, compared to 2.55 people.
Half of today's American homes have three television sets or more, and only 19 percent have just one. In 1975, a mere 30 years ago, only 11 percent of your fellow Americans had three sets or more, and fully 60 percent of us had one or none.
The average set is on in every household now for eight hours and 14 minutes a day.
The average American watches four hours and 35 minutes a day of tellie.
And the kids from 12 to 17 are watching more daily television now than their predecessors ever did.
You know who they are, too.
The gropingly obese - one in three American kids, according to recent statistics, who cannot find Iraq on a map. But who will go there if a talking head comes on television and tells them they ought to.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, a people who will not think about serious things has no advantage over a people who cannot think about serious things.
Pass the pork rinds!
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