The Death of Outrage, or Are You Smarter Than an American Idol?

Today we bring you another in what has become a series of laments about the sad state of learning in our modern society. Though this isn't strictly about books, it does have some bearing on reading, or the failure to read. This may come to either of my readers as old news, but last night was our first exposure to what we are about to describe: Kellie Pickler appeared on the television show "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth-Grader?"

Wikipedia tells us that Kellie Dawn Pickler, age 21, is an American pop country music singer-songwriter who finished sixth on the fifth season of the Fox television series "American Idol". She has since been signed to BNA Records as a recording artist, with her debut album Small Town Girl being released in late 2006. The album has been certified gold in the United States for sales exceeding 500,000 copies, and it has produced three singles on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs charts. Ms. Pickler graduated in 2004 from North Stanly High School in New London, North Carolina.

We have watched "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth-Grader?" several times. It is a fine quiz show, vastly superior to "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" because the questions do not revolve around pop culture, and because the show involves children. We also watched because we found first-year student Marki Ann Meyer to be adorable.

On the television show, Ms. Pickler was asked, "Budapest is the capital of what European country?" She replied, "This might be a stupid question, but I thought Europe was a country." She thought it might be France, and then was confused if France really was a country or not. When told the answer was Hungary, she did not believe the host. She said, "Hungry [sic]? That's a country? I've heard of Turkey, but Hungry? I've never heard of it." The video can be seen here:



That's good for a laugh, right? "It is her innocent ignorance that makes her so cute and likable," as someone commented on the television show message boards. But look at her face, and one can see she is completely overwhelmed, she is not acting the part of a ditzy blonde for commercial appeal.

Okay, so she's not a geography major. But since she is a musician, one would expect her to know about music. When she was asked what family of instruments the piccolo belonged to, she was still lost. She had no idea what a piccolo was, and it sounded as if she didn't know what percussion, woodwind, or strings was either. So she used her critical thinking skills and decided that the piccolo was from the percussion family because they both started with a P. She also determined that Franklin Pierce was a United States President because his last name began with a P, just as hers did.

Sadly, the audience found her answers funny. According to her website, when she appeared on "American Idol", her vibrant vocals, boundless energy, bubbly personality and refreshing honesty not only won over the judges, but endeared her to viewers as well. She is not stupid, she is quirky. She is not troubling, she is charming. Incredibly, Ms. Pickler has received numerous awards from local and statewide government officials praising her accomplishments as a contestant on the American Idol television show. Why hasn't she received numerous condemnations for her astounding lack of basic knowledge as supposedly taught in our schools? This is the death of outrage.

Ms. Pickler stands out as a perfect example of many. As far as we know, every contestant on the show has either flunked out or dropped out of the game before winning. The gentleman who followed Ms. Pickler answered the very first question wrong: how many e's are in the word mathematics? Something we are supposed to be taught in first-grade spelling.



Ms. Pickler undoubtedly possesses appealing features, including many of the attributes prized by the superficial male. She certainly has a pleasant singing voice. Her website calls her life a "fairy tale". What we are being told is that one needn't be smarter than a fifth-grader to be successful, one needs only smarts; happily ever after is equated with celebrity; looks will take you further than knowledge; all our heroes are whores.

The Cost of Reading, or Be Like John Bardeen

On Saturday a woman came into the bookshop with her husband and two children. She looked at a first edition hard cover of Jeffrey Archer and declared the price of $10.80 to be too expensive. She returned the book to the shelf, looked down another aisle, then said a curt "Thank you" and led her family out the door. Her husband proceeded to unload his golf clubs from the back of their van and head into the Golf and Pub, while she drove off with the children to visit the nearby amusement and water park where she will have no qualms about charging $200 or so to her VISA.

We recall an episode of The Simpsons in which Marge laments she never had the opportunity to apply the things taught in calculus class to her everyday life situations. The joke, of course, is that unless you are an engineer building the space shuttle, calculus will never apply to your everyday life situations. For many, calculus is studied in order to graduate, but never really learned, and then promptly forgotten. As our society becomes more visual, and more focused on the end user, learning is more often done by trial and error. See how a child learns to operate the remote control and the computer. Or how quickly he learns and masters a video game. Is it any wonder children study without learning and then forget how to read and write as well as do arithmetic?

The Golf and Pub is down the street from our store, and we watch people lug their clubs in all day long, far more in number than those who come into the bookshop. Americans have become brainwashed into equating the spending of money with being entertained. We wonder why other countries are performing better in academics. In a culture where the emphasis is on sports and celebrity, few children say "When I grow up, I want to be just like John Bardeen." They want to be like Tiger Woods or Paris Hilton. Why doesn't Random House turn to Tiger Woods to promote reading? Just as he raves about driving a Fusion, or shaving with a Tahoe, he can enthuse about the excitement, drama, and mystery of a Random House novel, or how he learned all about his idol Sam Snead by reading a Random House biography.

How will golf change the world? In 500 years, who will remember Paris Hilton? Few enter the bookshop while many enter the Golf and Pub; yet golf is the elite activity, requiring the expense of equipment as well as the precise maintenance of large amounts of land in an unnatural state. Only voting is more emblematic of democracy than reading. The Church used to put people to death for publishing the Bible in the vernacular, because they knew the consequences. Reading the Bible changed the world. Reading the Ninety-five Theses changed the world. The lasting value of books is so great as to make their cost negligible.

A man entered the shop today. "How much," he said as he strode by at a brisk pace, "do you want for..." and he quickly returned to place upon the counter a Stephen King book he had pulled from the shelf. $10.80. He already had his notes in hand, and without hesitation he peeled off two and handed them to me. My hope for mankind lingers on.

Afternoon Delight, or Reading The Best Of

Well, I wasn't quite as lucky as Bloglily, who enjoyed her in the flesh, but it did feel like I spent the entire afternoon with Litlove on Saturday. In between selling books at the shop, I read her new book The Best of Tales From The Reading Room. Though I have visited her salon often, I found I had never read much of her best. If you haven't already been, go check out the salon now. And when you discover you enjoy what you read, then go buy the book. Do this all in preparation for an impending wide-ranging interview with Litlove in this webspace. We promise to expose all her secrets!

Storylines, or Beyond One Dimension

Narrative irons everything out flat, linear, and one-way. It is what we use and how we are able to make sense of multidimensional experience. Today's question is, how can we overcome the flat, linear, one-way nature of fiction? How do we capture the messy, paradoxical simultaneous life? And if the essence of narrative makes such a thing impossible, what form of art can achieve it?

We Need More Slaves, or Let's Read Together

Danielle has dusted out some of the cobwebs at The Slaves of Golconda and the next book to read and discuss is The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence. There is still over a month left to read and digest it. The group continues to grow and more invitations have been sent out. If you would like to join in the mining, or know someone who might, let us know.

Short Stories, or How the Universe Works

Short stories have never interested us much. Perhaps it goes back to literature classes that forced us to answer twelve questions about every short story we read to show we understood its meaning and whatever.

A few months ago we were emboldened by Litlove's post about a story by Maupassant to pick up our volume of his short stories and read. We all tell stories every day of our lives, and many of Maupassant's stories struck us as being just like that. We had never thought of or regarded short stories in such a way, and soon the previously conceived possibility of writing some of our own transformed into a present probability.

Just when we start to consider writing short stories, we also follow a suggestion to read short stories. We do not intentionally do one because of the other. Reading the stories, however, reveals things to us that help us to understand the writing of them. This is all to set up the first of a series of questions we pose to either of our readers: what is the cause and what is the effect? Do we find the answer and then discover the question? Or do we know the question but don't ask it until we have stumbled upon the answer? Do we subconsciously mold one to fit the other? What is it that brings question and answer together? Does a person or thing uncover a hidden need, or create a new need? Or does a hidden need seek out the person or thing to uncover it?

You may discuss among yourselves for the next five minutes, and then please share your answers with the rest of us.

Possibilities

Three months.

I don't blame you if you didn't wait for me.

For those who pop your head back in, I will be generating some thoughts in the near future. Until then, you can read my column From The Bookshop, as well as the works of many other fine writers, in the new January issue of ...