Revenge of the Tards

From an essay on the dumbing-down of America:

For academics on the political left, the last eight years represent the sleep of reason producing the monsters of our time: suburban McMansions, gas-guzzling Hummers, pop evangelicalism, the triple-bacon cheeseburger, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader?, creation science, waterboarding, environmental apocalypse, Miley Cyrus, and the Iraq War — all presided over by that twice-elected, self-satisfied, inarticulate avatar of American incuriosity and hubris: he who shall not be named.

Well put (though I'd replace Miley Cyrus, whoever she is, with Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears). I grew up in the 80s, when hard-working nerds powered the economy and dumb jocks shoved them in the trashcan. Of course, I thought all that was in the past, now that Bill Gates was the richest man in the world, the President of the United States was an econ professor (on The West Wing, at least), and being a "nerd" was a one-way ticket to a six-figure salary.

Guess I was wrong. The Bush years have been the Revenge of the Tards, taking the surpluses that the nerds built and throwing them all at real-estate hucksters, finance crooks, and frat-boy government contractors with Hitler Youth haircuts. If you're a politician, it's bad to be an "elite" again, and it's good to be a "bulldog with lipstick" whose eyes glimmer with the dull sheen of sub-100 IQ. It's cool to do things that are obviously not in your economic interest - borrow money you have no hope in hell of paying back, for instance, or chug grease straight from the deep fryer until you become a waddling hippopotamus. If the Russians decide to start up the Cold War again, this time we won't beat them by inventing better technology, we'll just run into them repeatedly with our monstrous bellies, barfing up fryer grease all over their nice fur coats and slapping at them feebly with our vestigial hand-like appendages, moaning "Ga-buh buh ga-duhhhh..." and lobbing used Girls Gone Wild DVDs in their general direction...

Bill Gates and President Bartlett, we hardly knew ye.

(Note: if putting the links into this semi-satirical post has taught me one thing, it's that white people look totally ridiculous...)