Intellectuals for McCain

Laura Ingraham is trying to do an intellectuals for McCain/Palin movement:

I don’t know if I count. I gots me my smartie bona fides: I was valedictorian, got 1570 on my SATs, and graduated Carnegie Mellon University with over a 3.8. Also, I support McCain/Palin. Still, I don’t know if I’m really an intellectual because my degree is in Electrical and Computer Engineering which can be used for — ya know — useful stuff.

45 Comments

  1. But what did you get on the Humor SAT? 430?

    “We are smart. We LIKE being smart.” (horn sound)

    BTW, the proper category for this is “I Hate Frank.”

    I’m gonna go dig weeds in my garden…

  2. From what I learned so far from this campaign season is you can only be an intellectual if you get a job at a university for doing some great accomplishment like Bombing the Pentagon like Ayers, or defraud the Cherokee nation Like Ward Churchill.

    You can also be an intellectual if you live in San Francisco. People in potato infested fly over country are never intellectuals. (Seriously, have you ever read Ernest Hemingway. the guy was a crack pot.)

    Even worse since you went to Carnegie Mellon in Pennsylvania we now know you are extremely racist. And here I thought you were against Obama because he was a socialist…

  3. Intellectuals are those people who are all smart and stuff, and like smooth jazz and Broadway musicals, and didn’t need someone to tell them that arugula is not a cheese. But they can’t change the oil in their cars, don’t appreciate the genius of South Park, and have no clue who won the Stanley Cup last spring. Meh. Who needs them?

  4. The intellectual crowd in the USA is the one that is very good with words but terrible with ideas. Thus as an engineer we must disqualify you from every entering this class. Er well unless you are a quality engineer…. then you might stand a chance. Wonder what the mean time between failure of liberal ideas is? 0! ( factorial ). Now shut up and go back to work like a good slave. Don’t bother us again with your thinking. We write the laws as the words are spoken.

  5. Hay! Iteletuel! Y knot use dat cumputer engineerere dagree to put a speling and grammer chekker on you’re sight. I am not as smart. Thereer must be a bettter way to chek my spellen than pushing random kees on muy keebored.

  6. Intellectuals are the geeks that networked at Harvard or Yale, never actually accomplished anything, but cronied themselves into positions where people assume they’re smart. They usually never ran a business, never employed anyone, never generated a dime of actual hard-earned revenue, but think they have all the answers.

    They’re usually all for socialism, but only because they picture themselves among the corrupt leaders of the socialist plan and therefore above the massive majority of worker drone peasants.

  7. I’m not an intellectual, but I have a BSChemE from Clarkson College of Technology, and we got to beat the snot out of Yale, Dartmouth, Columbia, Harvard, Brown, Cornell etc at hockey. That was fun.

  8. The theory behind Scientology is that if you make someone pay enough money to learn something, no matter how outlandish, they will assume it’s true because cognitive dissonance will prevent them from admitting they did something foolish in buying it. It is easier for them to believe that aliens in spacecraft resembling DC-9s flew imprisoned souls to earth and dumped them in a volcano than to believe they spent $30,000 on total BS. Granted, you have to live in an environment, such as Hollywood, where reality has been hunted to extinction for generations. Reality tends to intrude now and then no matter where you live. But in environments where there is economic incentive to kill it on sight with a wave of bullcrap, such bubbles exist.

    Ivy League college tuition works on EXACTLY the same principle.

    I had an argument this weekend with a Chicago liberal who insisted that A) being found innocent on the Keating Five was worse than being buddies with a serial bomber. He went on to say that mismanaging a savings and loan is worse than killing three people. And this was at a Mensa convention, with a guy whose IQ is supposedly in the 170s. As I often say after years in Mensa, IQ does not stand for Wisdom Quotient. Or as G. K. Chesterton once said (I’m paraphrasing), there are some lies so convoluted that only an intellectual could believe them.

  9. I’ve always thought that the people who constantly have to reinforce their intellect are probably the stupidest people in the room. Think Obama and Biden… There’s probably a reason that people question your intelligence if you’re constantly having to defend it.

  10. I’m pretty certain that I have the educational credentials to be an intellectual … 2 useless bachelor’s degrees (English Comparative Literature with a concentration in Creative Writing, and a Bachelor’s of Civil Law) and I’m a Doctor of Jurisprudence (i.e. just your average, run of the mill lawyer). On the other hand, I work long hours to make a living, listen to and play death metal despite being a classically trained pianist and flautist, and cling to by Second Amendment rights like a liberal clings to ideas that fail to take human nature into consideration. I may well be one of the so-called “intellectuals'” worst nightmare – an allegedly bright young woman who made it through 4 years of liberal arts education and three years of professors trying to explain to me that the constitution and laws don’t really mean what they say in clear English – without being indoctrinated.

    I may dress up as myself and go trick or treating through the limousine liberal pseudo intellectual neighborhoods just to scare them! Wheeeeeeee!

  11. I’m well on my way to a PHD (I never remember which letters are supposed to be capitalized, so I capitalize them all), but that’s only because I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up, and they offered to pay me to keep going to school. What can I say? I’m a mercenary.

  12. Simple Intelligence Question: (From Scott Adams)

    You walk in to a room with three monkeys. The first monkey is playing with a stick. The second monkey is playing with a ball. The third monkey is observing the other two. Who is the smartest primate in the room?

  13. Amen to that, D-Rock. I went to grad school because I was afraid of the real world. I was like, “I’ll get paid to go to school? Only in America!” channeling Don King…

    Don’t know what field you’re in, but I’ve found that a PhD is sometimes more trouble than it’s worth. As far as job hunting goes.

  14. Mr. Small,

    I think it’s the monkey with a stick, because the stick can be used as a tool, whereas the ball serves no useful purpose and the fool watching the stick-ball game isn’t accomplishing anything.

    How’d I do?

  15. As far as I have been able to determine the PhD is a test if you are willing to shovel enough crap down your gullet, i.e. work as a slave etc. long enough for them to give you the degree. Its a decent test of stamina and intellectual fortitude. Its sufficient but not necessary condition right?

  16. It’s easy Frank. If you pushed hill 1, 3, 4, or 5, you are not an intellectual. If you pushed hill 2, you are smart, but still not an intellectual. If you remained comfortably inside Porter Hall, you may be an intellectual. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then you’re lying about having gone to CMU, in which case, you are probably a dumb monkey faced intellectual who went to Pitt.

  17. #16 – BigRichardSmall,
    As I was going to St. Ives,
    I met a man with 7 wives.
    Every wife had 7 sacks.
    Every sack held 7 cats.
    Every cat had 7 kits.
    Kits, cats, sacks and wives;
    How many were going to St. Ives?

  18. Before I started reading these posts I thought I was moderately intelligent. Most of my life I have exibited a fair amout of common sense, except when I married my first wife. I don’t remember working for it, it just seemed to be there. Without any degrees or credentials I work (self-employed), pay my bills and taxes on time, and am generally self-reliant (No grants, wellfare or state aid), I own a number of older vehicles that are parked around my home and the main thing that separates me from total white trash is they all start and run. I am now realizing that I am not and will not be an intelectual because; I don’t have any degrees (except 98.6) and even if I did I know it wouldn’t be the right one or from the right place. The stark reality is I’m not and never will be an…..intellectual. I feel so forlorn, empty and sad. It seems like every one is an intellectual but me. I’m probably one (not “the one”) that needs Barrack the most. He will lift me up. I’ll have hope and maybe some extra change. If I had only thought of organizing all of the intellectuals to vote for McCain I would have felt so cool. It’s probably a good idea, I’m just not sure that convincing 7 intellectuals to vote will offset the 700,000 dead people that acorn registered. What I need to know, is it better to be an intellectual or smart?

  19. Well, the SAT scores explain how, as an EE/CS major, you mostly get the grammer correct in your posts.

    Read Solzhenitsyn (Archipelag GULAG II) for an interesting exposition on who may be a true intellectual, an educated man or a worker.

  20. To be an intellectual you have to watch and enjoy Bill Maher, AACKKH! excuse me, the best example alive of diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain.

    You must also accept evolution vs. creationism, aka intelligent design. But when you think of evolution from a scientific point of view you should vomit. The experiment must be repeatable.

    If we are created in (Someone’s) image, we would all be pretty much alike, with a few deformities here and there (genetic quirks). If this is all an accident then mutations would be the rule, not the exception. People would have teeth in their sphincter, fingernails in their eyebrows, gentials for a nose and vice versa. Have you ever met anyone with hair on the bottom of their feet? When the dentist pulled my tooth he called it #18. Is it my #18 or what you would expect of anyone with teeth?

    String theory (quantum mechanics meets relativity) demands parallel universes that can communicate with each other, and something like 11 dimensions. The faithful understand heaven, hell and prayer, and dreams as well. Do we have only 5 senses, or does balance count?

    Why am I asking you?

  21. 11 dimensions. Why 11, and what are they called? I know about height, width, length and time but what are the other 7? What do they measure? Spin? Flavor? Paranoia? Surprise? Comedy? Drama? Action-Adventure?

  22. As Jeff Foxworthy might say,

    “If you chortle at the droll cartoons in ‘The New Yorker’
    just a trifle less than at the jocular, waggish musings
    of senior editor Hendrik Hertzberg….
    …you might be an intellectual.

    If , during Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama on ‘Meet The Press’,
    you wet your pants …
    ….you might be an intellectual.

    If the bucket fits your head….
    …you might be an intellectual. ”
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    I’ve just enough smarts to appreciate fine blogging,
    not quite enough to produce it.
    Though I’ve attained no degree
    I’m a man of letters still.
    …I deliver them.

  23. I never wanted to be “intellectual”, and I know that I managed to miss it. I just wanted to stay away from the real world. Never let degrees fool you into thinking that someone is smart. But people on here already know that…

  24. Intellectuals are the geeks that networked at Harvard or Yale, never actually accomplished anything, but cronied themselves into positions where people assume they’re smart. They usually never ran a business, never employed anyone, never generated a dime of actual hard-earned revenue, but think they have all the answers.

    Like President Bush!

    (Sorry, I don’t hate the man, but that comes pretty close to describing him.)

    I might be an intellectual. Big impressive degrees from top universities (same field as Frank) and not doing anything practical, but the latter is due to being out of work. Oh well. Still voting for McCain.

  25. 11 Dimensions! Ha! Everyone knows there are only eight. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,311952,00.html

    OK, I have an engineering degree from a great school (USNA), but I slept through most of my classes and couldn’t even dream of following the math referenced in that article. My senior yearbook has a quote next to my picture saying something along the lines of “If I sleep 12 hours a day, I’ll only spend two years here.” It was a miracle I graduated.

    Sorry, I’m no intellectual. And I have to say that I don’t think Laura is an intellectual either. She is very smart. She makes cogent arguments. She is entertaining. However, her website (http://lauraingraham.com/) has a humorous mainstay that disqualifies her from being considered an intellectual (kind of like this one, but on a smaller scale). Click on the monkey in the right hand column.

  26. Also a high school valedictorian, 1580 on SATs, graduated from Princeton University with a Chem degree, I’m currently in med school, and I support McCain/PALIN! However, I drive a pick-up truck with a NASCAR driver’s name on it, wish I had a John Deere Gator, drive fire trucks, and am “that guy” who listens to country music on his satellite radio because there are no country music stations near my med school (North Jersey). I suppose that disqualifies from being an “intellectual” in the liberal elite sense of the word. I can be an alternate if needed.

  27. Laura did author the book with the best title in recent memory: Shut Up And Sing; and it was published back before such a concept was popular or as widespread as it is now. It’s a book about all the politically loudmouthed celebutards who use their public platform to try and make the rest of us think as they do on domestic & world political issues. As if.

    And for the record: no, I’m not opposed to celebrities having political opinions, but they are paid (better than most of us) only to “entertain.”

    And how come the only — or at least the obnoxiously loudmouthed — celebs are Liberal? The exception might be Charlton Heston (RIP), but I don’t recall his NRA membership ever affecting his work. And I don’t see Tom Selleck, Dean Cain, Gary Sinise, Kelsey Grammer, James Woods, Patricia Heaton or Reba McIntyre pretending to be elected officials, or trashing those with whom they disagree. Guess conservatives really do have more class.

  28. I use to consider myself fairly smart, but then I started reading IMAO and have dropped several IQ points per year… I also belong to Iowahawks Legion of Dumb so I probably don’t qualify…

  29. Basil gets the prize for remembering humans are primates and The One is omnipresent. Congratulations Basil. You are intellectual enough to be Obama’s towel boy. Don’t worry. In the new order that Obama will usher in, you will get paid the same as everyone else… After taxes.

  30. I’m trying to figure out how to get a PhD in Creative Writing (if such a ghastly thing even exists), and using my JD as the means of achieving it.

    Just imagine it … an epic poem in the vein of Homer, with characters as poorly developed as Marlowe’s, alternating stanzas between iambic pentameter and haiku … at least 750 pages long … all about a heroic Memorandum of Law in Support of Plaintiffs’ Motion for Approval of Form and Manner of Notice of Pendency of Class Action to the Certified Class, and its struggles to convince a god-like (at least in his own mind) Judge to grant the Motion that is the Memorandum of Law’s sole reason for existence. It will, of course, contain villainous lawyers who write motions to counter our hero, and so on and so forth, blah de freakin’ blah. I might even throw in some aspects of nihilism, existentialism, the post-modern, deconstruction, and the occasional completely irrelevant reference to Antigone’s reaction to going to see Equus performed live.

    My hope is that reading it will be such a ghastly experience that the unfortunate reader will just give me the doctorate to avoid having to read the whole thing, make suggestions that I will ignore and just do the opposite (for I am, dear readers, a contrary little lady), and then that reader will have to go through the lengthy and wretched experience again and again. Given the person reviewing my masterpiece will doubtless be a liberal if not an outright communist, it will give me great pleasure to keep writing and re-writing, adding length without substance, making obscure references to works that never should have been written in the first place, using arcane legal technology, quoting directly from the Lex Romana Visigothorum as I imagine it to be (never having seen an actual copy of it OR the Lex Burgundium), and in all other ways conceivable, I SHALL EARN THAT PhD for my amazingly long, worthless tripe!

    Of course, if anyone would like to contribute funding to this endeavor (or, perhaps, experiment), feel free. They don’t pay associate attorneys at small firms nearly as much as the hourly commitment and stress should require. Free time, as a donation, would be even more appreciated. Or, a vacation! I haven’t had one of those in a year and a half!

    I guess that my work ethic alone, despite my creative antisocial tendencies, would preclude me from being an intellectual. Ah, well. Woe am I!

  31. Wow, I laughed so hard at the description of the epic poem in 41. That sounds like something I would do if I didn’t absolutely despise writing in general, and poetry in particular, and I have absolutely no patience for legal mumbo jumbo. But I love the idea that somebody else would go to all that effort just to make the dumb monkey-faced liberal reviewers bleed out of their eyes! Are you married?

    As for me, I’m too smart to be an intellectual. Even though I will collect the first of my advanced degrees in May, they’re in engineering (BS computer, MS electrical), so I guess I’m too practical to be an intellectual as well. In my experience, intellectuals are those people who think very highly of their own intelligence but would be unable to survive on their own – the first ones to die out when the system collapses into anarchy. I’ll laugh at them then.

  32. Our son called us last month and, during the course of conversation, called us “intellectuals.” We prepared to hang up on him, but reconsidered since the phone connection from north of Baghdad wasn’t the best. We questioned his conclusion; he clarified by calling us “intellectual conservatives” and we forgave him… yeah, because he’s in Iraq and yeah, because he’s our son, but primarily because we love the word “conservative.”

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