Don't Know Nuthin

I caught Jon Stewart interviewing Lee Siegel tonight (a repeat of yesterdays show). Siegel has written a book called: Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. Jon roughed him up a bit, but not, apparently, enough.

It seems that Mr. Siegel, who inveighs against the hazards of internet anonymity, has some personal experience. He is, in fact, the guy who put the "sock" in sock puppet.

Patricia Cohen, in an article that is mainly about another book, manages to slip in the following well chosen demolition:

Mr. Siegel, one might remember, was suspended by The New Republic for using a fake online persona in order to trash critics of his blog (“you couldn’t tie Siegel’s shoelaces”) and to praise himself (“brave, brilliant”).

Another book is Cohen's main interest: The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby. Jacoby is disturbed that Americans are so damn dumb, and don't seem to care. She got the idea for her book on 9/11:

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.

The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”

“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.

Writing a book about ignorance is a safe strategy, since the dummies won't read it. Whether "starting a national conversation" on the subject is likely to be fruitful, I couldn't say. My personal recipe for decreasing American stupidity would start with shipping Rupert Murdoch back to Australia together with all his minions, newspapers and their associated slime trails, perhaps in a barrel of vinegar. I have quite a long list of people he should take with him.