PrintMarch 12, 2009
Are you smarter than me?
If you surf the Internet, you've seen the ads for IQ tests which claim: Barack Obama's IQ is (the numbers vary from 135-171); Joe Biden's is 150; Hillary Clinton's is 155 and so on. Naturally, Republicans are rated much lower and a fake article on the presidents' IQ once claimed that George Bush's IQ was the lowest of all. The ad goes on to ask-Are you smarter than...? Well, I am and I can prove it unlike all these so-called claims of how smart our newly elected president is.
There may be substance to these judgments of Barack Obama's intelligence, but read carefully and you'll learn that these assumptions are made on evidence that does not exist. Writers of these fabulous tales will say "estimated" frequently because Obama's educational records have never been released. They assume that he was selected to be the first black president of the Law Review because of his high grades, but it's far more likely that political correctness had something to do with that. I say that because according to an August, 2008 Politico article by Ben Smith and Jeffrey Reissner, Obama left a scant paper trail there and only one paper was actually written by Obama. They noted that:
"The temperate legal language doesn't display the rhetorical heights that run through his memoir, published a few years later, but provides insight into his support for abortion rights and expanded social services."
Ah, that memoir! Many of my alleged intelligent friends told me that it was that memoir, Dreams from My Father that convinced them of how bright Obama is. They dismissed the possibility that Obama did not author that book alone and that so much of the book resembled Bill Ayers' own memoir, "Fugitive Days" published in 2001.
Jack Cashill wrote an intriguing piece or two for American Thinker that presented enough shadows of doubt for legitimate journalists to pursue. Unfortunately, the media elite were too busy feeling tinglings up their legs to break from the Obama spell and investigate and separate fact from wishful thinking.
My best friend is a highly intelligent woman who nonetheless fell for Obama because years ago he had come to her niece's house in Chicago to thank her for her support in a local election. "He seemed very nice," she told me. A good reason to vote for him to be the most powerful man in the world, right?
I have not spoken to her or to any of my other acquaintances who admitted that they had voted for "change" and "hope." They certainly don't want to be reminded that I had asked them in vain for concrete evidence that Barack Obama had ever done anything in his life besides run for president. I have lost patience with people who have lost the ability to think deeply about important issues.
I remember in my freshman Latin class, we asked why we should be studying a dead language. Sister Fredericka answered, "Because it will teach you to think." Americans have forgotten to think and the Hollywood stars of today prove that Truman Capote was absolutely right when he wrote in "Conversations," that "the trouble with most actors (and actresses) is that they are dumb. And in many instances, the dumbest are the most gifted."
That explains why Sean Penn can visit Cuba without noticing that most of the Island is desperately poor; that Vanessa Redgrave can be a Palestinian sympathizer without questioning why Yasser Arafat was a multimillionaire while his people starved in camps. The only bright stars are those who recognize their former ignorance and admit it.
Mensa admits members whose IQ's are in the top two percent of the country. When I joined in 1984, mine was in the top one percent so theoretically I'm smarter than Obama. This does not qualify me to be elected anything but it does mean I can think thoroughly about many issues that interest me. I tend to question statements that are furnished without evidence.
That's why I never understood how people fell for Al Gore's global warming panic. He's not a scientist. He flunked out of Divinity School. Besides how can you conclude that the planet is undergoing rapid climate change when we've only been documenting those records for a few hundred years? The planet was warmer before there were human beings on it. Nevertheless, Al Gore made millions selling the idea of carbon footprints to a dumb nation. Now I cringe whenever I see the word green.
I dream of the day when voters pick their candidate based on substantial evidence rather than oratorical prowess. I love the t-shirt on that East Valley student, Brandon Miller, that read, "Hitler gave good speeches, too."
Americans need to exercise their brain cells by questioning everything spoken by politicians and written in the media. That means wondering if I really belonged to Mensa at all.
Contact Alicia Colon.
Contact Alicia Colon.
