The settings change, the vile stupidity does not.
The smarts and the stupidity don't coexist side by side; they overlap.
What's more, the politics of stupidity didn't just appeal to the poorly informed.
It used to be possible to pretend certain sorts of stupidity did not exist.
If standardized tests are, as Professor Ronell suggests, attempts to define official forms of stupidity, does stupidity disappear if the tests do?
The elderly and the lonely seem to be especially vulnerable to plausible pitches, but a little stupidity doesn't help.
Spitting in a full-frothed outrage over both their audacity and their stupidity doesn't make the problem go away, in the same way that trying to understand it doesn't make you an apologist for Isis.
This meant that stupidity did not just define the dark realm of the irrational; it also became associated with the naïve and innocent -- the holy fool of Dostoyevsky, the schlemiels of folk literature.
Like De Niro, he's covered his pride by saying sorry for the offence caused rather than the remark itself – but you can feel the frustration, the shrug: "So we surrender to stupidity, do we?" Freedom of speech is sacrificed at the altar of manufactured rage.
"Success and stupidity don't mix.
