I like the part of Ellison’s interview where he wonders if young readers will think
I don’t have anything against him, but he does seem very generationally-focussed.
I always blamed the trend on a (surprisingly excellent) auto book called Volkwagen Repair for the Compleat Idiot or something very close to that, which sold well during the early 70s IIRC.
Designated Optional Signature at Bottom of Post
Why does anyone think that pompous ass Alex Trebek is intelligent? Why? Because he can read an answer off a card??? He doesn’t write the questions or answer the questions. Thinking Alex is intelligent because he hosts Jeopardy is kinda like thinking Bob Eubanks just got hitched because he hosts The Newlywed Show.
Personally, I don’t watch Jeopardy anymore because Alex annoys the hell outta me. I find it infuriating when a man whose intellectual credentials (to the best of my knowledge) are that he used to host Card Sharks uses that sniping TONE of his to put down an honest, intelligent contest.
OK, I’m done now.
Plunging like stones from a slingshot on Mars.
There’s an Op-Ed by William Safire in today’s New York Times titled “Besotted by Potter” that discusses the fact that adults ostensibly were purchasing the Harry Potter books to read to their children, but are now buying it to read for themselves. He quotes Philip Hensher of the Independent newspaper that this is another sign of the (and I love this phrase) “infantilization of adult culture.”
Can’t say I disagree with that.
By the way, my money’s also on Ben Stein. This is from the bio on his official web site:
I came to the understanding years ago that the producers of movies and television, no matter WHAT they say, do not actually give a hoot about what they produce for us to watch.
I mean look at some of the current and not so current television shows.
Ren and Stimpy (NOT for kids and we can thank the creators for the whole new slew of cartoons made of bad art which incorporate as much gratuitous drooling in great detail as possible and gross happenings.)
Married With Children. DUH!
90210 – I mean, come ON now!
Infomercials (MY pet peeve.)
Urkel — sheesh!
Bay Watch – I mean get a LITTLE realism in there!
Riki Lake – Could she present Black people in a WORSE light?
WWF – We’ve known for years that it is rigged and now they start dressing up like comic book characters and follow scripts and clog up the television.
Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
Divorce Court – could they have possibly found a Black judge to sound MORE like a steriotyped NIGGER(no racial slur intended)?
Ripley’s Believe it or Not. – They tend to stay with the gross, the extreme and such when I have read Ripley’s books and been to his museum and observed the many fascinating, NOT GROSS things he collected all over the world.
The Guinness Book of World Records – same as Ripley’s.
The MAN show. (Glorified bad taste.)
Dumb and Dumber – That sucked really, really badly.
Plus about a dozen kid shows where the kid is portrayed as a smartassed, mouthy, parent disobeying, conniving little hero, usually White, usually looking bratty. (Brothers comes to mind – or is it called The Three of Us?)
What? Me worry?’
Rainbowcsr, I am not sure it’s possible to use the word nigger in a way that does not imply a racial slur. While I don’t quail at writing it in this context, and I don’t want Mark Twain banned from libraries because he used it… the fact is, it’s a word that is a racial slur.
I wish you had picked another one.
- Rick
Scientific American has this to say about the subject.
ThereWolf, have you actually read these books? If not, maybe you should refrain from these kinds of remarks. I don’t disagree with you about the “infantilization of adult culture,” but I don’t think that Harry Potter’s popularity among adults is a symptom of it.
Never attribute to malice anything that can be attributed to stupidity.
– Unknown
Ripley’s Believe it or Not and the Guiness Book of World Records as symptoms of the dumbing of America?
Umm, can you say P.T. Barnum? Before he got into the circus business, he operated the so-called “American Museum” in New York City, which was predominantly if not totally a display of freakish objects, the encased remains of deformed persons and animals, and other “exotic” oddities. It wasn’t exactly the Smithsonian Institution, to say the least. Barnum’s museum was one of the biggest tourist attractions in New York City for decades! In the Nineteenth Century, mind you. So a desire in the public, or a significant segment thereof, to see disgusting oddities isn’t a product of “morally-decaying” modern society, not by a long shot.
You know what though? Nevermind… You’re exactly right. America must be the most modernized country with all the best technology and yet we still seem to be the dumbest people around. If I knew I could be a millionare by knowing famous actors tallest to smallest… hell I would have dropped out of school a long time ago. LOL. America come to think about it…is a joke
Thoughts by Chrissy
“What you think is what you think…but what I think is how it is.”
-me’00
CatInHat (interesting that I’d get into a debate on books for children with someone with a name such as yours),
I read about 50 pages of one of the books (Chamber of Secrets) when I purchased it as a holiday gift for a 12-year-old cousin. It’s imaginative and, for that age level (in fact, if you look at Amazon.com, you’ll see they state that the reading level for this book is Ages 9-12), it would be a good read. Much the same way John D. Fitzgerald’s “Great Brain” books were when I was that age. I’m also encouraged by the fact that it has shown that kids can be as enthralled by reading a (300+ page) book as they can by, say, the latest Pokemon.
However, it is a product geared toward preteens and young teenagers.
I’m not going to turn this into a “what is literature?” debate, but the age of the protaganist and many of the other supporting characters, the sophistication of the prose, and the “Good vs. Evil” plotline all point toward rudimentary reading and reasoning skills. As the Safire article says, this is no Huckleberry Finn, with its social commentary and adult themes. It’s not even Toy Story, where at least there are inside jokes geared toward adults that will go over the heads of the younger viewers. It’s a simple fantasy story written at a child’s level to stir a child’s imagination.
Agreed. (not to say it isn’t happening, but reading Harry Potter et al has little to do with it - I would posit the worse trend of psuedo-gerondizing - to coin a term - where yuppies think that cigars, big cars, suits and other “adult things” make them responsible adults).
To the list of “chilren’s” literature, add:
Lewis Carrol
Mark Twain
Robert Louis Stevenson
CS Lewis
JRR Tolkein (the Hobbit was for children - the books that followed were for adults)
etc.
On thread - I think that most Americans don’t engage in as informed a political discourse as Europeans. This is purely anecdotal, as I’m sure Euro-loosers don’t make it here as much as educated professionals.
However people from Europe that I have met and know tell me that they usually don’t have very interesting conversations about politics etc. with Americans compared to Europeans.
You guys have to lighten up on ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’. If you want to have a game show that gives away a million dollars at least once in a while, and you’re going to have 15 questions, then they’d better be pretty easy. If you have a 90% chance of getting any given question, your chance of winning the million would be about 20%. If you’re only 50/50 on each question, then they’d only give away the million once every 33,000 contestants.
Since you’re drawing the questions from a wide base of subjects, to give the person maybe an 80% chance of knowing the answer the question’s going to have to be fairly easy, no matter who the contestant is.
This is the reason for the lifelines, and for the the first five questions being pretty easy. Without that, they’d either never give away the million, or the questions would have to be so easy that we’d get really tired of seeing them.
Unless you think that the contestants are drawn from some pool of specially-stupid peoplle, I’d say they got it about right. One of the reasons the show is addictive is because it’s an achievement to get into the big money, and doesn’t happen every time. And the million might only be given away once every 10-20 episodes or so.
And I don’t know about you guys, but there’s usually a question or two that trips me up, and I’m very good at trivia. For example, I didn’t know that stupid “Duck Duck Goose” question. Never heard of the game before.
Bricker: I don’t agree that a person is dumb because he doesn’t know some of the answers on “Millionaire” or because he hasn’t read as many books as you. There are plenty of individuals who add a great deal to the U.S. who have had little or no post-high school education. Maturity plays a large role in dumb vs smart.
Plenty of my own colleagues are book smart but outside their field of endeavor they would fit into your category of dummies.
Besides when someone like yourself holds themselves to be superior to the dummies, it reminds me of the old saying: " If you are so smart, how come you’re not rich?
Well, since I must admit I do hold myself out to be superior to dummies, I guess I should respond.
There are two unstated assumptions in that question: that the dummies are rich, and that I am not.
I would contend that, in general, the dummies are not rich. As to myself – I guess it depends on what you mean by “rich”?
- Rick
Rick: I hate to answer a question with a question but one is called for here. Other than people who have trouble answering the “Millionaire” questions, what do you mean exactly by dummies? Please give me your definition. Perhaps we may even agree.
Fearlessly we fought the frenzied foe
As I alluded to in the OP, the ‘dummies’ that irritate me are the ones that seek to make a virtue of their lack of knowledge. Someone who can’t program a VCR doesn’t bother me, someone who doesn’t care that they can’t program a VCR doesn’t bother me, but someone who is proud of the fact that they can’t program a VCR irritates me beyond belief. I wanted to discuss the apparent trend in this country that ignorance is a quality to be praised, rather than corrected.
Even with respect to the Millionaire questions – it’s not the people on the show who miss the questions that I am holding myself out as superior over. It’s the producers who have decided to ask easy questions in the belief that people don’t wish to hear questions to which they don’t know the answers.
In short: for the purposes of this thread, dummies are those that embrace and cherish their ignorance, as opposed to those that seek to reduce their ignorance.
And I aver superiority to them.
- Rick
(emphasis mine) Rick, I think you have it.
Never attribute to malice anything that can be attributed to stupidity.
– Unknown
Um… could you be a bit more specific? Do I have the correct view, or the ignorance? 
- Rick
Bricker: Just read your response.
Once again, there are many aspects to smart vis a vis dumb. In my day my parents and those of my friends encouraged us to learn to play an instrument. (in my case piano). In recent years, I’m convinced that that trend has decreased markedly. In my profession (ob-gyn), to find the time to read the variety of books that so many of you read, is most difficult. I hate opera and would flunk on Jeapardy if that was my topic and would do poorly on literature. I don’t feel that that would put me in the category of Dummy.
IMHO, the parent is the initial and prime source for encouraging a WELL ROUNDED education. The teachers and the individual’s peers play an important part.
The Media is probably the most destructive element encouraging the dummies to stay that way.
Teachers get horrible pay. The not-necessarily-bright professional athlete gets a tremendous amount of money. But as one of my colleagues said to me: Who would pay to watch you do surgery vis a vis a pro football or basketball player?
I don’t know anyone, however, who is PROUD that they don’t know something.
Fearlessly we fought the frenzied foe