It seems like just yesterday that I was cringing at Sarah Palin’s disastrous interview with Katie Couric. I watched her stumble through a question I had once answered on a high school civic exams years ago: Name a Supreme Court ruling you don’t agree with? I gaffawed at her failure to answer this question, wondering how a woman who was running for the second highest office in the United States, and who had a journalism background, couldn’t name one Supreme Court Case (Roe v. Wade anyone)?
Now eight weeks later and one week after Barack Obama swept the country and won the election, I’ve had the chance to get to know this woman a little better through her many stump speeches that make conservatives swoon.
She took jabs at the “elite liberal media,” pointed out the differences between the pro-American parts of the country and the anti-American parts (I assume that Philadelphia falls under the latter category). Then while watching yet another pundit criticize Palin, I heard something that led me to an epiphany: Sarah Palin is running a campaign against smart.
It sounds funny — it was at the time — but now I’m beginning to see how true it is. Not until this election has it been a bad thing to be educated. Just ask Sarah Palin. I mean, she went to five different colleges just to get her bachelor’s degree, and she’s still ill-informed. Perhaps this is a testament to the failures of the American education system, and maybe we’re just wasting our time and money worrying about it.
Maybe going to college is a waste. Or maybe we should all just learn how to read and do basic math. Now as our economy is crumbling and the chances of our country remaining the world’s leading superpower diminishes, it is time to rearrange our priorities. Think about how much money we can save but telling our children to forgo higher education and pick up factory jobs and have children out of wedlock. If working hours in a factory for minimum wage doesn’t say prosperity, then I don’t know what does.
But since when was it cool to be stupid? Isn’t a mind a terrible thing to waste? Haven’t our teachers and parents been pushing us to be smart since we could talk? Well, new trends always catch fire when they’re started by someone prominent and popular - a celebrity. And what bigger celebrity is there in the United States than our own President? Yes, President Bush made it cool to be dumb. Where else in the world can you get a job with a mediocre grades, poor speaking skills, and absolutely no knowledge of the position? That’s why they call America the “Land of Opportunity.”
Sarah Palin is only reinforcing what President Bush taught us in the last eight years. You don’t really need to know what’s in the Constitution, you can just give it a skim. All of your political knowledge can be gained from watching Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show. Perez Hilton is a credible source and books are so 1999. It’s time for all of us to get with the program. Dumb is the new smart, whether we like it or not.
~Tiffany Hall
Philadelphia, PA
ihave.wings@temple.edu
