This weekend we woke to a tiny crust of white. For almost six hours, the snow stuck! It falls almost daily, for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time, in vivacious flurries which are very pretty — if you’re inside, if you’re not, they’re a bit slushy — and so we’ve gotten used to seeing it and smiling as it eddies upwards. But it was neat — if a bit chilly — to have it stick for a little while. Meanwhile, the produce from the farm now includes a few fresh chives. Spring is stretching toward the surface of the world.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is a rant.
T. has the unfortunate type of temper that takes a few days to realize that it is offended, but once it catches hold of the idea, boy howdy is it hard to let it go. Friday, one of D.’s classmates, in support of his very poor presentation, sent out this little piece of YouTubeness – to the entire graduate Philosophy department at the University…
Granted, every educated person — not just ever American person, but every educated person who sees this winces. These are people caught in the crossbeam of the camera lens, not at their finest hour, answering, with maximum vapidity, questions posed by a stranger. There are likely multiple reasons why these people — wherever they are and whomever they are — could not properly answer these, but what perturbs T. the most is the commentator’s comment about “the very world their country runs,” which we all know is utter fallacy. Since when does America run the world?
All right, all right. This is a fake network, and is meant to be satire. Point taken. With the massive American population, as a polling sample, this is less than worthless, as mean, medium and average in a poll would legitimately of course take an accounting of the whole population, and this does not. These are specific people ignorant about the larger world when their own country is so huge that they fail to grasp details about America itself. But the fact that someone emailed this out to everyone in a department which only has two Americans other than D… was probably not in the best of taste.
The differences between the Glasgow University Philosophy Dept. and other of his educational experiences in the U.S. has been a point of contention between D. and his professors. The Philosophy Dept. has a specific formula which they expect to see regurgitated on all papers. Students are not to stray from the topics set forth, nor are they to use sources outside of those carefully vetted by their professors, nor are they to cite Continental philosophers, whose ideology is suspiciously French or German. (Yes. There goes Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Simone de Beauvoir, Voltaire, and a host of others.) Much of last semester was a serious wrangle, with D. doing his very best to show up and speak up, and discovering that tradition and “the way we’ve always done it” hold serious weight here.
We point this out merely to stress the fact that everyone has a provincial side. Everyone has things they do not know, do not care to know, which can be mercilessly exploited in the name of making them look stupid. The fact that just this weekend an acquaintance remarked with surprise when we mentioned the Bear on the California State flag (“All the States in America have flags? Really?”), and a professor of D’s was enlightened to discover the characteristics of a mammal (“Give birth to live young, do they?”) when D. used its characteristics as an example in class indicates that not even in the UK is knowledge complete — nor has anyone inferred that it is. Except for this one student in the philosophy department which T. would dearly like give a swift smack upside his head.
Q:What’s the name of a country that begins with ‘U?’
As the student’s philosophy presentation was meant to be a discussion of intelligence, we are still not certain if the student meant to be insulting (It is possible that not even the student knows what he meant by this), or fire off an easy, ready laugh amongst the student population, underscoring a fact that “everybody” knows, that Americans are rich, fat and happily, inexcusably stupid.
D., as is typical of his much sweeter temperament (!), has merely shrugged about this, feeling only mildly annoyed (Fortunately, his temper takes even longer to brew, and sometimes it outlasts his attention span). Today another Scottish student emailed the entire department in response, and pointed out something interesting: according to several major British newspapers, 58% of British persons polled believe that Winston Churchill is a fictional character.
This was based on a poll of just three hundred persons and was given by a TV station, but oh, how the news wires which have picked this up and spread the news from shore to shore. “Are we a nation of know-nothings?” headlines demand. “British history fades into fiction,” another laments.
Obviously this is ridiculous, and proves once again that truly: anything can be exploited to make people look stupid.
So, perhaps this is less of a rant and more of a sigh: sometimes it seems summer can’t come soon enough.
– D & T
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Oh, this one really gets my goat! I start feeling like Merle Haggard whenever I see this sort of thing.
Some years back, just after the French had criticized the U.S. for escalating the war in Iraq, the BBC were interviewing Americans about their opinions. I swear to God that they targeted the stupidest, most bigoted people I have ever heard. One man, though, turned out not to be the dumb redneck he honestly looked like; he was quiet and well-spoken and his answer was obviously thoughtful and measured. The camaraman could hardly get away from him quick enough. He went and found himself another ninny and interviewed him instead. I’m sure that jibed better with the image he was looking for.
When they try to insist that the reporting here is unbiased, I can hardly contain myself.
Here are some useful bits you might be interested in if you ever have a friendly chat with the fellow who distributed this clip:
In all my years here, I’ve rarely met anyone who knows why bottled milk should not be left outside for hours.
A nurse once said in my hearing that bleach was an acid, then got huffy when I murmured ‘alkaline.’
My intelligent, well-educated husband still doesn’t get that you cannot open a can then refrigerate the remaining contents IN the can.
A bright British lad in his teens recently expressed surprise when I mentioned that Japan was one of the Axis nations. ‘What were the other ones?’ he queried.
And so on, ad nauseam. But what the heck: in another couple of months, you’ll have your own list!