Twitter reflects our dreadful collective geopolitical IQ
“I hope not, but I wouldn’t put it past this stupid country.”
That’s what liberal commentator & comedian Bill Maher recently said in response to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer when asked if he thought Sarah Palin had a chance of being elected President of the United States. This caused a negative response from viewers. Maher’s rebuttal to his hate mail is quite amusing in itself and in my opinion worth a read. He cites a few statistics to support his position:
- Almost half of Americans don’t know each state has two senators
- The average voter thinks foreign aid constitutes nearly a quarter of the federal budget (it’s less than 1%)
- Most Americans cannot name any of the branches of the federal government
- 24% could not name the country we fought for independence from in the Revolutionary War
- Two-thirds don’t know what Roe vs. Wade established
Maybe he was just exaggerating? I doubt it. Here are a few more alarming figures that he didn’t mention:
- Over 40% of Americans think Earth is less than 10,000 years old
- 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun
- 75% of 18-24 year-olds are unable to locate Israel on a map of the Middle East
I don’t know if, collectively, the United States is a “stupid country.” But I wouldn’t be shocked if the number of Americans that could name the last three American Idol winners outnumbered those that could name one justice on the Supreme Court by 5 to 1. We know lots of things, we just don’t necessarily know things that matter.
Twitter as a window to our civic literacy
Could we find any anecdotal evidence of Bill Maher’s findings in our day to day culture? If we use Twitter as an imperfect gauge of the nature of public discourse, then I’ll answer this question with a question: What do the Prime Minister of Isreal, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Prime Minister of Canada, the US Senate Majority Leader, the United Nations Secretary General and the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq have in common? They have less Twitter followers, combined, than Haylie Duff. No, not Hilary Duff. We’re talking about her less successful older sister here.
Here’s the follow count breakdown (as of today) of those I mentioned above — people that have a direct hand in shaping the world we live in:
PM of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu): 2,026 *
Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, highest ranking officer in the US Military (@thejointstaff): 5,363
Steven Harper, PM of Canada (@pmharper): 17,189
Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader (@SenatorReid): 1,591
Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations (@secgen): 4,131
Barham Sali, Deputy PM of Iraq (@BarhamSalih): 2,498
* Netanyahu seems to be on a hiatus from tweeting
I admit this is a small unscientific sample to illustrate a point. NPR Politics is now over 1 million and Barack Obama will eclipse 2 million followers soon (but he’s still tied at the moment with the likes of Ryan Seacrest). How influential is Ashton Kutcher on Twitter? He has more followers than the entire US Congress combined.
As for Bill Maher (@billmaher), he weighs in at nearly 28,000 followers. Not bad for sending only seven total tweets over the last three months.
One thing: Maher isn’t a liberal commentator. He’s libertarian, if anything, which makes him very un-liberal on a variety of random things.
Only a liberal would say Maher isn’t liberal. He is as important to the liberal cause as Rush Limbaugh is to the conservative cause. He makes liberal seem mainstream.
As far as America being a “stupid country”, the statement says a lot about the average persons complaints about liberals in general. Their snooty intellectual views of themselves is extremely off putting. What makes Maher so smart other than his high opinion of himself? It’s easy to mock the large amount of American Idol type sheep in this country, but to state the whole country is “stupid” is ridiculous. I don’t remember him or any other liberal saying Americans were stupid for voting for Obama. You can’t have it both ways. Maybe.. JUST MAYBE… (wait for it…) liberals are actually wrong about some things once in awhile rather then it always being some conspiracy with voting machines, or people being stupid, or some right wing conspiracy?
What is the deal with Twitter? It’s as if we just discovered broadcast texting? I just don’t get it. Aaron didn’t say he was liberal in this post, but reading his blog tends to make me think he’s at least a moderate liberal. If he is then I have to confess that my assessment is that liberals have better looking blogs than conservatives. Sigh. We will have to work on that. Anyway, your blog looks great! Also, loved your post on fancy check boxes with jquery. I don’t have any application for it right now, but I thought it was neat. Thanks for sharing it.
Speaking of IQ, where on the world map can I find the mystical country of Isreal?