Obama and the War on Brains

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Obama and the War on Brains
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: November 9, 2008

Barack Obama’s election is a milestone in more than his pigmentation. The second most remarkable thing about his election is that American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual. Maybe, just maybe, the result will be a step away from the anti-intellectualism that has long been a strain in American life. Smart and educated leadership is no panacea, but we’ve seen recently that the converse — a White House that scorns expertise and shrugs at nuance — doesn’t get very far either.

We can’t solve our educational challenges when, according to polls, Americans are approximately as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution, and when one-fifth of Americans believe that the sun orbits the Earth. Almost half of young Americans said in a 2006 poll that it was not necessary to know the locations of countries where important news was made. That must be a relief to Sarah Palin, who, according to Fox News, didn’t realize that Africa was a continent rather than a country.

Perhaps John Kennedy was the last president who was unapologetic about his intellect and about luring the best minds to his cabinet. More recently, we’ve had some smart and well-educated presidents who scrambled to hide it. Richard Nixon was a self-loathing intellectual, and Bill Clinton camouflaged a fulgent brain behind folksy Arkansas aphorisms about hogs.

As for President Bush, he adopted anti-intellectualism as administration policy, repeatedly rejecting expertise (from Middle East experts, climate scientists and reproductive health specialists). Mr. Bush is smart in the sense of remembering facts and faces, yet I can’t think of anybody I’ve ever interviewed who appeared so uninterested in ideas.

At least since Adlai Stevenson’s campaigns for the presidency in the 1950s, it’s been a disadvantage in American politics to seem too learned....

Yet times may be changing. How else do we explain the election in 2008 of an Ivy League-educated law professor who has favorite philosophers and poets?...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/opinion/09kristof.html?hp

[saltpoint]

1. Recommended.

I've emailed this piece to a lot of folks this morning.

[jwirr]

2. And that is the best news we could get just when we need one the most. nt

[Jade Fox]

3. One fifth of Americans think....

the sun revolves around the earth???

Good lord.

[starroute]

4. More that they don't know and don't really care

The poll came out a few months back. It wasn't that there are a lot of geocentric true-believers out there, so much as that there are a lot of people who never bother their pretty little heads with such things and prefer not to be bothered.

[otohara]

5. The Global Language Monitor Site Is Interesting

here's how they graded these top speeches.

Kennedy Inaugural Address 10.8
Reagan ‘Tear Down This Wall” 9.8
Lincoln “Gettysburg Address” 9.1
Martin Luther King: ”I have a dream” 8.8
Obama 2004 Democrat Convention 8.3
Obama Victory Speech “Yes, we can” 7.4

http://www.languagemonitor.com/

[Trojan]

6. What Grade Did They Give To ? "Fool Me Once..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ux3DKxxFoM


It is near the 48 second mark in the video...

What a Speechmaster He Was !

He will be missed by David Letterman and others...

[babylonsister]

7. An intellectual-manna from heaven after the past 8 years. Rec'd! nt

[judasdisney]

8. Will the NYTimes cease their War On Brains?

The New York Times' credibility has not been reconstituted. And Kristof has some horrorific op-eds from the past 8 years that he has not repudiated.