Academic bias?

About a month ago, I wrote a post about how I didn't want my president to be "like me".This was in response to Sarah Palin ramming her idea down America's throats that she was "just like us". Just like the "Hockey Moms" and the "Joe Six-Packs", and whatever other labels she threw out like so much bread crumbs at a city park. I felt that the last person that should run for public office should be anything like me, or like the millions of average people in this country. I wanted someone extraordinary, which would imply someone who had a hell of a lot more education and experience than me, and I would like to think I was not alone in that opinion.

But, so many people want for President someone they can identify with, someone they could see themselves sitting across the table with, eating a piece of pie, or having a cuppa joe. They see a man clearing brush on his movie set ranch in Texas and fall head over heels in admiration...they see a man in a mortarboard and gown adorned with gold braids and they back away in a desperate need to avoid a lecture.

We've all probably have raked the leaves, but we all haven't walked through a college campus. It's a common denominator issue at play. Easily understandable, but at times, that thought process should be put on hold.

Here's an interview with Monty Python alumni, John Cleese, making some valid points on Americas' seemingly biased attitude towards academia. He touches on it around the one-minute mark.




If I need a doctor, a lawyer, or someone to advise me in financial affairs, I would want to seek out who I felt was the most qualified in their field, not someone I considered a friend. Do you ever hear, "I'm going to have an appendectomy by Dr. So-in-So because I had a beer with him the other night and we shot a few rounds of darts and I really had a good time"? No, hopefully most people would research and seek out a doctor who is deft with a scalpel...may not have the best bed side manner, but has a excellent success rate.

So, I say again, I don't want my President to be "like me". Think about it...how scary would that be? It's frightening enough that based on his fifteen minutes of fame, Joe the Plumber (who may or may not have a six-pack) is considering a run for Congress, and that the McCain/Palin ticket is using his pearls of "wisdom" as talking points in their floundering attempt at a campaign. And now, at a campaign stop Friday, McCain introduced Joe as his "mentor".

And I thought Halloween was over with.