Say It Ain't So Already

Republicans: Celebrating Ignorance

September 15, 2011 at 1:56 PM Leave a comment

Here’s a great article about Republicans think it’s cool to be stupid.  An excerpt:

For eight years, just about every time George W. Bush was in the same room as someone with a post-graduate degree, the failed former president would tell the same joke: “I remind people that, like when I’m with Condi I say, she’s the Ph.D. and I’m the C-student, and just look at who’s the president and who’s the advisor.”

Republican crowds always cheered the line, reinforcing the anti-intellectual attitudes that too often dominate conservative thought. The man who succeeded Bush in Austin, and hopes to succeed Bush as the next Republican president, is cut from the same cloth.

As a child, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas was dead set on being a veterinarian. “That was my heart’s content. It’s what I always wanted to do,” he said.

Then came a day of reckoning, during the second semester of his sophomore year at Texas A&M University, when he went to see the dean of the veterinary school. His advice: switch to an easier major.

“He said, `Son, I’m looking at your transcript,’” Mr. Perry said. “‘You want to be an animal science major.’”

Perry made the joke during a speech yesterday at Liberty University, a school founded by crazed televangelist Jerry Falwell. The Texas governor didn’t say much about politics, but he spent a fair amount of time talking about what a lousy student he was.

Perry noted, for example, that at his small high school, “I graduated in the top 10 of my graduating class — of 13.” The crowd laughed and applauded.

ennifer Rubin, a conservative writer at the Washington Post, said Perry’s speech “was, at least in part, a celebration of ignorance.” She added, “Yes, he was trying to be self-deprecating, but it’s disturbing to see that he thinks being a rotten student and a know-nothing gives one street cred in the GOP.”

Disturbing to say the least.  Hey, let’s encourage our kids to be as crappy a student; as ignorant as they can be!  Go Amerrrrca!

Entry filed under: 2012 Election, Dumbed Down, Education, George W. Bush and Co., Republicans, Including Wingers & "Moderates". Tags: .