Idiots in high places

In a dotcom world where any YouTube video with enough views has the chance to be featured on the nightly news, it is more important than ever for our federal government to mandate a basic intelligence requirement that potential political candidates must meet.

The Internet has allowed the weeds to blossom in our political garden.

A person can gain national recognition despite having no ability, no merit and no clue.

Basil Marceaux is a beneficiary of the Internet’s star-making potential. While running for Governor of Tennessee, he promised to “immune you [sic]” from all state crimes for the rest of your life if you voted for him.

He also wants to make it mandatory for every citizen to carry a gun.

His website is riddled with so many spelling and grammatical errors that a spell check would explode before it finished the first paragraph.

The man isn’t just extremely bizarre, he is extremely stupid.

But Basil is not alone. Other Internet sensations such as Alvin Greene and Glenn Moon, and more successful political candidates such as Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell, have also risen to prominence, although I don’t think any of them could pass a grade-school Constitution test.

The nonsensical arguments and absurd behavior of these political hopefuls might entertain us, but their notoriety threatens to denigrate our political office, and the
attention they are receiving only validates their pursuits.

For instance, on the “Jimmy Kimmel Show,” when Marceaux was asked “If it doesn’t work out in Tennessee, would you consider moving to California to become our governor?” He was met with rowdy applause and shouts of approval.

And when Greene, in the midst of an indictment on felony sex charges, howled and moaned when confronted by reporters, the news anchors said, “He is certainly a different type of politician.”

In Greene’s case, the anchors were treating him as a genuine political figure who just happened to be a little “different.”

But Greene isn’t just a “different type of politician.” He is socially defective, devoid of any legitimate political views, and from what I’ve observed from his interviews, mentally imbalanced.

And I’m willing to bet the applause Marceaux received was fuelled by ironic appreciation, not earnest support.

His particular success resembles Carrie’s nomination for prom queen in Stephen King’s novel  or the story of Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion .

The poor man thinks people believe in him when in reality, they’re laughing at him.

Yet he received more than 3,000 votes in the Tennessee primary, probably due to his extensive media coverage .

Before you snicker at the number’s size, please realize that 3,000 people voted for a man who said “I’d like to put plant grass or vegetation across the state where any vacant lot and sell it for gas so we can use it for our expenses.”

Um, what?

I am not arguing intelligence can indicate someone’s ability to be an effective leader, but I don’t believe that we can have a well-functioning society if people as obviously brainless as Basil Marceaux hold any type of public office.  

Instead of giggling at Greene’s zombified mannerisms, or laughing at O’Donnell’s unsubstantiated belief that American scientific companies are creating mice with human brains, we should be scheduling them psychiatric appointments.


E-mail: joskraus@umail.iu.edu