VIRTUOUS IGNORANCE: another way of saying "anti-intellectual"

David Akin, in a recent posting on his On the Hill blog, referred to Jonathan Raban's book review of Sarah Palin's memoir Going Rogue in New York Review of Books. (Isn't that just about the most hyperlinked sentence ever?) In that blog posting he identified the words virtuous ignorance,
a phrase coming to mean the intentional employment of ignorance for a seemingly higher purpose. Sarah Palin is the poster girl of that movement.

Palin's speeches, comments, and writings are laced with untruths and innuendo which skirt the truth to the degree that increasingly it is difficult to separate truth from fiction. In my opinion, that is not unintentional. Her ability to employ a "turn-it-on/turn-it-off" folksy dialect to enhance her populist banter is a tool she uses very effectively in portraying herself as the peoples' guardian of political virtue. Many, many people love it. It feeds a wave of anti-intellectualism which is destructive and frightening.

If this were a peaceful era in which the national debates centered on obscure or insignificant issues, one might be amused by her virtuous ignorance. We could debate creationism and evolution until the cows come home. Such issues lend themselves to her style.

But the issues of war, international relations, the economy, health care and national security do not fare well in an anti-intellectual atmosphere. This is time for careful thought, honest research and intelligence, and review of options which are difficult and require global perspective. Virtuous ignorance as employed by Palin and her colleagues only serves to cloud the issues, mask them with superstition and fear-mongering, and wallow in folksy chit-chat which accomplishes nothing of significance. On another level, however, this enterprise slows down government process, delays effective legislation, and undermines the confidence of the people in their government.

Perhaps the use of terms like intellectual and intelligence create an opportunity for such violations of integrity. They are words which are "off-putting" to many people, reflecting an elitism which separates classes of the population. That is unfortunate, because they are also words which describe vital elements of good government. They are not meant to denigrate anyone, but to assure the voting population that their elected leaders are employing due diligence in the pursuit of peace, economic stability, and social justice.

A great bulk of the American populace is confused, angry and disappointed in the way life is unfolding at this moment in history. Those qualities are not restricted to conservative types or members of the Tea Party community. They cry out for clarity and signs of progress. But simplistic answers are not sufficient in such perilous times. To the contrary, the solutions to today's problems require keen minds, careful diplomacy and difficult choices. Virtuous ignorance is not a welcome attribute.


Photo courtesy of: www.creationism.org"

AFFLUENZA: extreme materialism which is the impetus for accumulating wealth and for overconsumption of goods (Dictionary.com)

Let's do a little current events review to begin:

$ Tiger Woods finds that being the first billionaire athlete isn't everything it was supposed to be.

$ Sarah Palin resigns as Governor of Alaska to go on a highly-compensated lecture tour.

$ Jason Bay rejects a Red Sox offer for $15M per year.

$ Banks pay back the US government the billions they were loaned so they can go back to paying their executives billions of dollars in bonuses.

That which these four news items have in common is affluenza, the pursuit of massive wealth. The word is a merger of two familiar words: affluence, meaning wealth; and influenza, a persistent and potentially dangerous disease. It may seem like a strange pair of words to combine, but when you get there...it works.

Affluenza is not restricted to the four news items with which I began. It is rampant in varying forms, even in our struggling economy. That is what makes it all strange. Here we are in the midst of an economy that almost tanked, in which at least 10% of our employable population is unemployed, and when people become homeless because their homes are taken away because they can't pay the mortgage. There may not be a fiscal depression in our country, but a huge number of the people of the United States are emotionally depressed.

And, in the midst of this, newsworthy people are amassing huge windfalls. That fact is not being ignored by the populace. Sports heroes are falling from grace, not only by their indiscretions, but by their images. Political wannabees are being looked at with a second look. And CEO's and bank Trustees are portrayed in the media as villains. Affluenza (many times at the expense of the general public) is the source of public anger:

$ Charities lose millions by Tiger Woods taking a sabbatical to try to repair his crumbling marriage.
$ The Republican Party shifts further and further to the right, leaving moderate Republicans behind.
$ Try to purchase a ticket to a Red Sox game. In order to pay out huge salaries, the cost of a ticket to America's Favorite Pastime is increasingly inaccessible to the average baseball fan.
$ Try to get a loan for a small business, or try to get your mortgage rate reduced.

The demonstration of affluenza is directly tied to public stress, and this is not a good time for that stress. The result is cynicism, which is not a good emotion when it is important to be about the process of rebuilding our economy.

Throughout this fiscal mess we have been experiencing, I have found myself increasingly angry with the Wall Street firms and the banks. The government has gone way, way, way out on a limb to secure them, potentially endangering the political future of the President and those in Congress. But the response of the financial industry has been tepid at the most. Clever schemes to protect its disposable wealth at a time when the nation's economy is crumbling have been nauseating. Over and over I hear commentators use the phrase "Wall Street just doesn't get it!" That's not a simplistic statement...I think it is a profound statement of reality.

At a time when the banks and Wall Street could be heroes, they have chosen instead to be scoundrels. Is it any wonder that people question the viability of capitalism? I'm not ready to give up on capitalism, but those responsible for maintaining a capitalistic equilibrium must join the effort. Their economic narcissism is offensive and potentially disastrous.

Photo Credit: newsweek.com

JUMP THE SHARK: the point in a television program's history where the plot spins off into absurd story lines or unlikely characterizations.

-------------------------

It was September, 1977, and the TV show, Happy Days was waning. Viewership was down, and general interest had peaked and declined. The writers wrote a scene into a three-part series of the show in which Fonzie needed to show his bravery to retain his reputation. He mounted water skis and jumped over a shark in the waters. At the end of that season Happy Days closed. It became a classic scene, and the term jump the shark emerged as a term to depict a desperately scripted scene used to signal a memorable moment, but a slippery slope to finality.

If you happen to be one of those people who reads media magazines you will find the term employed regularly. Apart from that, however, the term jump the shark seems to have no legs. That amazes me. It is such a colorful term I would have expected it to have been adopted by other areas of life...like politics.

Think about a presidential campaign which is sluggish, losing points, and signalling defeat. In a desperate attempt to revive the campaign, the writers (substitute handlers, pols, party, etc.) make a bold move. They select a flashy, but somewhat unknown character from an unlikely setting to be the running mate for the flailing candidate. She is a vocal, sometimes off-message, populist with a colorful history and life story. The tired, depressed party pushes her into the forefront of the campaign, stirring a temporary but lively energy which captures the imagination of people who are tired of the same, old thing. Like Happy Days, it is too much, too late, and the campaign "folds" at the finish. The jump the shark event has been good for a brief uptick in the polls, but has no lasting effect on the campaign as a whole.

Doesn't that "hypothetical" story sound like a legitimate use of the term jump the shark? Wouldn't you have expected to hear it as a term batted about by talk show hosts and writers of editorials? I don't remember seeing or hearing it even once. Yet, it is a perfect description of what happened with the introduction of Sarah Palin into the Republican campaign of '08.

Couldn't the same be true for the introduction of the proposed bill to legalize same-gender marriage in New York State by Governor Paterson, whose bid for re-election is stumbling and is probably in its last moments? The bill failed, and so will the hopes for the Governor's nomination as the Democratic candidate for Governor next year.

I'm awed that the term jump the shark has remained apart from political jargon. Maybe I'll mount a campaign to introduce it in the next political season. It's too expressive a term to lie languishing in the media journals.


Photo credit: Wikipedia