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To: GraceZ who wrote (13304)	8/27/2003 1:35:33 PM
From: fatty	Respond to of 306849

Complaining about the younger generation's competence in a given discipline is a good indication that there is no market for that discipline. Mind you, most people don't get a college degree to be a better debater. They do so to be financially better off. Given the choice of a better technical skill and a better language skill, most employers will choose the former one. Therefore it is only natural that students opt for a better technical training instead of better language training. If you want to assign blame, blame it on your generation. Your generation controls the economy. Your generation made the decision to favor technical training over language training.

To: GraceZ who wrote (13304)	8/27/2003 3:16:24 PM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Respond to of 306849

Actually I'm relying on the opinion of my next door neighbor who is a filmmaker and has been documenting the Bush family ...If I fault Bush at all, it is that by speaking the way he does it simply feeds into the strong anti-intellectual sentiment in this country. there could be something to your argument--obviously Bush Sr is as blueblood as they come in America. i remember reading about how he would pepper his speech with bluebloodisms not used by ordinary Americans (saying "Just a splash" when asked by the waiter for a refill). this was compounded by his obvious cluelessness regarding the daily lives of average Americans when he expressed wonder at a bar code scanner he saw in a museum or some place (he clearly didn't know that millions had already been deployed in retail outlets for more than a decade). in order to make up for such gaffes, Bush Sr eventually stooped so low as to chew a few pork rinds in front of reporters in a vain and lame attempt to appear arrdinery. hopefully he did not barf on them as he did in Japan. so i guess i can see the logic behind Shrub's developing the persona of a down-country hick with a room temperature IQ in order to appeal to the portion of the country that is more familiar with Nascar than Nasdaq. but i see several problems with this argument: * Shrub's stupidity is too well-executed to be an act. he would have to be mighty smart to act that dumb all the time. * the simple fact that Shrub speaks differnt with his fambly than when out in public doesn't mean the public persona is a lie. he can probably speak the English his daddy taught him, though probably not as well as your neighbor thinks. this is due to the "dancing dog" phenonmenon. basically, when you see a dog dance you think he's great simply because he's a dog, not because he's a great dancer. likewise, when you hear an idiot like Shrub speak blueblood, he probably comes across as a cultured genius even though he's just saying "gimme the remote!" being from Austin, i've heard some stories about Shrub over the years which lead me to believe he's not all that cultured or intelligent, regardless of the act he puts on when he's chewin' pork rinds with Pa. the strong anti-intellectual sentiment in this country. well, for an anti-intellectual country, we sure have got a helluva lot of intelligent people. all you have to do is cruise blogland a bit and you'll see what i mean. it may be inappropriate to call them "intellectuals", mainly because that term has traditionally applied in societies where the majority of the population consists of illiterate peasants. but they are certainly no less intelligent and well-informed than traditional intellectuals.