Question for Arianna: Does graduate school make you dumb?

Longtime old-media fixture Howard Fineman's recent move from a moribund Newsweek — that never really "got" this new-fangled internet thing — to the beating heart of new-media leftspeak, The Huffington Post, presents a sad coda to a distinguished career. The old boy didn't know what hit him. Maybe Arianna saw him as a useful idiot to lend gravitas, albeit faded, to her masthead. See below for more. Above, video still from Taiwanese NMATV's cutting-edge masterpiece of the animator's art, "Jon Stewart rallies the troops in Washington."

Does graduate school make you dumb? Consider this, just in:

Graduate students and former graduate students now form the last redoubt of approval for President Barack Obama, according to [a new] Gallup poll.

Now consider the astonishing lack of factual content and critical analysis in freshly minted Huffington Post Senior Political Editor Howard Fineman's latest column, "A New Appreciation for the 'Rally to Restore Sanity.'" With two graduate degrees and a lifetime of journalism honors to his credit, the former Newsweek Chief Political Correspondent conflates two newsbites from the latest news cycle to explain a come-to-Jesus moment regarding Jon Stewart's forthcoming Oprah- and Arianna-funded, "non partisan," Beck-baiting "Rally to Restore Sanity":

Even though [Arianna's] backing Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity," and even though I now work for her, I had dismissed the event this Saturday on the Mall as self-indulgent, time-wasting comedy.

Until now.

The reason is that I watched two videos: one, of a thug named Tim Profitt pressing his shoe onto Lauren Valle's skull; the other, of Joy Behar calling Sharron Angle a bitch who's going to hell.

That was enough. I now think the rally is a fateful moment in this political campaign, an indispensable plea for a smidgeon of decency in a season of crazy, vicious assaults from both sides of the aisle.

Not unlike Arianna herself — See our post "A momentary flash of insight into that great abyss, the 'progressive' mind" — and Geoffrey Baym, the starry-eyed "media studies" professor we quoted yesterday in our post "Jon Stewart: The clueless leading the clueless," Fineman appears to have swallowed whole the Byzantine spinnings of the soundbite manufacturers, breathlessly unaware of the febrile disintermediations on both sides of the aisle attempting to shape the "narrative." After a brief engagement with the newsman's instinctual skepticism, Fineman settles comfortably into acceptance of his employer's tale of a grassroots longing for peace and love that will inexorably draw the nation's best and brightest to the Mall for a day of holding hands and singing Kumbaya. Meanwhile under their radar the Taiwanese NMATV animators dance on Fineman's journalistic grave, their grasp of the breakneck speed and google-facilitated knowledge base of contemporary politics and commentary leaving him in the dust.

Charles Murray asserts we've got a just-plain-smarter crop if Ivy Leaguers who've married Ivy leaguers of the opposite sex for the last couple of generations to produce a "New Elite," a Master Race for our day, but we think old Charles is missing something that Darwin may have predicted. The newcomers from outside the tribe — Our Cuban-American twittermate Cubachi's first among equals of Tea Party favorites, Florida Senatorial candidate Marco Rubio, son of Cuban exiles, comes to mind — who are reinvigorating the blue bloodline both genetically and philosophically, reminding the fat and happy among us that freedom isn't free. Could anything be more Shining City than that?

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Comments

[Gayle Miller]

I beg to differ. I have a graduate degree and I'm not stupid. It only makes those with the dumb gene dumb! For example, Joy Behar has a masters degree in education! Like how I've made my point?

[goomp]

Let us face it. those with graduate degrees have relatively high IQs. However, it is what you are able to understand and accomplish that counts. Having little experience in the real world of producing something of material value and little or no understanding of those who produce our affluent society, they are supremely unqualified to tell us how to operate our society.

[Gayle Miller]

I am a member of Mensa and at Mensa meetings you will meet more clueless idiots than anywhere else in this country! They are so brilliant in their fields that they think they are capable of handling everything - not! Most of them cannot even balance a checkbook. They figure if there are blank checks in the checkbook, they still have money.

[Graduate Dissertation]

Thank you for sharing this information. The information was very helpful and saved a lot of my time.

[Sven]

I don't know if graduate school makes you dumb, but it might be dumb to go to graduate school.

If the "100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School" blog doesn't convince you, check out the essays by Thomas H. Benton in the Chronicle of Higher Education.