Let me explain. You could say that these people are dumb because they are uninformed (”my sister says that they sit and wait in parking lots to have their babies”) and make stuff up (when unable to think of something the Administration has done to stifle free speech — and there's quite a list I can think of! — she's clueless, so she looks for inspiration, sees the Lincoln Memorial and says, “Well, last week they said people can't pray at the memorials.”) But this actually shows that they are cognizant of the fact that they're not bringing much, if anything, of value to the discussion. The problem is that they are fully conscious of this and bluster on, without hesitation or ambivalence.

Let's also not confine this lack of humility to matters of native intelligence. What about their views on immigration? One could conclude that these people are just too dumb to understand a complex problem, but that's not what their shortcoming is. They have a bloodlust for people who want to cross the border and tap into the system. The one woman complains about people who travel across the border and sit in parking lots just so that their child can be an American citizen. Well, here's something I'm sure that she's aware of and grasps as a fact: she, herself, is an American citizen for no other reason than she came out of her mother's belly in a very fortuitous geographic location and, in fact, as she fully comprehends, she owes her own American citizenship to nothing more than the blessing of that passive role she played in the event that conferred citizenship on her. She didn't take any risks, suffer the travails of waiting and filing papers and waiting some more. She didn't even pay a fee or a lawyer to make it happen. It was automatic and she is an American citizen based on 0.00 merit points that earned. She knows this. She's not so stupid that this escapes her. But she's too arrogant to admit to the fact that she got her citizenship easier and more passively than any immigrant did and she got it in exactly the same way that these parking lot women are supposedly providing U.S. citizenship to their children. The derision she harbors for these other people is borne of arrogance, not ignorance. She thinks she has some higher, more sacred right to citizenship because of nothing that she did. That's worth mocking and it's not distasteful to do so. This is NOT a matter of someone with some mental shortcoming failing to understand core facts — which would be distasteful to mock.

Even here, though, where they are cognizant that they're not particularly brilliant, the humor is not because they've been shorted in the brain department. It's because they push ahead, asserting themselves unabashedly without any concern that others will find their arguments to be suspect. Again, contrary to what this article says, I contend that they're not suffering from some sort of delusion that they're brilliant. They are fully cognizant of their station — which explains the derision for “academia” and “intellectual elitism.” And it's why — despite not being so well-served by the schooling that they got — they yearn for a return to the old-timey learning of their youth. They are so caught up in their quest for validation of their position and the things that they know are their shortcomings that they will condemn their own offspring to their same fate if it means they can feel righteous about their flaws. That's why these particular interviewees are repugnant and not deserving of our pity.

I fully agree that it's distasteful to make light of people where they may lack certain gifts. But I don't buy the thesis of the article that's juxtaposed with this video. I don't think this shows people who are unaware of their shortcomings. This is a video of people who are arrogant and selfish and driven to be self-righteous (in some cases in the face of their shortcomings) and those people are always fair game for ridicule. We all lapse into that now and then, and when we do, we're all fair game because if we're getting a comeuppance for it, it's almost always well-earned. As it is here.

-This is a common tactic used by the defenders of the betrayers that are the Democratic Party. When all else fails you accuse those to your left of being a Republican plants. I am sure you have absolutely no idea how far off the mark you are.

Amongst my friends and coworkers I am the furthest left person I know of with perhaps one exception. I read the World Socialist Website daily and I’m against Obama’s War, for single-payer and for a safety net to help people in need. I am for raising taxes on the rich and corporations and extending unemployment benefits. I oppose Obama’s desire to increase offshore drilling and increase the use of nuclear power. I have never written anything on Alternate that is remotely in support of Republicans.

You demonstrate your lack of critical thinking when you display your failure to differentiate between attacks on Obama coming from his left from those coming from the right. You are close to being a Republican yourself because you support pro-war Obama who has surrounded himself with pro-war Republicans like Bush holdover, War Secretary Robert Gates and various generals plus he regularly appoints Republicans to panels like the one he set up to gut Social Security. You seem incapable of understanding a critique of Obama coming from the left.

You are correct, you are not an idiot, but you should aspire to become one because you have potential. WHAT YOU ARE NOW IS AN IMBECILE.

And pleeeeeze leave my avatar alone! It's a raw nerve with me!

Still, I found that school interfered with my education and pretty much checked out as soon as I learned to use a library card.

Can't speak for you, but it wouldn't matter to me if Beck or Palin had a dozen degrees between them, they'd still be idiots – and they wouldn't be the first educated idiots I have known.

OTOH, my wife is Phi Beta Kappa from a really good school and I have the greatest respect for her accomplishments. I could never do what she did.

Formal education is highly beneficial to some and entirely wasted – for completely different reasons – on others.