The Stupidest Generation

by Lawrence Eubank (November 2013)

Our country faces problems today more numerous, and greater in magnitude, than we have seen in many a year. And the possibility has to be considered that one major cause of our national difficulties is our sheer stupidity.

I have observed us for a long time, and in my considered judgment, we say stupider things, in stupider English. We watch stupider movies and TV shows, and listen to stupider music. We elect stupider politicians, for stupider reasons, by stupider methods. We wear stupider clothes, fight stupider wars, and idolize stupider heroes. We have stupider laws and far, far stupider bureaucrats. Every day, in every way, we are getting stupider and stupider.

Of course, there has always been a noticeable streak of stupidity in American life. But our stupidity was formerly of more or less a normal type, with a more or less normal distribution of intelligence and stupidity. Now we are stupid in more basic ways, on a more fundamental level, and in disproportionate levels.

Stupider English

A stand-up?

Many English Speakers Cannot Understand Basic Grammar,” Science Daily, July 6, 2010). It’s a study that originated in a British university, but it illustrates how basic a person’s misunderstanding of his native language can be; one of its startling conclusions is that some speakers were not able to understand passive voice:

Research into grammar by academics at Northumbria University suggests that a significant proportion of native English speakers are unable to understand some basic sentences.…

[B]asic elements of core English grammar had not been mastered by some native speakers.

Past-perfect is passé

Another element of English that is apparently too difficult for us today is past-perfect tense. This is not something that should be too hard to grasp, but it is completely disappearing from our spoken English.

In 2007, Hillary Clinton said of her vote on the Iraq War, “If I knew then what I now know, I would not have voted that way.”

Subjunctive Mood is gone

Mass Nouns (things that are measured rather than counted)

The misusage is taking over, as in these cases:

• Here are some other mismanaged mass nouns:

  Written English– The Dreaded Apostrophe.

  Here are some other instances where the dreaded apostrophe gets the better of us:

  • – from Breitbart.com, at http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/24/How-Did-Shotguns-And-Handguns-Become-Assault-Rifles#comments.
  •  – from http://wiki.answers.com/
  • www.foxbusiness.com
  • – from www.newegg.com, a commercial computer-hardware business site

  Mush-Mouthed Pronunciation

  Some other words we seem unable to process:

  • Miscellaneous manglings:
    • www.washingtonpost.com/, November 28, 2010):

      And finally, ironically, in what can only be seen as its ultimate abdication as a trusted authority, Merriam-Webster gives us, aloud, the following pronunciation:

       

      Spelling 

      

      (image from http://worldduh.com/ 

      

      http://joannecasey.blogspot.com/

       

       Donna Brazile      @donnabrazile

      #Obamacare. My provider told me it was because of my age. More to come.

      92 Retweets 27 favorites

      http://politicalmavens.com:

      Numerous studies have shown that millions of Americans cannot read or do basic math well enough to conduct basic transactions of life, according to The Washington Post. . .

      [A] recent study conducted by Vanderbilt University found that 4 out of 10 adults were unable to calculate the amount of carbohydrates in a half a bagel, based on [the carbohydrates in] a whole bagel. Get this: 68 percent of the study participants had at least some college education, yet they could not divide by two!

      [M]y family has attended the same public schools since 1896. Without exception, all six generations of us . . . were given a good, competitive K-12 education.

      Movies Are Stupider

      http://ace.mu.nu/archives/335421.php, Dec. 04, 2012):

      http://pjmedia.com/, September 5, 2012) summed it up this way:

      Avatar was a . . . gorgeous, illogical movie with a trite, recycled plot that could be fully summed up with “Trees good! Natives good! Military bad!”

      http://www.dallasobserver.com/ ) :

      TV is stupider

      http://articles.washingtonpost.com/):

      This year the “reality” show “Jersey Shore,” which for six hideous seasons has been a compelling argument in favor of a major Earth-asteroid collision, finally got canceled, and we dared to wonder if maybe, just maybe, we, as a society, were becoming slightly less stupid.

      But then, WHAP, we were slapped in our national face by the cold hard frozen mackerel of reality in the form of . . . “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” which, in terms of intellectual content, makes “Jersey Shore” look like “Hamlet.”

      Let’s put things into perspective: 2010 was not the worst year ever. . . . For example, toward the end of the Cretaceous Period, the Earth was struck by an asteroid that wiped out 75 percent of all the species on the planet. Can we honestly say that we had a worse year than those species did? Yes we can, because they were not exposed to Jersey Shore.

      Of course, reality TV did not arrive in a vacuum. It came along after Oprah had softened up the intelligence of TV viewers with a relentless barrage of doltishness for 25 years. Regaling her audience with quack therapies, sob-sister exhibitionism, and the chronicles of her vejayjay, she lowered the national I.Q. with every episode of her show. She was a mother lode of mumbo-jumbo like this (as reported by http://jezebel.com/ ):

      Oprah and reality TV may be seen as the Scylla and the Charybdis, the phony uplift and the exhibitionist descent, of American TV.

      Music is stupider

      – stand-up comedian Natasha Leggero

      Music is also regressing. Like our use of English, our music is shrinking beneath us like an ice floe under a polar bear. One genre, rap or hip-hop, has discarded melody (and therefore harmony) altogether, reducing itself to a sort of witless doggerel chanted over a rhythm track. This is the stupidest form of musical performance ever invented.*

      http://entertainmentmagazine.net/, “Interview with Ray Charles and ‘My World'”, 1993):

      http://www.gale.cengage.com/ ):

      Not to pick on her alone, but Lady Gaga is typical of the phenomenon: a more or less bog-standard pop artist, she pulls such stunts as wearing a meat dress or a pistol bra, in an effort to stand out. Thus she is well on her way to becoming the Carmen Miranda of the girly-pop set, known more for her outlandish get-ups and gimmicks than for her musical performances.  

       

       Our Government Is Dumber

      The First Lady is no brain trust either, despite the fact that she once held an important, well-paid, absolutely unnecessary job at the University of Chicago Hospitals. Here she is, answering the question of whether any TV shows are off limits to her daughters:

      Diagram those sentences!

      Le Pétomane was the stage name of the French flatulist (professional farter) and entertainer Joseph Pujol . . . . He was famous for his remarkable control of the abdominal muscles, which enabled him to seemingly fart at will. . . .

      To comment on this article, please click here.

      To help New English Review continue to publish interesting articles such as this, please click here.