Columnist P.J. O’Rourke classifies Obama’s policies in one word: “Stupid”.
As a satirist, however, O’Rourke holds up a mirror to those who are the front lines of either criticizing or not criticizing the President: political pundits. He calls out the hypocrisy of others who used that same label just a few years back:
Maybe we pundits don’t tell President Obama, “You’re stupid,” because we are proudly showing off our sensitivity to the negative stereotypes that hurtful language engenders in a way that we didn’t feel was necessary when we were telling Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush, “You’re stupid,” even though actors, WASPs, and Texans are burdened with their fair share of negative lamebrain stereotypes.
Remember, these were the same people who called President Bush “stupid” and every synonym for it, despite the fact that both he and Obama had a near-identical private school and Ivy League education. Dislike of Bush’s policies led pundits to call him “stupid”. General agreement with and endorsement of Obama’s policies have led them to virulently avoid that word.
But O’Rourke explains that it’s an aspect of the punditry themselves:
More likely it’s because we pundits prize signs of intelligence. We take every opportunity to display our own signs, and President Obama exhibits the same wordy, wonky, academic intelligence indicators that we do, so we don’t call him stupid.
Take the words of both Bush and Obama and let them be read by a third party with a different voice, and then see the reaction. Obviously people are going to react differently than they do to Bush’s Texas drawl or Obama’s metered timbre.
Words are words, and unfortunately, the messengers matter more than the content. It’s easy to call someone stupid, but it’s more difficult to call their policies stupid, because that requires critical thought. And when the group of people in our society who are tasked with judging policy abdicate that responsibility, then they lose the trust we hold in them to provide worthwhile opinions.
