It's NOT OK to be Stupid

It’s not OK to be stupid. I realize this goes contrary with what you are told by TV but it is not OK to be stupid. It’s OK to be ignorant but being proud of being stupid is just not cool.

I caught a minute or two of the Ellen Degeneres show at the gym on Monday. She had as a guest some guy from Morocco and somehow the conversation got around to the languages he spoke. He mentioned French and Ellen blurted out some pidgin French and the audience got a big kick out of how funny and cool Ellen was for not speaking French. It just reaffirmed my view that most people on TV in this country are nitwits.

Had Ellen rattled off a bunch of French, or better yet a bunch of Arabic, I would have been impressed. I would think that here is a woman who is intelligent and cosmopolitan, someone whose show might be worth watching, she might say something worthwhile. But no, she’s just another dull drip in the sewer that makes up most of television. If she had spoken French she would have only made her audience uncomfortable with their ignorance. I went back to reading my book.

It certainly is OK not to speak French. My own French is certainly flawed and no one can be expected to speak every language. But it certainly isn’t cool not to speak another language. It isn’t cute or funny to butcher another language. If I were speaking with someone in Dutch I wouldn’t be proud of the fact that my Dutch is lousy. I wouldn’t think that my ignorance of that language was cute or funny. I would find it embarrassing more than anything else.

I suppose lots of people are comforted by the lame brains that make up most of our popular culture because they reassure everyone that it is OK to be an anti-intellectual slob. I used to keep track of how often I would hear of a celebrity confess that they never read, ever. If I didn’t read I certainly wouldn’t walk around practically bragging about it. This leads me to the curious question people invariably ask: If you’re so smart why aren’t you rich? I would ask people like Ellen and other non-reading celebrities: If you are so rich why aren’t you smart?