USA: RANT, Are We Becoming A Nation Of Idiots??

Check this item Current events dwarfed by pop culture... from Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Three quarters of Americans can correctly identify two of Snow White's seven dwarfs while only a quarter can name two Supreme Court Justices, according to a poll on pop culture released on Monday.

According to the poll by Zogby International, commissioned by the makers of a new online game on pop culture called "Gold Rush," 57 percent of Americans could identify J.K. Rowling's fictional boy wizard as Harry Potter while only 50 percent could name the British prime minister,Tony Blair

The pollsters spoke to 1,213 people across the United States. The results had a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.

Just over 60 percent of respondents were able to name Bart as Homer's son on the television show "The Simpsons," while only 20.5 percent were able to name one of the ancient Greek poet Homer's epic poems, "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey."

Asked what planet Superman was from, 60 percent named the fictional planet Krypton, while only 37 percent knew that Mercury is the planet closest to the sun.

Respondents were far more familiar with the Three Stooges -- Larry, Curly and Moe -- than the three branches of the U.S. government -- judicial, executive and legislative. Seventy-four percent identified the former, 42 percent the latter.
Twice as many people (23 percent) were able to identify the most recent winner of the television talent show "American Idol," Taylor Hicks, as were able to name the Supreme Court Justice confirmed in January 2006, Samuel Alito

MY TAKE:

I saw the scariest thing on CNN the other day, a biographer of Bin Laden talked about the terror leaders 1998 fatwa (a pronouncement) declaring it a duty of his followers to kill any American, - including civilians. In his evil mind since we freely elect our leaders, we the people of the United States are responsible for anything our government does abroad.

It doesn't matter what your politics are, most of us can agree that who we vote for can be a life and death issue. So then how the hell can we elect decent leaders if most of us don't even have a damn clue? Besides not knowing about what goes on in the world, we don't know how our government is run, who runs it, and our own countries history.

There is absolutely no excuse for this kind of stupidity. I have lived in country's where people are ignorant because they don't have enough to eat, and kids are forced to go to work instead of going to school. Here in the US of A we are so rich our poor people are overweight, and everyone finishes high school.

Americans get awfully political, and pretty informed as soon as there is a crisis, a national disaster, or something hits close to home. Then its time to get elected representatives to act quickly, while we moan and whine about how horrible and crooked politicians are. In the end its the people to blame are the voters and not the politicians. Basically we get what we deserve for being uninformed.

We need to learn this stuff people! The basics have to be taught in school. And even us adults can benefit from leafing through a high school civics or history textbook. To keep up with current events, all you need is to pick up a damn newspaper and spend five to ten minutes leafing through the news section, or at least watch real news like the BBC. And parents should make sure their kids read the papers and follow the news here. To paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes, several generations of imbeciles are enough; no more Dopey's here.