Saturday, April 17, 2010

What madness be this?

In the last couple of years, I have been quite appalled with this heavy ego in certain graduate students that I know of. Apparently it has something to do with the fact that they may possibly lay claim to a doctoral degree within the decade and therefore they claim to be more brainy that the no-you-can't-be-called-doctor world. However, despite my revulsion in the matter, this unavoidably makes me think of my own relative position in this spurious scale of smartness. Degrees alone do not satisfy me and therefore I have searched many months for a good defining test that would qualify me as a have-not or otherwise. Finally, today I have found an unexpected qualifying test.


When I first moved to Gainesville, I purchased a CRT television from a friend for a bargain. When football season ended and I got tired of the food network, I started watching Fox News. It was not so much for the tidings as it was for my curiosity to find out for myself, are these newscasters really as mental as the world claims them to be? However, in a very short while, other things came up - work got more interesting, the weather got better outside, my girlfriend moved closer and football season started again - and so I had to move Fox News out of my limited daily agenda. I had not covered enough ground with the channel to establish perfectly, the state of their madness but I knew all the same that it existed, like it exists in all forms of biased, mouthpiece news media.

Today after nearly a year and a half, I saw this interesting video posted on my facebook feed with two of my favorite keywords - secularism and economy (ok, they are not my favorite keywords but 'loldogs' and 'cheezburger' do not exactly help my social perception).




I saw this video with narrow eyebrows that arched mildly after it. I realized how my viewership (rather the lack of it) had adversely affected the already challenged intellectual quality of Fox News. This therefore, stands as solid proof that I also can claim my proud place among the ranks of more self-claimed brittle intellectuals.

Thank you Fox News. You have made me a bit smarter today.

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