All that is evil, all their allies; your parents, your leaders, those who would call themselves your judges
Jay Leno. He has this recurring bit… ah hell. Watch one below. Warning: it’s seriously disgusting:
This seriously cuts at the fundamental tendons of our democracy. No, not the rank ignorance on display. Well, not directly. It’s the fact that Jay goes out and looks for people for his audience to feel smarter than. He’ll spend hours doing these interviews, and show only the dumbest.. what? 20%? And claim create the appearance that this is a representative sample. It’s even worse than that.
The questions themselves are sloppy. Take the Jay asks the audience about 20 seconds in. “we got our independence in what year?” The correct answer is 1783. Though a case could be made for 1784, or 1781. The really cheeky might say 1815.
We know what he means, though. He means “what year did America declare independence.” Am I being picky? Am I unfairly asking Jay to have correct information at the top of his head? Yes. Jay is leading his audience through an exercise of group schadenfreude. If he can’t be correct in a pre-written segment, then I get to call him on it.
I don’t simply mean to call Jay Leno a douche bag. After all, for those who need them, a douche bag serves a legitimate function. Jay is being actively harmful to American Democracy. Every time he airs a segment like this, carefully showing Americans at their worst, he tells his audience that they are smarter than everyone else. Over time, you end up thinking- in the words of my Leno-watching father- “people are stupid”.
Once someone stops believing that other people are capable of making good decisions– after all, Jay Leno showed me how much basic information everyone else lacks– representative democracy starts looking unpalatable. If “people are stupid”, then “We the People” have successfully become otherized. Keeping secrets from “them” starts looking like the smart idea. Asking for a Strong Man to use his own judgement about what budget items should be cut, or who should be indefinitely detained, or which Americans should be assassinated where.
Imagine a different segment. What if Jay spent his time going around to random people and asking them what physicist refer to as Magna Carta was signed, or who is the President of Burundi? (Bonus points for referencing Coffee in your answer). Imagine if Jay Leno awed and delighted his audience by showing them average people being smarter than they are.
Until that happens: here’s average people turning literal junk into working airplanes.
No related posts.
Sadly, it gets him ratings because people _like_ thinking, “I’m smarter than that idiot!” It gives them the illusion that they are smarter than average, and makes them feel good about themselves as a result, so they eat it up. They would be less enthralled watching other people answer questions correctly that they don’t know the answers to, because then they’d feel dumb.
You’re right though. I don’t trust other people to make smart decisions, but that’s mainly a product of my upbringing and being surrounded with adults who made consistently poor decisions… I’ve never watched Leno. I’ve definitely had the thought before, ‘If that were true, maybe it would be better if the general public doesn’t know about it’.
I think it’s far more prevalent than just Leno, also. The internet is rife with sites cataloging stupid things people do and say, so that everyone can laugh at them and feel like, ‘they’re an idiot, I wouldn’t ever be that dumb’. Mainstream movies, also, often include times where the government keeps things secret, or only one ‘Strong Man’ is smart enough to make the ‘right decision’.
I think that probably says something about either human nature, or American society, but I’m not sure which.
Leno could certainly not contribute to the problem though… instead of helping it along in massive doses.
I wish it were just Jay Leno!
But he’s a great example because he’s hugely popular and the product he sells is cynicism and mistrust.