THOSE PEASANTS OUT THERE, THEY'RE SO BENEATH US – AT 8:32 A.M. ET:  If liberals want to stage any kind of comeback, and if the academic and journalistic worlds want to stop alienating huge chunks of the American public, they might all take a silent pledge to eliminate the word "stupid" from their vocabulary.  This is common sense, which some of these characters just don't seem to have.  From the Washington Examiner:

Political reporters often rely on University of Wisconsin political scientist Charles Franklin for expertise. In just the past few months, his insights have appeared in articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Associated Press, Politico, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, and many other publications. He's also a co-founder of the influential website Pollster.com, as well as co-director of the Big Ten Battleground Poll.

So Franklin answered with considerable authority when he was asked, at a recent forum on the November 2 election results, why Republicans emerged victorious in so many races. "I'm not endorsing the American voter," Franklin said. "They're pretty damn stupid."

Franklin was responding to a question from Bill Lueders, news editor of Isthmus, a weekly alternative newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. In an account published Thursday (H/T Ann Althouse), Lueders says he asked Franklin why "the public seemed to vote against its own interests and stated desires, for instance by electing candidates who'll drive up the deficit with fiscally reckless giveaways to the rich."

"Franklin, perhaps a bit too candidly, conceded the point," Lueders writes. "'I'm not endorsing the American voter,' he answered. 'They're pretty damn stupid.'"

Lueders writes that he responded, "Thank you, professor. That's the answer I was looking for."

COMMENT:  Well, first of all, Bill Lueders is a walking example of why Americans have lost confidence in the media.  When he said, "That's the answer I was looking for," Professor Franklin should have stopped the conference in its tracks and replied, "I don't give answers you're looking for, young man.  I give answers I think are right."  But, alas, the professor didn't.  Maybe he didn't think there was anything wrong with Lueders's approach to his craft.

Now for Professor Franklin:  I don't think I'd be too interested in anything he has to say in the future.  Clearly, he doesn't know his own country.  Isn't it interesting, but I didn't hear "scholars" using the word "stupid" to describe the American voter after the 2008 election.  I wonder why.  Could it be that they agreed with what the voters did, and that therefore the voters were suddenly intelligent?

This is cheap talk, unbecoming a professor.  American voters are far from stupid.  As a group, they're probably the most discerning in the world.  Proof:  In the face of a Republican tide, voters in several states - Nevada, Colorado, Delaware – voted down a Republican candidate for the Senate they thought was too extreme, and in Alaska voted, with write-in ballots, for the candidate they wanted to remain in the Senate.  We may not agree with their choices, but their choices were clearly made thoughtfully, not stupidly.

I may have told this story before:  I once interviewed Charles Kuralt, the CBS reporter who did the "On the Road" series for years, driving around the country and interviewing ordinary Americans.  I asked him for the single most important thing he learned in all those years.  Without hesitation he replied, "I'm always amazed at how well informed Americans are."  And Kuralt was right.  Americans are probably the best informed voters in the world, and, as a group, they do care.  Watch tracking polls during election campaigns.  As soon as anything important happens, the polls change.  Americans are listening.

There's a whole tier of elites who love to make fun of their fellow Americans.  It makes them feel superior, more important, and more knowledgeable.  And they love words like "stupid."  Many of these people are in the knowledge industry.  Their greatest fear is that someone else may know as much as they do.  Harry Truman said it best:  "You can't tell an expert anything because then he's not an expert anymore."

Professor Franklin, like many other professors, might do well to temper his rhetoric, and demonstrate some becoming modesty.  The great professors who taught me were always the first to tell students what they didn't know.  And never, and I mean never, did I hear one of them use the word "stupid." 

November 22, 2010