Considering the mainstream media, and especially the mainstream news media, it seems to me that it is basically Michael Scott from the U.S. version of The Office.
Like Scott it is a paid shill for a failing business. Like Scott it is very ill-informed about the world at large, and spends much less than one percent of its time engaged in critical thinking, while mostly believing what it wants to believe, regardless of the facts, and telling it to others as if it were the truth. Like Scott its principal talents seem to be distraction and misdirection, while it never really seems to do any real "work," or let anyone else get any real work done either. Like Scott it is a narcissist that is always trying to make itself seem more impressive than it really is in ways that just show how awkward it is, but thinks it has succeeded in achieving the elevated standing it regards as its right to go by its wildly exaggerated idea of its own standing in the eyes of others, reflected in its demands that everyone pay attention to it at all times and not anyone else. Like Scott it is also prone to feel underappreciated when its wildly unrealistic expectation of others' attention and respect are (unsurprisingly) disappointed, and very prone to self-pity, though after wallowing to its satisfaction invariably reverting to its inflated notion of its importance, no introspection required. Like Scott it presumes to be concerned and conscientious and a pillar of humane and tolerant values when it is usually the extreme opposite, not least in regard to matters like race--posturing as enlightened, while being exceedingly bigoted and exceedingly offensive in doing so, all as it indulges fascist nitwits to an extreme degree. Like Scott it is prone to react in wildly disproportionate fashion when it goes on the attack against someone it has deemed an enemy, while being as incompetent as it is irresponsible in that attack (ever ready to do the equivalent of Scott's planting "weed" on Toby). And like Scott, no sane person with sufficient lucidity to understand what it does wants to have anything more to do with it than they can possibly avoid, with that unavoidable minimum likely to be far more than they find bearable, and quite enough to force on them a situation in which they cannot help saying what they really think. (Stanley, you speak for all of us.)
Really the only time when the media isn't like Scott is in those moments when Scott surprises us with a display of significant, useful knowledge, insight or skill, or genuine human consideration for others. No, that we definitely do not see, the media's consistent loyalty to its masters (or at least, its functionaries' consistent loyalty to the protection of their phoney-baloney jobs) far too great for that to ever happen.
Thursday, August 7, 2025
Remembering "Homer's Enemy"
I recall watching the Golden Age Simpsons episode "Homer's Enemy" and being struck by its treatment of the figure referenced in the title, one Frank Grimes. Abandoned at the age of four by his family, depriving Frank of a normal childhood in ways he was never allowed to forget (as the relevant wiki article has it, he had to work as a delivery boy "presenting gifts to children from wealthy and loving families"), at the age of eighteen he suffered the additional calamity of having a silo fall on him, putting him in a full body cast. The recovery and rehabilitation from the accident were long and hard, but through it he managed to earn a degree in physics, making his life the kind of story of "overcoming adversity" that moralizing idiots love to fling in the faces of the discontented--such that, sure enough, it made the local news as a human interest piece. Happening to see it, it impressed Mr. Burns enough that he was moved to offer Frank a Vice-Presidency at the plant--only for (in another cruel twist of fate all too characteristic of poor Frank's life) Burns to forget all about him in his fascination with the protagonist of the next story, a heroic dog, to whom he gave the Vice-Presidency instead (!), as he had Smithers fob Frank off with a job "somewhere out of the way" in Sector 7-G, where, of course, he encountered that other Sector 7-G worker, Homer Simpson.
The intelligent, conscientious and hard-working Frank thus ended up constantly face to face with a man who was the opposite in every respect, a profoundly underqualified, incompetent, irresponsible and lazy man who nonetheless had "everything" (apparently living the "American Dream" in the suburbs--and a Grammy-winning astronaut to boot!). That was more than Grimes can bear, drove him over the edge of madness--and before the credits rolled, to his death.
One of the series' darker episodes, it seemed an indictment of something, but of what exactly? Some seem to see it as an indictment of the universe's absurdity. But that fails to explain the sheer meanness the episode itself seemed to display toward Grimes. Through the entire story Homer's endless financial, legal, health and family problems, which do see him constantly suffer from the stupidity and irresponsibility that so offend Frank, are conveniently forgotten, so that nothing disabuses Grimes of his illusions about just how good Homer apparently has it, while no one ever shows Grimes the slightest sympathy or empathy for his situation, the writing stacking the deck in favor of Frank's being not just made to feel even worse than before about his unhappy lot, but that having a problem with it he is the crazy one until eventually he does become crazy.
Still, I didn't give all this much thought until I read a piece about the writer who had the story credit on this one, John Swartzwelder. TV writing can be very collaborative, and the convoluted way in which the industry hands out credit means that a writer who has writing credit on an episode of a show may not have actually had much, or even any, input into that particular episode of that show. (I recall the quip in Toby Young's The Sound of No Hands Clapping by one Hollywood figure that he'd won Emmys for TV episodes he hadn't even seen, let alone written.) Still, Swartzwelder was notorious for fussing to get more of his material into an episode than his colleagues, while he has also been much remarked for his right-wing, libertarian, politics, which suddenly seemed significant. It is, after all, the right which insists on those who have been unfortunate gracefully stomaching not just misfortune generally but unfairness specifically, with this insistence, indeed, what defines their ideology (conservatism is in the end a defense of the status quo and those privileged under it against those who are not), with this reflected in how a very large part of what is conventionally presented as wisdom, morality, religion and personal "maturity" is stomaching unfairness without inconveniencing the comfortable, the powerful, those in Authority--not getting mad, not getting even, not protesting or trying to get redress in any way, just enduring it with a "good attitude." Indeed, the indoctrination in this accommodation to unfairness, from the first sneer of a grown-up that "Life isn't fair" in a child's face, is so intensive that at the first sign of objection to any unfairness people of conventional mind fall all over themselves trying to shut down the "whiner," and indeed, many gleefully embrace the role of "apologist and admirer of injustice, misery and brutality." It is also the right that gets outraged when people don't display the expected "convenient social virtue" to accept unfairness with grace, and denounces them as immoral, envious, self-pitying, even insane, and certainly dangerous--potential Pol Pots the lot of them (Homer's deciding that his flaws have nothing to do with the situation, that it's just Frank being "a crazy nut," obtuse and oafish as it sounds, perhaps not to be dismissed too quickly here as the Message).
Especially given the stress on the contrast between competent and conscientious but ill-rewarded Frank and a Homer who is the opposite on every count it seemed to me that the ideas of that particularly important figure in the libertarian tradition, Friedrich von Hayek, were specifically relevant. Where so many apologia for "things as they are" make much of meritocracy as a legitimator of inequality (and promise the disappointed that if they are frustrated now, if they are worthy, they will eventually get their share of the good things in life), von Hayek, in The Constitution of Liberty, rejected meritocratic justifications in no uncertain terms. As he emphasized, a system of private exchange distributes rewards not according to "merit" (What would the standard of merit be? How would we assess merit?) but to the extent to which one's services have provided benefits" to other participants in that system. One may imagine that all other things being equal the intelligent and hard-working will create more "benefits" by way of their services than those who are not, and be rewarded commensurately, but merit and service remain two different things nonetheless, all as other things are not all equal, with Hayek indeed stressing the importance of "accident" in life, and the maximization of the room for accident to happen as indispensable to civilization's progress, and even sustenance (to say nothing of freedom as he understands it). The result is that there would be outcomes unexplainable in terms of merit, that are when judged by that standard, and perhaps any other, unfair, but simply have to be borne--with all that implies about what that Statement of Aims of the Mont Pelerin Society signatory and inspiration to Margaret Thatcher thought about the proper attitude toward those who did not simply accept unfairness the way they demanded. (I might add that it does not seem irrelevant that in giving Grimes a stereotypically nerdish appearance the show could seem to evoke certain well-known stereotypes about those the right has long perceived as disproportionately numbered among threatening malcontents.)
For his part Swartzwelder disavowed any sophisticated rationales behind the story of "Homer's Enemy" (the issue instead that Grimes "didn't approve of our Homer" he said in an interview a few years ago). Still, taking it altogether it can look an awful lot like a man to whom life has been generous punching down at the Frank Grimeses of the world and their sympathizers from the position of a cushy writing gig. And accepting that reading of the episode it also looks like a reminder of how pop culture tends to be a lot less "liberal" than many across the political spectrum constantly insist it to be, even a show as "liberal" as The Simpsons delivering its share of right-wing Message. Those racking their brains for another example of such a moment may find one in what seems to me the particularly anti-populist-with-a-whiff-of-Cold-Warrior story of Swartzwelder's later "A Tale of Two Springfields" (not so subtly having the revolt of the have-nots against their "betters" produce physical division behind an analog to the Berlin Wall, with the have-nots in a failing economy and society behind it), though venturing nowhere nearly so far through the episode guide one could find another Message and Agenda-heavy episode--in the immediately prior episode Swartzwelder got writing credit on, which aired just two weeks before "Homer's Enemy," "The Old Man and the Lisa."
The intelligent, conscientious and hard-working Frank thus ended up constantly face to face with a man who was the opposite in every respect, a profoundly underqualified, incompetent, irresponsible and lazy man who nonetheless had "everything" (apparently living the "American Dream" in the suburbs--and a Grammy-winning astronaut to boot!). That was more than Grimes can bear, drove him over the edge of madness--and before the credits rolled, to his death.
One of the series' darker episodes, it seemed an indictment of something, but of what exactly? Some seem to see it as an indictment of the universe's absurdity. But that fails to explain the sheer meanness the episode itself seemed to display toward Grimes. Through the entire story Homer's endless financial, legal, health and family problems, which do see him constantly suffer from the stupidity and irresponsibility that so offend Frank, are conveniently forgotten, so that nothing disabuses Grimes of his illusions about just how good Homer apparently has it, while no one ever shows Grimes the slightest sympathy or empathy for his situation, the writing stacking the deck in favor of Frank's being not just made to feel even worse than before about his unhappy lot, but that having a problem with it he is the crazy one until eventually he does become crazy.
Still, I didn't give all this much thought until I read a piece about the writer who had the story credit on this one, John Swartzwelder. TV writing can be very collaborative, and the convoluted way in which the industry hands out credit means that a writer who has writing credit on an episode of a show may not have actually had much, or even any, input into that particular episode of that show. (I recall the quip in Toby Young's The Sound of No Hands Clapping by one Hollywood figure that he'd won Emmys for TV episodes he hadn't even seen, let alone written.) Still, Swartzwelder was notorious for fussing to get more of his material into an episode than his colleagues, while he has also been much remarked for his right-wing, libertarian, politics, which suddenly seemed significant. It is, after all, the right which insists on those who have been unfortunate gracefully stomaching not just misfortune generally but unfairness specifically, with this insistence, indeed, what defines their ideology (conservatism is in the end a defense of the status quo and those privileged under it against those who are not), with this reflected in how a very large part of what is conventionally presented as wisdom, morality, religion and personal "maturity" is stomaching unfairness without inconveniencing the comfortable, the powerful, those in Authority--not getting mad, not getting even, not protesting or trying to get redress in any way, just enduring it with a "good attitude." Indeed, the indoctrination in this accommodation to unfairness, from the first sneer of a grown-up that "Life isn't fair" in a child's face, is so intensive that at the first sign of objection to any unfairness people of conventional mind fall all over themselves trying to shut down the "whiner," and indeed, many gleefully embrace the role of "apologist and admirer of injustice, misery and brutality." It is also the right that gets outraged when people don't display the expected "convenient social virtue" to accept unfairness with grace, and denounces them as immoral, envious, self-pitying, even insane, and certainly dangerous--potential Pol Pots the lot of them (Homer's deciding that his flaws have nothing to do with the situation, that it's just Frank being "a crazy nut," obtuse and oafish as it sounds, perhaps not to be dismissed too quickly here as the Message).
Especially given the stress on the contrast between competent and conscientious but ill-rewarded Frank and a Homer who is the opposite on every count it seemed to me that the ideas of that particularly important figure in the libertarian tradition, Friedrich von Hayek, were specifically relevant. Where so many apologia for "things as they are" make much of meritocracy as a legitimator of inequality (and promise the disappointed that if they are frustrated now, if they are worthy, they will eventually get their share of the good things in life), von Hayek, in The Constitution of Liberty, rejected meritocratic justifications in no uncertain terms. As he emphasized, a system of private exchange distributes rewards not according to "merit" (What would the standard of merit be? How would we assess merit?) but to the extent to which one's services have provided benefits" to other participants in that system. One may imagine that all other things being equal the intelligent and hard-working will create more "benefits" by way of their services than those who are not, and be rewarded commensurately, but merit and service remain two different things nonetheless, all as other things are not all equal, with Hayek indeed stressing the importance of "accident" in life, and the maximization of the room for accident to happen as indispensable to civilization's progress, and even sustenance (to say nothing of freedom as he understands it). The result is that there would be outcomes unexplainable in terms of merit, that are when judged by that standard, and perhaps any other, unfair, but simply have to be borne--with all that implies about what that Statement of Aims of the Mont Pelerin Society signatory and inspiration to Margaret Thatcher thought about the proper attitude toward those who did not simply accept unfairness the way they demanded. (I might add that it does not seem irrelevant that in giving Grimes a stereotypically nerdish appearance the show could seem to evoke certain well-known stereotypes about those the right has long perceived as disproportionately numbered among threatening malcontents.)
For his part Swartzwelder disavowed any sophisticated rationales behind the story of "Homer's Enemy" (the issue instead that Grimes "didn't approve of our Homer" he said in an interview a few years ago). Still, taking it altogether it can look an awful lot like a man to whom life has been generous punching down at the Frank Grimeses of the world and their sympathizers from the position of a cushy writing gig. And accepting that reading of the episode it also looks like a reminder of how pop culture tends to be a lot less "liberal" than many across the political spectrum constantly insist it to be, even a show as "liberal" as The Simpsons delivering its share of right-wing Message. Those racking their brains for another example of such a moment may find one in what seems to me the particularly anti-populist-with-a-whiff-of-Cold-Warrior story of Swartzwelder's later "A Tale of Two Springfields" (not so subtly having the revolt of the have-nots against their "betters" produce physical division behind an analog to the Berlin Wall, with the have-nots in a failing economy and society behind it), though venturing nowhere nearly so far through the episode guide one could find another Message and Agenda-heavy episode--in the immediately prior episode Swartzwelder got writing credit on, which aired just two weeks before "Homer's Enemy," "The Old Man and the Lisa."
Remembering "The Old Man and the Lisa"
Reading about John Swartzwelder's time on The Simpsons had me looking anew at not just the famously divisive "Homer's Enemy," but also another, less notorious, episode of his, "The Old Man and the Lisa," frankly for the same reason, its being a piece of right-wing satire. After all, consider what we have in the episode--a billionaire losing his money, but totally regaining his fortune by episode's end on the basis of plain and simple "entrepreneurship" on an implicitly "level playing field," with the result that where we all know Monty Burns to have been born to wealth and privilege, here he is "reborn" as a "self-made man." As Kurt Vonnegut might have had it, the episode makes making a dollar look very easy--so that those who haven't done so well at that game are left with nothing to do but "blame and blame and blame themselves" for the fact, perhaps the more in as far from being able to attribute it all to under-handedness on the part of an evil man, Montgomery Burns this time around is presented as a kindly, honest individual who means to make the world a better place, and deal fairly with the little girl to whom he owes the idea he used to make it all happen.
It seems fair to describe this course of events as a paean to the Social Darwinistic notions of the inherent superiority of the rich at the money-making that they hold to be the ultimate test of a man's mettle, the cult of the "entrepreneur," the validity of "bootstraps" ideology, the idea that everyone of any merit who is not a billionaire is only "temporarily embarrassed" that way, and to capitalism more generally, while it is also a blow against the tendency to villainize plutocrats so much a bugbear of the right to boot (the more obviously so as Swartzwelder's writing credits on the show include the episode in which Homer's more fully self-made half-brother Herb managed an even earlier return to riches after "losing it all," and other episodes which showed a softer attitude toward Burns as "Rosebud," or more respect for his abilities, like "Homer the Smithers").
However, on top of that there is also the specific entrepreneurial project Burns used to regain his wealth--a colossal "recycling" plant using giant nets woven together from disused six-pack holders to, via the most destructive fishing technique imaginable, collect vast amounts of biomass that the plant then turns into canned "slurry." Accelerating the destruction of the oceans rather than saving them--all, again, with the best of intentions, as Burns shows when he presents the operation to Lisa and, in his present state of fair-mindedness presents her a check for her share of the proceeds--Lisa can do nothing but reject the project and the money in horror, all as, in contrast with many an episode of the series, the usually much more gently treated Lisa is not given the slightest cause to dry her tears by episode's end.
Of course, the episode doesn't seem to have been taken that way when it aired. Different people explain this in different ways, but it seems to me that the reason for that is that when this episode came out in the '90s, environmentalism (like "political correctness") seemed so secure as societal conventional wisdom that it appeared harmless to mock at it, the more in as there was that "'90s irony" that had people of limited intelligence dealing with anything dissonant by taking it as meaning the opposite of what the speaker actually said, or even nothing at all, the more easily for the tendency of many who ought to know better to "convert narrative gaucherie" into such, as Ian Watt had it. So did it go with that contemporaneous piece of narrative gaucherie par excellence, South Park. However, while South Park has since undergone a measure of (long overdue) revaluation that has had many accepting that many of the nihilistic or reactionary stances the show took were not meant at all ironically, no such reevaluation has happened with The Simpsons, or even just the episodes of the now famously right-wing (and anti-environmentalist) Swartzwelder, so that they assume there is a "liberal" sensibility is at work even when what they have in front of them is very obviously a right-winger giving them the middle finger.
It seems fair to describe this course of events as a paean to the Social Darwinistic notions of the inherent superiority of the rich at the money-making that they hold to be the ultimate test of a man's mettle, the cult of the "entrepreneur," the validity of "bootstraps" ideology, the idea that everyone of any merit who is not a billionaire is only "temporarily embarrassed" that way, and to capitalism more generally, while it is also a blow against the tendency to villainize plutocrats so much a bugbear of the right to boot (the more obviously so as Swartzwelder's writing credits on the show include the episode in which Homer's more fully self-made half-brother Herb managed an even earlier return to riches after "losing it all," and other episodes which showed a softer attitude toward Burns as "Rosebud," or more respect for his abilities, like "Homer the Smithers").
However, on top of that there is also the specific entrepreneurial project Burns used to regain his wealth--a colossal "recycling" plant using giant nets woven together from disused six-pack holders to, via the most destructive fishing technique imaginable, collect vast amounts of biomass that the plant then turns into canned "slurry." Accelerating the destruction of the oceans rather than saving them--all, again, with the best of intentions, as Burns shows when he presents the operation to Lisa and, in his present state of fair-mindedness presents her a check for her share of the proceeds--Lisa can do nothing but reject the project and the money in horror, all as, in contrast with many an episode of the series, the usually much more gently treated Lisa is not given the slightest cause to dry her tears by episode's end.
Of course, the episode doesn't seem to have been taken that way when it aired. Different people explain this in different ways, but it seems to me that the reason for that is that when this episode came out in the '90s, environmentalism (like "political correctness") seemed so secure as societal conventional wisdom that it appeared harmless to mock at it, the more in as there was that "'90s irony" that had people of limited intelligence dealing with anything dissonant by taking it as meaning the opposite of what the speaker actually said, or even nothing at all, the more easily for the tendency of many who ought to know better to "convert narrative gaucherie" into such, as Ian Watt had it. So did it go with that contemporaneous piece of narrative gaucherie par excellence, South Park. However, while South Park has since undergone a measure of (long overdue) revaluation that has had many accepting that many of the nihilistic or reactionary stances the show took were not meant at all ironically, no such reevaluation has happened with The Simpsons, or even just the episodes of the now famously right-wing (and anti-environmentalist) Swartzwelder, so that they assume there is a "liberal" sensibility is at work even when what they have in front of them is very obviously a right-winger giving them the middle finger.
The Virtues of the Good Old Landline Phone
The old landline phone was simple, durable, reliable. Buy one, just about any one, install it, and you might find yourself still able to use it perfectly well decades later, without having to do anything but keep paying your phone bill. You could even use one when the electricity was out--something people learned to appreciate in disaster prone-areas (which just about every area seems to be these days). These are considerable virtues from the standpoint of the sane non-idiot--and when personal computers exploded in the 1990s, seeing how little of these virtues those devices displayed, they may have hoped that computers would become more like phones this way. Instead computers remained just as problematic as before, and indeed got worse in various ways--in significant part because the ballyhooed "entrepreneurs" of Silicon Valley realized that making them into Orwell's telescreens would be a profitable proposition, and the government they pretend to despise even as it invented and subsidized everything that made them rich (as they take all the credit to the thunderous applause of their claqueurs in the media and the rest of the commentariat) of course had no problem with their using them this way (wink, wink). In the process, rather than making computers more like phones they turned phones into computers, with all their enduring and even worsening defects actually magnified (at least the user of a wired PC--never mind a landline phone user--doesn't have to worry about battery charge and signal strength and the security of their "Wi-fi" and fumble with tiny and hyper-delicate SIM cards and touchscreens with all their annoyances and maintenance demands), all as, even twenty years after the unveiling of the smart phone, a mobile phone still can't give you the reliability and quality of an old-fashioned landline call, not that people will be able to make the comparison for much longer. Telecom companies which love taking your money but hate paying for infrastructure and everything else relevant to service are working hard to make the landline a thing of the past, not by making it superfluous but by making it legally possible for them to simply not offer the facility.
I, for one, appreciate the technological progress of the last two decades. I feel no nostalgia whatsoever for dial-up Internet, preferring gigabit broadband and all that it enables--like streaming video. I certainly think being able to query a chatbot with a complex question far superior to typing strings of unconnected keywords into a search engine. And I certainly think it a good thing on the whole that portable communications devices exist. But it is dishonest or stupid to pretend that every change has been for the good, that the bad was all the necessary "price of progress," and that the changes were all a matter of "consumer choice." Here as everywhere else the consumer is not king. Business offers the consumer what it wants to offer them, take it, or take it, all as "simple," "durable, "reliable," "long-lasting," "low-maintenance," "straightforward," "cheap" and "user-friendly" are not only not at the top of their lists, but things the Waste Makers fight against with every fiber of their being as a mortal enemy to their divine right to take the consumer for as much as possible as they give them as little as possible in return, all as they smarmily tell them "You've never had it so good."
I, for one, appreciate the technological progress of the last two decades. I feel no nostalgia whatsoever for dial-up Internet, preferring gigabit broadband and all that it enables--like streaming video. I certainly think being able to query a chatbot with a complex question far superior to typing strings of unconnected keywords into a search engine. And I certainly think it a good thing on the whole that portable communications devices exist. But it is dishonest or stupid to pretend that every change has been for the good, that the bad was all the necessary "price of progress," and that the changes were all a matter of "consumer choice." Here as everywhere else the consumer is not king. Business offers the consumer what it wants to offer them, take it, or take it, all as "simple," "durable, "reliable," "long-lasting," "low-maintenance," "straightforward," "cheap" and "user-friendly" are not only not at the top of their lists, but things the Waste Makers fight against with every fiber of their being as a mortal enemy to their divine right to take the consumer for as much as possible as they give them as little as possible in return, all as they smarmily tell them "You've never had it so good."
"The Stupid Person's Smart Person": A Few Thoughts
It is not uncommon these days to hear this or that "public intellectual" dismissed as a "stupid person's smart person"--someone who, perhaps not really a "smart person," conforms to certain conventional expectations of how a "smart person" appears and sounds and may therefore be taken more seriously than they ought by the credulous.
But what goes into that really?
Let us start with the oft overlooked reality that high intelligence tends not to be a very "showy" trait, apt to manifest itself only in relatively small and subtle ways, at least in casual social contacts and other comparable, everyday, situations--a certain alertness or nuance or quickness with words or numbers, for example. Such things are unlikely to register with and make much impression on a "stupid person"--their "smart person" having to display evidences of intelligence in a much more conspicuous, even bombastic, way. I can think of at least two types of such evidence:
1. The Appearance of Authority.
The society we live in is vehement about treating intelligence as the defining trait of, foundation of the authority of, indeed even monopoly of, society's elite. (As Immanuel Wallerstein put it in his handy essay, the presumption is that the bourgeoisie is in charge because "they are the smartest.") This is underlined by how any suggestion that those who are not of the elite have any intelligence is dismissed--most famously in the vulgarian sneer "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" (utterance of which phrase is as good a piece of evidence of the speaker being a "stupid person" as I know of). The result is that the "stupid person" will expect the "smart person" to display the trappings of elite status and the Authority that goes with it in spite of the fact that these may testify to privileged social background rather than actual intelligence--such as evidences of wealth, position, and an education at far-flung and exotic-sounding institutions of learning (which education is not likely to be had without one's having come from money, regardless of their intelligence, such that it is a surer testament to the former than the latter). Consistent with this is the arrogant and even rude demeanor that those who have had privilege and position so often display regardless of intelligence (perhaps, as evidence of its lack)--the respectful, indeed, apt to speak of them that foolish phrase "He did not suffer fools gladly."
The actual "smart person" will see right through the trappings, the demeanor, and judge whether the person in question really has anything to say worth hearing (and are thus not a "stupid person's smart person," just a "smart person" lucky enough to have what it to takes to impress the stupid that they are such). However, as (in lieu of Naming Names, however easy it may be to come up with many a name deserving of mention here) the list of the more prominent public intellectuals of our times indicates, there don't seem to be many of these around, least of all in the mainstream media, given its profoundly uncritical, indeed often exceedingly deferential, treatment of figures who acquire such status--in spite of the fact that they so rarely do have anything to offer.
2. A Tendency to Unnecessary Obscurity. People react very differently to what they do not understand depending on the circumstances. Much of the time, confronted with the unintelligible, they will assume that it is also unintelligent. However, when the unintelligible is backed up by Authority the more credulous--those of whom we speak as "stupid persons"--will very readily believe that it is all simply above their heads, whereas a "smart person" may reserve judgment, and indeed be skeptical, for the truth is that the greatest feats of intelligence are apt to involve making what may seem overwhelming comprehensible. (To take an easy example, thus do scientists derive laws of nature from the phenomena of the universe.) Indeed, unintelligibility is apt to bespeak confusion, whether the speaker's being confused, or their deliberately trying to confuse their audience to intimidate them--with their effort to do the latter apt to take such forms as a flinging about of empty buzzwords, a propensity for mathematical statements that mean nothing at all, a penchant for arcane diction and obscure quotations for their own sake, perhaps even a proneness to just speak very fast, so as to conceal the banality of their ideas, and even their not having any ideas at all, behind seemingly ostentatious intellectuality.
Faced with such the actual smart person will, if given a proper chance, be able to tell the difference between someone whose explanation is difficult because the material is genuinely difficult (and they, again, not a "stupid person's smart person" but a "smart person" period), and someone who is pulling a con--but again, there don't seem to be many of these around, least of all in the mainstream media.
Taken together what we get from this is that the prototypical "stupid person's smart person" is a personage displaying the trappings of Authority who wraps up vacuity in a show-offy pseudo-erudition, or possibly both. In doing so such a stupid person's smart person also makes themselves "the smart person's stupid person," one who is the more deserving of being labeled a stupid person because they worked so hard to earn the opprobrium, and because when they have become public figures their claptrap is so often so pernicious in its effect--not that the criticisms of such persons by the truly intelligent and learned amount to much anyway, just about never slowing down a racket of this kind once they have got it properly going.
But what goes into that really?
Let us start with the oft overlooked reality that high intelligence tends not to be a very "showy" trait, apt to manifest itself only in relatively small and subtle ways, at least in casual social contacts and other comparable, everyday, situations--a certain alertness or nuance or quickness with words or numbers, for example. Such things are unlikely to register with and make much impression on a "stupid person"--their "smart person" having to display evidences of intelligence in a much more conspicuous, even bombastic, way. I can think of at least two types of such evidence:
1. The Appearance of Authority.
The society we live in is vehement about treating intelligence as the defining trait of, foundation of the authority of, indeed even monopoly of, society's elite. (As Immanuel Wallerstein put it in his handy essay, the presumption is that the bourgeoisie is in charge because "they are the smartest.") This is underlined by how any suggestion that those who are not of the elite have any intelligence is dismissed--most famously in the vulgarian sneer "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" (utterance of which phrase is as good a piece of evidence of the speaker being a "stupid person" as I know of). The result is that the "stupid person" will expect the "smart person" to display the trappings of elite status and the Authority that goes with it in spite of the fact that these may testify to privileged social background rather than actual intelligence--such as evidences of wealth, position, and an education at far-flung and exotic-sounding institutions of learning (which education is not likely to be had without one's having come from money, regardless of their intelligence, such that it is a surer testament to the former than the latter). Consistent with this is the arrogant and even rude demeanor that those who have had privilege and position so often display regardless of intelligence (perhaps, as evidence of its lack)--the respectful, indeed, apt to speak of them that foolish phrase "He did not suffer fools gladly."
The actual "smart person" will see right through the trappings, the demeanor, and judge whether the person in question really has anything to say worth hearing (and are thus not a "stupid person's smart person," just a "smart person" lucky enough to have what it to takes to impress the stupid that they are such). However, as (in lieu of Naming Names, however easy it may be to come up with many a name deserving of mention here) the list of the more prominent public intellectuals of our times indicates, there don't seem to be many of these around, least of all in the mainstream media, given its profoundly uncritical, indeed often exceedingly deferential, treatment of figures who acquire such status--in spite of the fact that they so rarely do have anything to offer.
2. A Tendency to Unnecessary Obscurity. People react very differently to what they do not understand depending on the circumstances. Much of the time, confronted with the unintelligible, they will assume that it is also unintelligent. However, when the unintelligible is backed up by Authority the more credulous--those of whom we speak as "stupid persons"--will very readily believe that it is all simply above their heads, whereas a "smart person" may reserve judgment, and indeed be skeptical, for the truth is that the greatest feats of intelligence are apt to involve making what may seem overwhelming comprehensible. (To take an easy example, thus do scientists derive laws of nature from the phenomena of the universe.) Indeed, unintelligibility is apt to bespeak confusion, whether the speaker's being confused, or their deliberately trying to confuse their audience to intimidate them--with their effort to do the latter apt to take such forms as a flinging about of empty buzzwords, a propensity for mathematical statements that mean nothing at all, a penchant for arcane diction and obscure quotations for their own sake, perhaps even a proneness to just speak very fast, so as to conceal the banality of their ideas, and even their not having any ideas at all, behind seemingly ostentatious intellectuality.
Faced with such the actual smart person will, if given a proper chance, be able to tell the difference between someone whose explanation is difficult because the material is genuinely difficult (and they, again, not a "stupid person's smart person" but a "smart person" period), and someone who is pulling a con--but again, there don't seem to be many of these around, least of all in the mainstream media.
Taken together what we get from this is that the prototypical "stupid person's smart person" is a personage displaying the trappings of Authority who wraps up vacuity in a show-offy pseudo-erudition, or possibly both. In doing so such a stupid person's smart person also makes themselves "the smart person's stupid person," one who is the more deserving of being labeled a stupid person because they worked so hard to earn the opprobrium, and because when they have become public figures their claptrap is so often so pernicious in its effect--not that the criticisms of such persons by the truly intelligent and learned amount to much anyway, just about never slowing down a racket of this kind once they have got it properly going.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
