Genius.

We still need the best and brightest, but we need them to have somehow learned humility along the way.

Perhaps we should only take them from Michigan.

Self-awareness is the conservative pundit’s kryptonite.

Holy crap, Reese Witherspoon really is the first image result. That-is-awesome.

Besides the lack of self-awareness in Douthat’s column, there’s also the dishonesty. He goes with a sadly predictable anti-intellectual angle, ignoring obvious motivators such as greed and power. Given that he wants a rich aristocracy and poor, Bible-thumping Catholic peasants, that’s not too surprising.

“The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to appreciate their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to the situation in which less competent people rate their own ability higher than more competent people

The problem is that the nation is infected with Dunning-Kruger Syndrome; which while not terribly deadly rises to such when the former type, like Mr. Donut represents exceed the latter.

All one can do is remember history. When a woman approached Adlai Stevenson with gushing praise about his politics and stated “Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person,” during one of his presidential campaigns he responded…..”That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!”

I thank God every day that I live in a republic and not a democracy, because as George Carlin once pointed out “Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider!”

The Diane-Freddie Kruger Effect is a similar bias under which people imagine that the world sees them as resembling the former when in fact it’s more the latter.

Self-awareness? Hunh?

Douthat really ought to have “I am the embodiment of The Peter Principle” tattooed across his ample forehead.

I just had an imaginary conversation between the 4 Rose pictures above. Rose #4 ax-murdered the other Roses….

So, he’s saying that all our problems were created by janitor’s sons? Or that the wealthy are too stupid to tie their own shoes? Or that the current crop of Republican candidates are complete idiots. While I agree with the last two he does seem to be aiming squarely at his own feet while firing on full auto.

The non-chunky Reese Witherspoon is the #1 image. Coming in at lucky number 13?

Mooselini. Also.

Double your Douthat, double your fun.
Imagine your Witherspoon, dressed as a nun…

Dammit….it HURTS to snort beer through your nose. Although it did inspire me to look in the dictionary and right next to “twit”, there was a picture of Ross Douthat. Imagine that….

His face is boneless. Just sayin’.

Harvard grad lecturing us about the vagaries of American “meritocracy.”

What a douche.

O/T – Tbogg, you will love the uproar regarding that sanctimonious prick of a college coach, Joe Paterno, regarding his culpability in his assistant coach’s sexual deviancy. Even his strongest supporters are turning against him in droves. These people are shocked, SHOCKED, that such a strict, sees world in black-and-white disciplinarian has been involved in a cover-up.

Their first clue should have been that the Republicans always wanted him to run for either Senator or Governor because of his moral rectitude. And we know how that type of Republican has been turning out.

rectitude

What does that word mean in the Republican dictionary?

Thank you all for slogging throu Douchehat’s scribbles. I can’t bear even thinking about it.
The end of a once-proud newspaper. Once upon a time, Russell Baker and Anthony Lewis, even James Reston. Now Douthat and Brooks.

It ain’t just the internet that killed newspapers.

nice

Holy crap, Reese Witherspoon really is the first image result. That-is-awesome.

Thank Brad DeLong for his googlejuice, and for being the first to bring the Chunky Reese story to the attention of the internets, long long ago.