Mistaking Wit for Intellect: A Childish Error

'The Real America,' Redefined

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006; Page A29

When a nation alters its philosophical direction and changes its assumptions, there is no press release to announce the shift, no news conference where The People declare that they have decided to move down a different path.

Yet 2006 is looking more and more like one of history's hinge years, a moment when old ideas are cast aside, new leaders emerge and old leaders decide to speak in new ways. The changes in politics and culture are visible in the many sudden and outright reversals of the conventional wisdom.

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When the right seemed headed to dominance in the early 1990s, the hot political media trend was talk radio and the star was Rush Limbaugh, a smart entrepreneur who spawned imitators around the country and all across the AM dial.

Now the chic medium is televised political comedy and the cool commentators are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Their brilliant ridicule of the Bush administration and conservative bloviators satisfies a political craving at least as great as the one Limbaugh once fed. Stewart and Colbert speak especially to young Americans who rely on their sensible take on the madness that surrounds us. The young helped drive their popularity, and the Droll Duo in turn shaped a new, anti-conservative skepticism.

Surprisingly, accidently, E.J. Dionne is correct. The Left has discovered a powerful new weapon to combat the reason and factual arguments of those on the Right. Well, he's partially right, to be completely accurate one must include the Left's very successful destruction of our education system.

The bulk of today's youth graduate from high-school with less than an eighth grade education. Young people are already inclined to react emotionally rather than rationally. When that is combined with an "education" which is more of an indoctrination into Leftist ideology and dogma than it is training in critical thinking and fact based education, the inevitable result is a youthful population that is vulnerable to the propaganda of the Left.

Shows like those of Dionne's much revered Stewart and Colbert rely on snide, childish remarks rather than reasoned argument. For a population that has been "trained" (raised)by "teachers" (propagandists)to be incapable of critical thinking and brainwashed by a television culture that panders to their baser natures, reasoned arguments are of little value.

What Stewart and Colbert do is nothing new. Their choice of medium and style is novel, but their technique is as old as the hills; distract with glitz, seduce with humor. The youthful are often inclined to mistake clever repartee for intelligence.

The success of the Left in using programming like Stewart's and Colbert's is not a sign of growing awareness, it is a sign of a failing educational system.

The writers at the Post have never been known for their "weighty intellects" and just as youths mistaking wit for intellect is a sure sign of the failure of our educational system, the fact that Mr. Dionne sees what these two do as providing a "sensible take on the madness that surrounds us." is merely confirmation of the weak intellects of editorial writers in today's Paleo-media.

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