Dana Milbank thinks Iowans are too stupid to understand Gore's book

[AlGore-08.com]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/29/AR2007052902038.html

Is It Wise to Be So Smart?
By Dana Milbank
Wednesday, May 30, 2007; Page A02

A capacity crowd of 1,500 people jammed into Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University last night for Al Gore's speech and book-signing. But the numbers don't matter: Even if Gore were speaking before a sellout crowd at Verizon Center, he would still be the smartest guy in the room.

(snip)

And therein lies a problem for the Gore '08 bubble.

Publication this month of Gore's jeremiad against Bush, "The Assault on Reason," has fed fervent hopes among environmentalists and others on the left that he will run again for the presidency -- an unlikely prospect, but one Gore does not completely dismiss. Yet reading Gore's book, or listening to his speeches, may remind some of those same supporters what they liked least about him the first time he ran, in 2000. Gore is usually smart and sometimes prophetic -- but, all too frequently, pedantic.

(snip)

Imagine the Iowa hog farmer cracking open "Assault on Reason," and meeting Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, John Kenneth Galbraith, Walter Lippmann, Johannes Gutenberg, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson and Marshall McLuhan -- all before finishing the introduction.

I gotta go with Dana Milbank here. After six years of incompetence, cronyism and blind allegiance to ideology, the LAST thing we Americans need to do is THINK! :sarcasm:

[unpossibles]

1. sadly, it will be used as a way for the media to smear him

while I would like more of America to actually respect smart people more, I also know that many will buy into the attack and fall for the same crap. I'm not saying that it's based on geography or that it will be wide-spread enough for him to lose, but we've had decades now of people being told it's bad to try to educate yourself, and how elitism is bad, even though the ones sending out the message consider themselves way above the hoi polloi.

[Bassic]

32. I never understood why intelligence is so reviled in the US.

I really can't wrap my mind around that one.

[NYCGirl]

2. Heaven forbid that we LEARN something! I've always thought the leader of the

free world should be smarter than I am.

[phantom power]

3. Nice to see them sliding right back into the "gore the bore" meme without a beat.

And did you hear he wears earth tones?
:eyes:

[gratuitous]

9. Yep, it's right there, isn't it?

"Yet reading Gore's book, or listening to his speeches, may remind some of those same supporters what they liked least about him the first time he ran, in 2000. Gore is usually smart and sometimes prophetic -- but, all too frequently, pedantic."

Right, I just love it when someone is smart, prophetic, and right but when he's pedantic? Shit, kick him to the curb! We can't have pedantry! That is most certainly a characteristic up with which I will not put. I'm glad Milbank is still here to remind us all what true journalism looks like.

Bob Somerby at The Daily Howler was right in 2000, and he's right now: The media rip on Gore not because of anything Gore does, but because it's easy and it's fun. You can hear the high fives Milbank has to be slapping with his journalistic cohorts all the way out here on the Left Coast for those two sentences quoted above.

[Demeter]

4. This Is Old News to Mensa

In fact, there's an appellation for anti-snobs like Millbank: Densan! Never seen anyone display such ignorance and contempt in a public forum like the Washington Post since---Kent State, maybe?

[DU9598]

5. LOL

Wows Meester Milbank, uz Iowans doesn't not no who Lincoln or thooz uther peoples ar. Maybes u most smartest media hooors can do explaining to uz. Thankz

[IA_Seth]

6. Screw Dana Milbank...

Iowans are some of the most well-educated and politically-involved citizens of our country, consistently scoring toward the top on standardized testing. I dont have the time to find links, but people like Dana Milbank need to do their damn homework!

[SharonAnn]

30. As a born and bred Iowan, and a Mensan, I disagree with Dana Milbank.

Iowans are some of the smartest, and certainly best educated, people that I know. Standardized testing and literacy rates have always been way above average.

Education is highly prized in Iowa, which is why I find East Tennessee so puzzling. Many people here just don't value "real" education. Our local county is very focused on getting God back in schools, teaching the Bible in schools, and athletics.

The people I most identify with here seem to send their children to private schools with high academic standards.

Growing up in Iowa, education was honored. Here, it is sometimes sneered at. Especially if it came from a college or university "somewhere else".

[Jackpine Radical]

7. What fucking arrogance!

You know how low America ranks in comparison to other countries in terms of education, right? How dumb our kids are? Well, if you created a nation out of WI, MN and IA, that nation would rank ABOVE all other countries on those education measures.

I mean, just cause I own 2 tractors, 2 pickup trucks, a bunch of guns, a hunting dog, an old fishing boat, and an old farm I'm sure Dana would find me at least as insufferably bucolic and ignorant as those Iowa hog farmers. But, ya know, I find Assault to be the most compelling book I've read in a long time.

[IA_Seth]

8. Sing it Jackpine! n/t

[Rydz777]

10. I agree that Al Gore was the smartest man in the room, but where

does that leave Milbank? If Milbank moved to Iowa, would that raise the IQ of both Iowa and the WaPo?

[GeorgeGist]

11. IOWA RANKS SECOND IN THE COUNTRY IN GRADUATION RATES

http://www.queuenews.com/Newsletters%20Feb/Iowa_Education_2.html#IA_ranks

Those hog farmers might be smarter than Milbank.

[dflprincess]

24. We in the midwest

(or the "heartland" as the pundits love to call it) are often "misunderestimated". Especially by politicians not from our part of the country. They forget who we have sent to Washington to represent us (Humphrey, Wellstone, Harkin, Feingold, Keith Ellison to name a few) or that a hotbed of anit-war sentiment during Vietnam was the University of Wisconsin at Madison and that Peg Mullen, (in many ways the Cindy Sheehan of the Vietnam War) came from Iowa.

They also forget that strong third party populist movements came out of the midwest during the Depression - it could happen again.

[UnyieldingHierophant]

12. What's pedantic mean?

:rofl:

[Deb]

13. Yes, Imagine a farmer reading about other farmers.

Wow. :grr:

[NYCGirl]

14. The Daily Howler (Bob Somerby) addresses this today:

http://dailyhowler.com/dh053007.shtml

THE LEAST TERRESTRIAL GUY IN THE ROOM: We’ve speculated that they may be insane. We’ve wondered if they’re extra-terrestrials. This morning, the ET hypothesis carries the day as Dana Milbank—complaining that Gore thinks he’s smarter than you—produces this deeply weird paragraph:

MILBANK (5/30/07): He spoke of Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson and John Stuart Mill, only briefly mixing up his patriots: "James Madison wrote—no, Thomas Paine, I'm sorry." He gave a brief history of the printing press's spread through Northern Europe. He used social science phrases such as "the collective process" and the "marketplace of ideas" and the "exchange of goods and services" and "guided by the role of reason."

Once again, no—we aren’t making that up. Milbank complains that Gore used such high-fallutin’ terms as “exchange of goods and services.” Disturbingly, he even seems to have cited the “marketplace of ideas.” Writing like this makes Milbank a Conehead—if we don’t want to get more honest about his likely actual problem. Meanwhile, as he often does in his columns, Milbank lies in wait, praying that Gore will briefly say one name when he meant another.

Milbank’s “Washington Sketch” has been a disaster from its inception. Most likely, we’ll discuss this problem in our posts next week. But there’s a vast human tragedy lying behind the sheer inanity in today’s “sketch.” Your public discourse lies in the hands of a group of deeply strange people. If you even speak English among this strange crew, they rise in angry protest. The next morning.

When a great nation’s discourse is put in such hands, disaster is sure to follow. When we discuss Gore’s book next week, we’ll point to its great problem: Gore avoids discussing and naming these extra-terrestrials, the largest source of the vast dilemma whose genesis he seeks to describe.

[Uncle Joe]

15. I don't believe Milbank

thinks Iowans are too stupid so much as he wants them to be.

It's just part of the on going process of many in the Mass Corporate Media wanting to dumb down the American People in order for us to be more easily manipulated by the corrupt, incompetent leaders of whom Milbank would prefer to enable to power such as Bush.

I also believe the primary problem many in the media have with Al Gore is the fact he empowered the American People with a voice of their own when he championed the internet opening up true two way communication, this is what really intimidates Milbank's ilk.

So whenever Al Gore makes salient points against the media, I'm sure they will be bored to tears.

:cry: :nopity:


P.S. In spite of that rule against using Hitler as an example, the same techniques were used against the Germans in the 30s to dumb them down and enable a psychopath to power, attack the intellectuals or for Milbank's purposes, smart people.

[SoxFan]

16. Elitist Codswallop

Look, I've spent most of my life in New England. There are a lot of Ivy Leaguers around here (Milbank is a Yalie), and many of them look down their nose at people who attended public colleges, especially public colleges where football is a bigger sport than crew, squash, or sailing. At least they look down their nose at me; someone who didn't attend college doesn't even warrant a passing glance.

According to their criteria, Harry Truman and Abraham Lincoln, two self-educated but remarkably well-read men, would be too gauche to assume the responsibilities of the presidency. George W. Bush? Well, he's a bit tacky (cowboy boots, after all), but he does hold a degree from Yale!

[Bullet1987]

17. Yea...cause we really want out

President to be a dumb@$$ :sarcasm:

[SoxFan]

18. Nobody wants a dumba$$

The problem is that Milbank is one of those characters who confuses intelligence, thoughtfulness, and a sense of history with a specific set of credentials.

I cast my very first vote for president for a guy who never finished college. Sen. Paul Simon dropped out after only one year, but he was very well read, and wrote more books than the Shrub has ever read. I still believe that we'd have been better off as a country if Paul Simon had been elected in 1988 instead of a guy with a prestigious degree and lots of old-money credentials.

[Uncle Joe]

19. Did anyone notice how Milbank didn't dare try to answer this question?

Professor Gore used a roving microphone and paced back and forth, pausing thoughtfully and looking upward at times, putting one hand in his coat pocket and gesturing with the other. He began by expressing his concern about the American public's knowledge. "How could it be that 70 percent of the American people genuinely believed that the person responsible for attacking on 9/11 was Saddam Hussein?" he asked. As for the Bush administration's false claims about Iraq's weapons, he called it "shocking and much more troubling to me that our nation fell for it so easily."


Maybe it was too close to home for Milbank.

[KoKo]

20. AH...Dana doesn't know that most Hog Farming is done by Agri Business

He has that insular view of America that the Beltway Insiders keep perpetuating. He flies in...attends an event...talks to a couple of people and gets the hell out. He has NO IDEA what most America is like.

And...this election isn't going to be decided by a lone hold out Pig Farmer trying to compete against Big Agra ...it will be decided by those who are CLUED IN and EDUCATED. Milbank's arrogance shows he's still thinking like one of the "entitled class" who don't realize how much America has changed under this F**ing IDIOT and his NEO CON and BIG BUSINES HANDLERS!

Milbank's crowd thinks the folks who RULE AMERICA should only be Tom Friedman Readers and the rest are some kind of yokels who go to Tent Revival Meetings and can barely read.

That's not America...and those who will be voting these days...

[depakid]

21. Anything coming from the Post strains credulity

That paper has become a laughingstock....

[PlanetBev]

22. This is what the media did to Adlai Stevenson in '52 and '56...

"Oh, he's such an egghead, he's too intellectual, the American people can't understand him, go with the war hero", etc., etc.

The media were assholes then, and they're assholes now. They will never, ever change.

[bklyncowgirl]

23. We've tried dumb. Dumb got us into Iraq and put us in debt up to our ears.

Maybe it's just me but I WANT the leader of the free world to be the smartest guy in the room.

[rosesaylavee]

25. It has been said that Iowa has the highest percentage

of literacy of any state in the union and the largest percentage of college graduates in the country. That "lowly" hog farmer, more likely than not, has a masters in ag business from one of the state's university's.

Mr. Millbank needs to see a little bit of the world outside the beltway sometime before he dies. It will boggle his mind how us little people really do read out here.

[AZBlue]

26. AZBlue thinks Dana Milbank is too stupid to understand anything.

[illinoisprogressive]

27. milbank thinks like all the other pundits. they think we in the heartland are idiots.

Unless you live in DC or ny you are too stupid and a waste of time. They cannot figure out why we just won't accept what they say since they think they are so smart and elite.
They just cannot accept it's the other way around. they are the ones behind the times and stupid and we are the ones far ahead of them and so much better read and independent in our thinking.

[illinoisprogressive]

28. i just sent milbank and scathing email

[chieftain]

29. Dana Milbank doesn't think any of us are smart. It is a close

race between him and Jim Warren as to who is most openly disdainful of the public at large.

[Supersedeas]

31. Dana is the print version of Tweety- crass, superficial & interested only in horse races, not policy