Not That There Are Any Similarities to Ann Arbor or Anything
Town Hall Meeting Gives Townspeople Chance To Say Stupid Things In Public. ‘’This town used to be so different … Kids are different. Adults are different. People. People are different. What happened? How do we get back to the way things were? How, Councilman Reed?”
Funny, I thought of Ann Arbor when I read that article.
posted by Brandon on September 8th, 2007 at 10:33 pmIsn’t it sad when when aaio’s attempt at sarcastic humor becomes so transparent that it elicits a Pavlovian response like Brandon’s?
posted by mucho gusto on September 9th, 2007 at 8:04 am< salivates >
posted by ann arbor is overrated on September 9th, 2007 at 10:10 amposted by peter honeyman on September 9th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Funny, I read that article on Onion before you posted it, and still thought of AA.
posted by TD on September 9th, 2007 at 6:39 pmYes, I read that article before you posted it as well, is what I meant, and thought of AA.
posted by Brandon on September 9th, 2007 at 10:15 pmposted by buzzkill on September 9th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
wow I thought of ann arbor too look I’m posting on the internet hurrrr
posted by Anonymous on September 9th, 2007 at 11:31 pmContempt for “the people” is not a very nice thing, actually. Not everyone has an IQ of 150, admittedly; and democracy will often create stupid things. However, democracy and popular input and governance beat technocracy, or rule by grad students, or fascism, or whatever else you want to replace it with.
posted by David Boyle on September 10th, 2007 at 1:10 am(Hardly anyone has an IQ of 150 or higher. That’s more than three standard deviations above the mean, or less than 0.1% of the population. If they’re overrepresented in Ann Arbor by a factor of ten — a hugely optimistic scenario — that would still come to less than 1% of the local population. Most of us probably don’t even know anyone in that category.)
(In any case, I believe longitudinal studies show that additional IQ points past about 130 add nothing to chances of occupational success or personal income.)
I couldn’t tell whether the author of the Onion article had just attended a local government meeting for the first time and was shocked by the inanity, or was jaded from attending such meetings for years. Either way, like David, I didn’t enjoy the nasty descriptors applied to each individual who spoke. The article would have been better satire without them.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on September 10th, 2007 at 3:49 amI didn’t think the contempt was really aimed at “the people” as much as the tendency for large meetings to devolve into this kind of thing, and the insults aimed at the speakers’ intelligence were supposed to be the ugly thoughts of someone forced to sit through this meeting. If they were actually real people, then it would be too mean for me.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on September 10th, 2007 at 6:11 amBy the way, you’d be surprised at how ideologically opposed I am to arguments about “the people” not being smart enough to make good choices, whether economically or democratically or with regard to media (”all the sheeple care about is Natalee Holloway when they could be watching big important Iraq news”) or nutrition (”don’t these yahoos shopping at Kroger even read Michael Pollan?”) Not smart enough to keep a several-hours-long meeting interesting and on-topic…that’s another story.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on September 10th, 2007 at 6:59 am