Easier to say “I’m poor and jealous”.
Ditto Reagan. And Kaiser Wilhelm II. (Or maybe he doesn’t count-he wasn’t all that successful in the end, was he?)
I say nay, nay. He’s more of an idiot.
Easier still to spare us your pointless snark and post nothing.
Don’t forget Clarence Thomas.
Someone once said of FDR that he did not have a first-rate intelligence, but did have a first-rate termperament. And I think that what Bush lacks is much more the latter than the former. He once said that he never debates with himself which I take to mean that he never thinks about his decisions.
But a lot of different things go into success. Intelligence is one, but perseverance is another and the plain ability to work hard. Or maybe I am saying that there are many different kinds of intelligence, not all of which contribute to ability in school. There are a lot of professional athletes who did zip in school, but it is obvious from watching them play, they bring a lot of intelligence to their games. If you remember Vince Colemen, you realize that a truly stupid baseball player will not be successful no matter his talents.
I would also question that Bush was a success. He is slated to enter history as the worst US president ever and I would not call that a success.
A friend of mine has better clothes than me, a nicer car, a girlfriend, lives in a great city, gets jobs thrown at him because his Dad had one of the biggest jobs in town. He will likely soon be making more money than me. His family payed for him to move away and go to a music school for a year because it was his “passion”
He spent 8 years getting a 4 year degree, failed many a class, totaled at least 3 cars and received traffic tickets all the time (his liscense was once suspended) He smokes.
Maybe not an idiot neccessarily, but he has had a lot of good luck.
The one saving grace…I don’t live with my parents anymore 
I don’t know that I would call him an “idiot”, but in 8th grade English we were supposed to read The Odyssey, which is IMO absolutely fascinating, and my cousin flat out refused - REFUSED - to participate. This, in a small high school in a small town, 40 years ago! He was always a lousy student and just barely passed his courses. He may have very well had some kind of ADD or ADHD or learning disability, but this was 40 years ago and he was considered a dullard, and a troublemaker, and was held back a grade (oh , the horror! the shame!)…flash forward 20 years and he got a job driving a Pepperidge Farm route. Made enough to live in a McMansion out in the country, sent two sons to Ivy League schools, AND slipped his considerably smarter but poorer relatives all the just-barely-expired English muffins, corn cakes, and White Toasting Bread they could fit in their freezer (because it was just going to be thrown out, anyway).
Here’s where I get to quantify my earlier post. I have a degree in Classics. I was supposed to have read the Odyssey 3 or 4 times for different classes. I managed once and then was fucking bored of it. All the other times I skimmed or referred to Cliff’s Notes. How many times do we have to dissect this shit with how many different literary theories? Gah. I much prefer Hesiod. Better yet, give me some Histories.
(I was also held back a grade, never finished high school, and I am a GED holder. But I digress.)
I ain’t poor and I ain’t jealous. I also don’t have to live in a state of constant paranoia, worrying about getting caught.
Supermegaboss, the woman who designed the non-SAP I’m implementing.
For those who don’t know it (or who have only seen its misused side), SAP is a big database/program to manage companies “globally”: you can use it to manage anything from personnel training to presctiptions written by company doctors to stocks to product quality. It’s ugly but, if used properly, it works and can work very well. You can add in-house patches to it: this is a bad move 99% of the time; most of the patches I’ve seen tried to add functionality which SAP already has but the people involved didn’t know where.
This woman’s company is using SAP but always in a “patched up” way. What my team is implementing is the biggest patch ever and it’s, using mild language as we’re not in The Pit, a huge piece of male cow doodoo.
A well managed, normal one-phase installation can be done fully in 12 months including post-installation support. Phase one has so far taken 5 years. I’m in phase two and expect to be able to pay off my house from this project.
She’s also a college professor; one of my coworkers had her as a teacher. When another coworker (who must have been lacking caffeine at the time) asked how was Supermegaboss as a teacher, the other one said “you’ve seen how bad she is at explaining anything! She wouldn’t be able to teach shitting to a cow.”
This woman is on the 3rd-from-the-top line in a 41-country multinational company; she has several thousand subordinates.
I used to know the “X Games” moron that married the “rock star”. The dude was easily one of the stupidest people I’ve ever met.
They both disgust me so much I refuse to type names.
I wanted to say “our CEO”, but now that I think about it, it’s just possible that he’s an asshole intentionally. I never hear him talk but he rubs my fur the wrong way.
And the longer I work my current job, and the more I try to find a different one, the more I wonder if I’m the world’s most successful idiot. It’s highway banditry, what they’re paying me for a project that everyone else has known wouldn’t work for the last fifteen years. I told them it wouldn’t work. They don’t care.
Wait, I’m missing something. How is a guy who drives a bread truck considered “successful”?
My oldest sister’s husband. He is a high-school dropout, hasn’t worked steadily in many years, doesn’t know very much and isn’t very bright, and has a horseshoe up his ass. His ass horseshoe has got him up to at least a million dollars financial worth, and probably much more, without him doing very much for it. My sister, on the other hand, has worked her ass off for years and years. To top it all off, he’s not even a very nice guy. He seems to be taking most of the credit for their successes when he hasn’t done very much beyond marrying well and winning a lottery (literally - they won a house).
My brother is far from a moron, but he knows nothing about money or economics. Yet he is paid a hefty six-figure salary as Director of Finance for a large division of a huge global corporation. He is wholly unqualified for this position, but he has moved up through the ranks because he knows how to talk to the big-wigs. He’s on his way to Chief Financial Officer, at which point his fraud will surely be discovered. However, by then he will be so rich that it won’t matter.
My Boss.