War on Intelligence and Reason

So hours after posting the AIG comic and letter, I was watching CNN (first mistake, I know), and saw a commercial expressing outrage at the bonuses and asking, in reference to President Obama, "Is this change you can believe in?" I'm going to sidestep the discussion of how and why these bonuses were paid, because the bigger problem here is the effort by a political organization to capitalize on people's poorly informed decisions and emotions to affect political change. Many people viewed President Obama's election as a turning point in the war on intellectualism in this country: fact, not myth, would guide our environmental policy, and we'd see increased funding for education and the sciences, etc. But commercials like this - and they're run by both sides of the political aisle - really make me wonder about the continued durability of democracy in this country. This AIG thing has been going on for two weeks. Two state Attorneys General are investigating the bonuses. Chris Dodd might lose his Senatorial seat over this. And over at CNN (second mistake for being on their website), White House correspondent Ed Henry wrote a nauseatingly self-masturbatory account of a "testy exchange" he had with Obama at the White House today when he asked why it took Obama days to express his outrage at the AIG development. Here's an excerpt: 

"The pressure was on now because the president had called on me. Someone handed me a microphone, millions were watching, and it's scary to think about changing topic in a split second because you might get flustered and screw up.

"But it's fun to gamble and like any good quarterback (though I was never athletic enough to actually play the position), I decided to call an audible.

"So I went hard on the AIG question, and took Wolf's advice and followed on a couple of colleagues who got pushback from the president when they asked about how his budget numbers do not seem to add up.

"The president, like any good politician, decided to pick and choose what to answer. So he swatted away the budget question and ignored the AIG stuff.

"So I waited patiently and then decided to pounce with a sharp follow-up..."

His article was unfortunately so poorly written and convoluted that I couldn't actually figure out just what that follow up actually was. You can read the whole thing, if you dare, here. Anyway, CNN naturally decided that once again reporting the news is huge news, so it had Anderson Cooper interview Mr. Henry later in the day. Here's a gem from that one. I'm warning you, you may want to grab a trash can or something, just in case. 

"I wasn't planning to bring [AIG] up; I had some other things in mind, but when I saw that none of my colleagues had brought up what had been the hottest story of the last week, I felt like he needed to answer that question. He clearly didn't He wanted instead to talk about how he believes he's going to turn this economy around, what he believes he's done already..." 

That's funny, Ed, because THAT'S WHAT I WANTED TO HEAR! But instead, you wanted to talk about what "had been" the hottest story of "the last week." Don't think about this for too long, folks, or in the words of Lewis Black, blood will shoot out your nose. 

Anyway, I can't be comfortable thinking that this is where many Americans get all their news, if they get it at all. The future is scary. 

But before I close, I have to say that intellectuals are not entirely without fault here. While Congress and the major media outlets have launched an all-out assault against public reason and intelligence, those who believe in reason have struck back by attacking... religion? More on faith later (probably), but it seems like many people have their priorities in disorder. Who will save us?