Red, White, and Drool

Over the weekend, I was sent a link to one of those clips where some interviewer from another country talks to a (hopefully not but highly likely) random sampling of U.S. citizens and asks them a series of idiotically simple questions along the lines of..."Which of these is not a primary color: red, blue, or muffins?"

This interviewer is usually then richly rewarded with such stunning gems as "Wait, what kind of muffins?"

Always depressing, but no more so than if you went to any number of other opulent countries and asked their lowest common denominators the same basic set of questions. Unfortunately we happen to have a disturbingly higher number of lowest common denominators. If you weren't aware, and you probably aren't if you're living in America right now, this nations's denominators are hovering between the "very low" to "Mariana's Trench" levels.

It's a serious problem, one which, if our politicians as well as our numerators don't get on top of by giving our educational system a boost, might eventually be our ultimate downfall as a superpower. Case in point, if asked to name other superpowers, I wouldn't be shocked to hear responses from my fellow Americans such as "laser eyes" or "super stretchiness."

Yes Yakov, what a country.

Perhaps I'm a little spoiled by the company with whom I grew up. My family's intelligence--barring the crazy Jesusy portion of them--tends to reside in, if not the highest eeyrie of brainpower, at least at upon a very healthy upper-mountain jutty of rapid-fire neurons. My older cousin Josh Frost, who is more of a half-brother really since his mother and mine are twins, is a good example. I probably spent every day of every summer up and through our mid teens at our grandmother's pool with him and my other cousin Bobby.

So I know the guy pretty well.

Since he was a little boy, all he wanted to do was to become a math teacher. Well, that worked out for him because, guess what he teaches? That's right. He teaches French Woodshop. (I set my sights a little higher however. Sadly, my goal of becoming Spiderman has yet to manifest itself. YET!)

But he's not just any math teacher. He's the kind of math teacher you wish you'd had. Teachers like Josh are the only reason every child isn't getting 'left behind' these days. If a kid's stuck on a problem, he stops and walks him through it. Alternately, if that kid's a math whiz with no time for the basics, well, he'll take the time to challenge his gifts. The guy's good at what he does and it shows. He won a presidential award for teaching in 2005. His N.H. math team mopped the Granite State's floor (ironically it's marble) with the competetition for almost 10 years, and even after moving back to the much more densley populated Massachussetts a few months ago, his new team still came in second last week, with a chance to take the state championship later this year. By the way, I'm pretty sure one of the kids on his team is a robot and just pretending to lose once in a while. Josh took umbrage with me however when I tried to test this theory by throwing magnets at the kid and asking him unsolvable riddles and waiting for his head to explode. (it didn't)

And oh yes, Josh also scored an 800 on his math SATs.

(I'm sure he did fine in English too. Thank you very much.)

Anyway, that's Josh.

So after weeping into my hands for a full minute or two, I forwarded the link to this video to him, an unspoken offer to partake in some company for that particular piece of misery. "Who better?" I thought.

After we both agreed that a good place to start would be by creating a list of Americans to sterylize, basically anyone who can't score above 115 on an IQ test--I further contended that fans of ACCORDING TO JIM be placed on this list automatically, regardless of test results--Josh suggested that perhaps a country with such an aloof interest in the education of its own citizens may no longer be up to the task of voting in capable, worthy politicians.

I happen to agree, and two terms of the worst president in history makes this tragic case for us. Don't panic though. We have an answer to this problem.

Well, Josh does. It is simple, fair, and effective, and I urge the thousands upon thousands of politicians who read my blog daily to act upon this idea. The Frost-Crespo Voting Act of 2007 could turn this big lug of a country around. And it would pretty much cripple the Republican Party until it got its head out of its own ultra-conservative-pandering ass, which would probably be never. So either way, America wins. And while Josh is himself not a comedian, his response to this video was filled with enough malaise, I felt it warranted posting.

And thus...

FROM JOSH:I agree that all presidential ballots should be computerized but not facilitated by 3rd party companiues with a vested interest in particular candidates. There should also be a paper trail, but most importantly, before voting I think citizens should have to answer 10 randomly generated questions (logic, geography, current events) to at least 70% accuracy or their vote doesn't count.

Sample pre-vote test:
1) Who is the current VP?
a) George W Bush
b) Condeleeza Rice
c) Dick Cheney
d) your mother

2) Which of these countries is closest to us geopraphically?
a) United Kingdom
b) Califoria
c) your mother
d) Canada

3) If seven chickens weigh 56 pounds, how much does each one weigh?
a) 8 lbs
b) 5.6 lbs
c) 10 lbs
d) your mother

4) Whose face is on the quarter?
a) Ben Franklin
b) Bill Clinton
c) George Washington
d) your mother

5) Which country is York in?
a) New York
b) your mother's country
c) England
d) Pennsylvania

6) What is the other baseball team in New York City called which is not the Mets?
a) Dodgers
b) Red Sox
c) Yankees
f) your mother the car

7) Which of these weigh the closest to the same as a pound of steel?
a) 5 lbs of wood
b) 2 lbs of dirt
c) 1 lb of feathers
d) 7 kg of grass
e) Yo-Yo Ma

8) Out of these, who was the worst president of the U.S.?
a) Osama Bin Laden
b) Adolf Hitler
c) George W Bush
d) Geena Davis
e) George W Bush
f) George W Bush
g) George W Bush's mom

9) Fifteen minutes is what fraction of an hour?
a) one half
b) one third
c) one quarter
d) muffins

10) Given a choice, whose side would you have fought on in the United States Civil War?
a) North
b) South
c) East
d) West

NOTE: If they answer b for number 10 the floor below them should then open up and drop them into a pit full of pissed off alligators and ACCORDING TO JIM blooper reels.


We are a family of many opinions. Fortunately for you, all of them are correct.