Stupidity on steroids

Probably as long as there have been human beings on the planet, there has been stupidity.

I am willing to grant that, but it does seem like lately we have been getting stupidity on steroids. Maybe it is just because cable TV inherently magnifies otherwise plain, simple random stupidity into instant celebrity.

Maybe it is because of global warming. Heck, we can blame every other earthly problem on global warming, so there should be some way to work stupidity into the mix (although I think when drug addicts say their brain was fried, they are not talking about the temperature).

Or maybe it is just because there are no grown-ups left. I remember reading a novel when I was in junior high about a world where all the grownups disappeared one night and all the children got bigger. Problem was, they didn't get smarter, just bigger.

That seems to just about fit the facts of our modern-day epidemic of stupidity.

Take Don Imus, for example.

Here is a guy who has spent the last 40 years telling us why he is smarter than the rest of us. On his radio and television show, he has cultivated a cadre of fawning celebrities who cater to his megalomania and vie for invitations on the show where they can be insulted by him for being dim-witted or ugly or whatever he wants to say.

This week, Imus more than lived up to the name given him by MSNBC newswoman Contessa Brewer back in 2005 when she was forced to read the news on his program. She called him "a cantankerous old fool," at which point he called her "fat" and got her removed from the show.

This week, Imus probably wished he had just called a woman fat. Instead he referred to the Rutgers women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos." Then, probably in an effort to distract attention from Imus's stupidity, his producer Bernard McGuirk called the Rutgers team "jigaboos," which for those of you who don't know is the prehistoric form of the "n" word.

But it doesn't matter what Imus or McGuirk say because they are just on the radio or TV, and you can turn them off, right? Remember the prevailing wisdom is that the First Amendment gives people the right to say virtually anything they want in public no matter how coarse or inappropriate. At least that is what passes for wisdom by people who just don't seem to care how sick our society becomes.

Although Imus apologized, the New York Times also reported that he "said people should relax and not worry about 'some idiot comment meant to be amusing.'"

Uh huh. Why worry about the sickening of our society?

Speaking of idiot comments, sometimes they come from high places. Nancy "Chamberlain" Pelosi demonstrated this week that she doesn't know any more about diplomacy than she does about war. The Speaker of the House spent part of the week square-dancing with Syrian strongman Bashar Assad, then announced that she had whispered in his ear that Israel was ready to negotiate.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert quickly set the record straight, however, saying that "Syria continues to be part of the axis of evil and an element that encourages terror in the Middle East." If there are going to be negotiations, "Syria must cease its support for terror," Olmert said. Since Pelosi doesn't comprehend the idea of an axis of evil, it is unlikely she got the message from Olmert.

Of course it was just a week or two ago that we learned from Rosie O'Donnell (diva to the Taliban) that terrorists are not evil anyway, just misunderstood. Remember folks, it is the United States which is evil. Get with the (moveon.org) program!

Closer to home, we saw one more in a long string of incidents that should have us worried about what exactly we are teaching our children. Turns out that four fifth-graders allegedly had sex in front of other students in an unsupervised classroom in rural Louisiana.

The students - two 11-year-old girls, a 12-year-old boy and a 13-year old boy - have been arrested and were charged with obscenity, a felony.

About this incident, you can say two things. First, it is unbelievable. Second, we had better believe it because it is not an isolated case. These kinds of things are happening more and more.

And why shouldn't they? Schools are not allowed to teach values any more - because values suggest some inherent meaning to life, and such meaning can only be discovered when you acknowledge that life has a spiritual component which is just as important as the biological one.

So what are we teaching instead of values?

Don't know if there is a core curriculum in "American Idol" yet, but Michigan Democrats have put forward a plan to buy an iPod or MP3 player for every school child in the state.

Yeah, Michigan, the very same state which faces a $1 billion deficit and which is planning on raising taxes to pay its many bills. As the Detroit News asked in an editorial, "Are they !#$!ing idiots?"