Tar and Feathers

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer

What Will Cure Idiocraphobia?

I have never been a big sci-fi movie fan so I have not seen a 2006 comedy called “Idiocracy” set 500 years in the future, but because of the many references to it in Twitter, Facebook, and the printed word it is making a comeback. Los Angeles Times Columnist Meghan Daum recently devoted part of a column to it, claiming that the projection of 500 years was way too much, and that we had already reached that cultural level.

The main character in the movie is Joe who wakes up–with a prostitute–after an induced 500-year hibernation. In 2505 anyone with intelligence is considered to be an endangered species.  Joe, fortunately, has a below average IQ so he is considered a genius. The people have significant names like Frito and Mountain Dew, Costco sells university educations and toilet paper, and the most watched reality show is “Ow, My Balls!”  It’s a half-hour of watching a man getting whacked in the genitals with a stick. Daum has a real zinger with the line that “Jersey Shore” in 2505 would look like today’s Masterpiece Theater. She lists a few things that might indicate that 2505 scenes in “Idiocracy” are actually happening in 2011.

She cites the congressman who sends pictures of his underwear-clad genitals around the Internet and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzeneggergroper who fathers children with his maid and wife during the same period. Arnold would fit nicely into 2505 society. And then we suddenly have Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann who could easily fit into the characters of Frito and Mountain Dew.

Idiocraphobia: The Emerging Mass Stupidity

I would like to add many items to Daum’s list which makes her believe she is already living in 2505. She has coined the world “idiocraphobia” to fit this weirdness. It’s perfect.

(1) I think the best indicator of how we are possessed by idiocraphobia is how the national media has determined that Michele Bachmann is in the top three of Republican possibilities for the 2012 presidential nomination. The total voters in the Iowa Straw Poll could sit comfortably in the FargoDome with thousands of seats left over. All of Bachmann’s supporters could just about occupy one end zone’s seats. Bachmann received 4,823 votes or 0.0000223 percent of the eligible voters in the U.S.

(2) Amateur and professional sports seem to be getting out of hand. Professional sports are dominated by billionaire owners and millionaire players while “amateur” athletes at Football University and Basketball University get a chance to sample the good life as demonstrated by Miami and Ohio State. I see an Argentinian seven-year-old soccer player has signed a professional contract to play with the Real Madrid professional soccer team. Isn’t that a bit young? Perhaps we should up that endangered species date of 2505 for intelligent people to 2011.

(3) A recent DNA report indicated that Neanderthals and humans had sex somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000 years ago. I would think that more research would reveal that many of the Neanderthals were so dominant in their relationships that their offspring are now outnumbering humans at Major League Baseball and National Football League stadiums.

Neanderthals are partial to beer, something they developed long ago in the caves and forests of almost all continents except Africa.  According to stadium security forces, alcohol has become a major problem at practically every stadium in the U.S. Nine percent of the humans across the world from Asia to America have Neanderthal DNA, one can only conclude they are causing most of the problems at games in this country. The director of the Center of Alcohol Studies at Rutgers University said recently: “What’s alarming is the increased risk, because you have so many people in the stadium who are becoming intoxicated. A lot of them are young men. It becomes a kind of a tinderbox for aggression.” Neanderthals can be determined by the number of times they buy beer at concessions and the number of times they go to the restroom in the fourth quarter.

(4) I see we are having all kinds of problems with keeping our new F-22 fighter in the air. Although we have 158 of them, none of them have flown a minute of combat in any of the wars we are presently engaged in. This may be the biggest piece of idiocrap the Pentagon has, but it might take years to determine if it is better than all the other crap they are working on. Hasn’t any member of Congress or the Defense Department heard of warranties? Fargo just built a new high school for $40 million. Is there an Air Force general around who understands that an F-22 sitting in the repair shop represents ten high schools that would educate about 15,000 students who would produce marvelous innovations and policies for use by our society? When will we end this idiocracy?

(5) What about a story of unintended consequences? The National Chamber of Commerce spent $34 million supporting Republican candidates in the 2010 election. A lot of Tea Partiers they supported won. But many pro-Tea Partiers in the Congress in 2008 voted against the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) which ended up causing a $1 trillion loss in stock value to many Chamber members in a single day. Is that smart?  Wall Street is now the big casino in the country, but at least in Las Vegas you know you are going to have fun losing.

(6) The battle for political supremacy in the 2505 Idiocracy may be between Neanderthals and chimps. After all, the three of us share about 99.9 percent of the genome. If low-IQ Joe is a genius, then chimps may actually win Iowa straw votes and elections in 2505. The actor Dick Van Dyke loves to tell the story of when he was playing a fighter pilot named Lt. Robin Crusoe in a “B” movie and he had a chimp as his man Friday.

The first morning on the set, Van Dyke, drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette, saw his “man” Friday relaxing in one of those Hollywood chairs. The chimp crooked his finger and invited Dick over to his chair. The chimp immediately took the cup of coffee and drank it – and took the cigarette and smoked it. From that time on Dick brought Dinky his coffee and a cigarette each morning and then they would go through each other’s hair looking for lice. The chimp was quite intelligent and hardly ever blew a trick. If he did make a mistake, he would stomp a foot, howl, and then pee in his pants. Sounds just like a political candidate to me.

(7) Former Minnesota Governor Tim “Toolittle” Pawlenty tried to morph himself into a composite of John Wayne, Paul Revere, Michele Bachmann, and Captain America during his abortive campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Instead he turned himself into a Dorian Gray, rotting rapidly away in a tiny Tea Party closet. At one time this handsome product of a Democratic South Saint Paul was a moderate in state politics, supporting gays and lesbians when they faced discrimination in the marketplace, pledging to make the University of Minnesota into a national leader, expressing support for raising taxes to increase health care for the poor through Minnesota Care, and, early in his career, vowing never to sign “No New Taxes” pledges. He had enough science in him to declare that climate change was actually happening because of seven billion people. Remember when he championed buying prescription drugs in Canada for old folks because Canadians had the sense to regulate prices?

But then he swallowed the seeds of ambition and tried to turn himself into something he wasn’t. The painting in the closet will likely morph to a musty “Toolate.” He tried to “gain the whole world but lost his soul” in the process. Like Macbeth, he is now “a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.”  His campaign was essentially “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”  And would fit very well in 2505.

(8) Evidently Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton has become an early victim of idiocraphobia because he keeps pushing for a new stadium for the Vikings somewhere in the $1.2 billion range. He thinks it’s a job creator. So is building roads, bridges, parks, and other infrastructure that commoners would use. Who needs a 50,000 seat bar and grill used only on Sundays? If the rich and the super-rich want a playground with huge skyboxes hanging above the drunken pissants in the crowd below, let them buy shares in the team and the stadium as an investment.

Urban planners and sports economists have been saying for decades that public money should not be wasted so billionaires can watch millionaires inflict and suffer concussions. University of Chicago Economics Professor Allen Sanderson put it bluntly: “If you want to inject money into the local economy, it would be better to drop it from a helicopter than invest it in a new ballpark.”  In his article “Why Do Mayors Love Sports Stadiums?” Neil DeMause outlines 30 studies going back to 1984 about the economic impact of new pro sports stadiums. The studies indicate that 27 of the new facilities had no economic impact whatsoever––and that three of them actually decreased economic activity. Let’s hope Dayton recovers from his idiocracy syndrome.

(9) In case you think World War III between the rich and the poor has not started yet, we have additional evidence from Berlin where unemployment among 18-29-year-olds is reaching 25-30 percent. Over 500 rather expensive Mercedes autos owned by wealthy Germans have been burned in the streets of the German capital recently. Each morning reveals new auto carcasses from skirmishes the night before.

(10) It is popular among robotic Republicans to shout this gross fantasy: “The United States has the best health care in the world!”  This bombastic idiocy only adds to our level of idiocraphobia. Our life span averages about three years less than European countries that have universal health care. Now the Center for Disease Control tells us that our maternal death rate is 13.3 deaths per 100,000, up 100 percent from just two decades ago. Our black women die at the rate of 32.7 per 100,000. We now rank 41st among industrialized nations. Great Britain with that horrible National Health Service the Republicans scream about averages only four deaths per 100,000.

Our doctors, hospitals, and health insurance companies are already living Idiocracy in 2505. Perhaps the three entities could explain these charges in recent cases. A father takes his child to a clinic for her broken pinky. The doctor checked x-rays and the patient for about five minutes. He referred the case to a hand specialist. The father received a bill for $600 for five minutes work. Reasonable? A patient with Crohn’s disease uses drugs once a month that cost the hospital $6,300. The patient is billed $38,000 for them. Reasonable? A blood pressure drug that cost hospitals $25 a dose in 2010 has suddenly jumped to $1,200 a dose in 2011. Reasonable?  What is a heart surgeon worth per year? $300,000? $800,000? $4 million? Or is the surgeon “priceless?” I see smokers worried about lung cancer are getting hot deals on MRIs for $99. Why is the regular MRI rate over $1,000? Investment bankers and hedge fund managers have only one private goal in mind – money. I thought doctors, teachers, firefighters, and nurses had higher goals—public service. Medicine has become like that old Jack Benny joke. Jack is told by a holdup man: “Your money or your life!”  There is a long pause. The guy with the gun finally asks: “Well?”  Jack says: “I’m thinking. I’m thinking.”

Questions and comments: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)