by Erik Setser

Created on: May 15, 2009

Seeing as how so few Americans are fairly represented in the public eye, it isn't exactly safe to conclude how foolish we are as a collective whole. The most widely heard among us tend to be the most outspoken. And those so outspoken generally fall into two categories. On the one hand, you have your obnoxious Ashton Kutcher meets Billy Mays types, whose yelling and idiot-grins make anything they say sound like mindless drivel, even if they're quoting Stephen Hawking. On the other, you have the bitter and the angry, Rush Limbaugh meets Bill O'Reilly (pardon the fact that both are Republicans, nothing is meant to be implied by that) types, whose screaming rage often stems from or suggests a lack of understanding.

Still, it seems like this first group is the one that gets the most attention. A Youtube video of a man in a bikini quacking like a duck while he chases the cat around the house is going to get more views than a discussion on quantum physics or even a by-the-numbers analysis of our economy. In fact, it could even end up among the front page news videos on Yahoo, somehow. This seems to have stemmed from our alleged collective love - though I've met very few people who are part of this collective - of reality television.

At some point, producers stopped looking for realistic people and instead sprang for the biggest clown-faced caricatures they could find. Little tip, those sort of characters are funny on the Simpsons because of the scripting and decent voice acting. Rectally-extracted scripts and hack-job newbie actors, if they can be called that, aren't going to produce the same results. Anyway, now we have people going on national television making complete fools of themselves for their fifteen minutes of shame. And somehow, somewhere, millions of Americans are apparently gobbling it up with a spoon.

If this is what the rest of the world sees of us, I can't blame them for thinking we're dumb. Keeping that sort of thing popular only serves to support the Stupid American stigma, just like having a McDonald's every five blocks builds up the Fat American stigma.

Beyond that, we have the ignorance of the state of the union or even our own cities. This generally stems from a lack of reporting, as the headlines are generally overrun with one of two types of articles. On slow news days, we have the special interest banalities. "Man Saves Dog from Truck" is a nice thing to hear, but there are far more important things going on, I'm sure. The rest of the

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