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Do you ever watch Jay Leno when he asks people on the street questions about history and they answer with responses like "the first person landed on the moon in 1860." At first, you think these are scripted moments.

They aren't.

Call it elitist, but "Just How Stupid are We?" proves the point.

First of all, watch a video about the book here.

Shenkman provides a great service in how a nation that is misinformed and accepts the misinformation as fact (in large part due to corporate television) ends up pursuing failed policies. Also, we have become a nation whose main economic product is entertainment. In such a culture, the division between drama and truth is often very wide.

One of the great aspects of Shenkman's book is his humor. He would require Americans to become better informed about current events and public policy. The enabling legislation, he suggests, would be called, the "Too Many Stupid Voters Act."

All in all, this book goes a long way toward explaining something profoundly short-term, not likely to happen, and counter-productive measures -- such as the so-called "summer gas tax vacation" -- could become a major campaign issue.

From howstupidblog.com:

The Argument

Politicians continuously tell us how smart the American people are. How then do we square that with all the evidence that suggests our politics are shallow and dumb? We cannot. Our politics are often dumb because many Americans are not smart about politics. According to Rick Shenkman, author of the new book JUST HOW STUPID ARE WE? Facing the Truth About the American Voter (June 9, 2008; Basic Books; $25), they don't care about the subject and they don't know much about it.

Only 2 out of 5 voters can name the three branches of the federal government.
Only 1 in 7 can find Iraq on a map.
Only 1 in 5 know that we have 100 US senators.
It would be stupid to say that the American people are stupid�as stupid as saying the American people are smart. It is impossible to generalize�and silly. But our politics are often stupid. And there are times when no other word, harsh as it is, seems to capture the essence of the turn politics has taken in recent decades.

We have all heard the most common explanations for our broken political system � media manipulation, disingenuous politicians, ambitious CEOs. But in JUST HOW STUPID ARE WE? Shenkman cuts through the Gordian knot of contemporary politics with a shatteringly simple claim: the problem lies not in the machinations of elite business leaders and policy-makers, but in the gross ignorance and irrationality of millions of ordinary voters.

An Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter, bestselling author, and historian who founded the History News Network, Shenkman argues that politicians count on us being dumb. They spend millions on dumb TV advertisements because they have figured out that most Americans learn what little they know about the candidates from those ads. They play Americans like a fiddle, exploiting voters� hopes and fears, because they know that they can get away with it.

Although more than 50% of Americans can identify at least two members of the Simpsons Family, only 25% can name more than one right guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Only 20% of young Americans between the ages 18-34 read a newspaper daily. An astonishingly low 11% report surfing Internet news sites.
A Washington Post poll in September 2003 found that 70% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. A majority continued to believe this even after the 9/11 Commission reported that the claim was groundless.
If facts don't drive our politics, what does? Shenkman says it's myths. Politicians tell people what they want to hear. They tell us we're smart, better than others, and God's favorites. To win us over they pretend to be just like us, belting back shots of whiskey and playing pool, in a crude exploitation of the myth of the common man.

Decade after decade Americans have been getting more and more schooling while our politics have been getting dumber and dumber. In 1940 6 in 10 Americans didn't get past the eighth grade. Today most have some college experience. So what happened? Increasingly voters have been left on their own, cut off from those hated party bosses and labor bosses of old, who in the past offered political guidance. Cut off, voters turned to television for political information, setting us up for the shallow politics we currently endure.

Although Shenkman�s jeremiad leaves almost no figure un-skewered, his argument is deeply rooted in an old-fashioned political idealism � the belief that we can and should live in a country with smart voters, and that overthrowing the myths that have dominated our discussions will open the door to an honest and clear-eyed analysis of our political state.

Bio

Emmy award-winning investigative reporter and New York Times bestselling author Rick Shenkman is the editor and founder of George Mason University's History News Network, a website that features articles by historians on current events. An associate professor of history at George Mason University, he appears regularly as a commentator on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. His books include Legends, Lies & Cherished Myths of American History and Presidential Ambition: How the Presidents Gained Power, Kept Power and Got Things Done. His observations about the 2008 election can be followed on his blog, �How Stupid?� He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Comments About the Book

"A smart, stylish, and witty wrestling match with the most difficult problem a democracy can face."--Rick Perlstein



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