Jokers

Wanda: To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people. I've known sheep who could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher IQs, but you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape?
Otto: Apes don't read philosophy.
Wanda: Yes they do, Otto, they just don't understand it. -- A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

There's a reason why the only "contact", as it were, I might periodically undertake with viewing the gibbering fools in certain quadrants of the blogosphere is the occasional visit to ClownHall. Put simply: there is never even the pretense of accountability with them. If you take something they have loudly, hilariously asserted as an indisputable fact, and conclusively skewer their idiotic contention, they never just say, "Oh, well, I guess I fucked up, didn't I? Maybe I should fact-check shit a little more often." (And, for the record, I have seen much stupider assertions presented pseudo-factually as Drudge-esque "gotchas" by some of these folks, so this Hummel eagle thing is about par for the course.)

Seems simple enough, but it never happens because their investment is and always has been emotional, rather than intellectual or empirical. By definition, it has to be. Since there's not much walking back from calling CIA veterans "morons" and drunk-dialing Juan Cole -- that is, criticizing people who actually know about the things they write about -- all they can do is hem and haw when it's pointed out who the actual morons are in this here fable. And anyway, so they missed a minor detail (it's always major breaking news when they "catch" it; picayune when they get pimp-slapped with it). They've been right on all the major epistemological points, right? Right? The Dow is still over 13,000; ergo, Bush has been correct about everything. QED, muthafuckas!

It would seem axiomatic that stupid people are stupid because they're just too lazy to motivate, educate, or apply themselves. This is not always true; some people put quite a bit of work into it. And the problem is not of the Broderella stripe -- the vituperation and even the sheer ignorance don't matter so much as the utter lack of even basic intellectual honesty.


Intrepid citizen journalist prepares to unearth secrets of Corkonforkgate. Breaking....