Aaron Brown of CNN's Newsnight had Aaron McGruder, the creator of the comic strip Boondocks, on last night to discuss the debate. What transpired is an exchange rarely seen on network or cable news. I reproduce the entire segment below:
AARON MCGRUDER, CARTOONIST, "THE BOONDOCKS": Good to see you.BROWN: All right. Two sentences: who won the debate? You're going to say this.
MCGRUDER: Kerry. He got his ass whooped.
BROWN: Who did?
MCGRUDER: Kerry. I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. George Bush.
BROWN: You set that whole line up, and then you blew it.
MCGRUDER: I did. No, it was -- it was a very clear victory.
You know, what bothers me about shows like this, and all the news shows, after Bush talks I hear all these smart people completely ignoring the elephant in the room. And the elephant in the room, which nobody wants to say, is that Bush is not a smart man. He can't articulate well. He doesn't speak in complete sentences.
BROWN: Well...
MCGRUDER: And everyone just ignores it, like that's OK.
BROWN: OK. So...
MCGRUDER: But he's really dumb.
BROWN: OK. That's a different thing. Let's say he is not articulate. And I think they would concede he's not the most articulate guy on the planet. It doesn't mean he doesn't have convictions. It doesn't mean he believes in some things. It doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong. It just means he can't express himself.
MCGRUDER: But beliefs don't mean anything if you're stupid. And not only that, but he -- it's almost as though he's talking to the dumbest segment of society, whereas Kerry...
BROWN: Aaron, don't you think that's an incredibly arrogant way to look at the world?
MCGRUDER: It's -- you know, it's real, you know? It's just that nobody is saying the obvious, which is the man is not smart and he's the president.
BROWN: I wouldn't say that...
MCGRUDER: Everybody knows it, but nobody is saying it.
BROWN: What does that say, then, about the 52 or three or one, or maybe it's 49.5 tonight, percent of the country that not only believes he is smart enough to run the country now but should be the guy to run the country for the next four years?
MCGRUDER: I think they have been woefully misled. I think -- I think Americans have a natural inclination, like all people around the world, to believe that their government is not corrupt, that the people are fair and smart and they're not lying to them.
And history doesn't prove that out. And current events doesn't prove that out. The American people have been lied to, and it's at the point now where I think that that percentage of people simply are not interested in the truth. They don't want to go down the road the thought that the president, one, is not intelligent; and two, the people behind the president who are intelligent are deliberately lying and misleading the American people constantly.
BROWN: Let me see -- let me see how cynical you are.
MCGRUDER: OK.
BROWN: Do you believe that a Kerry presidency would be there -- would be more honest, or is this a corruption, in your view, of the entire establishment?
MCGRUDER: I -- I don't blame it -- I mean, to say the establishment is oversimplified. I think that the institution of journalism has failed in its responsibility to hold the government accountable. The government's doing what it's supposed to do when left unchecked.
I do think Kerry would be better than Bush. I think he would be more honest. I think he would be more intelligent. But that's -- everybody knows that already. That's not really in anyone's debate. It's just people have picked a side.
It's -- you know, it's like, you know -- it's the kind of weird God people in the middle of America, the people that live on the coasts fly over. We don't talk to those people. We don't understand those people, and they don't understand us.
But nobody just says the obvious, that their president can't articulate himself and is dumb. And it drives me nuts. BROWN: I got all that.
MCGRUDER: There you go.
BROWN: Nice to meet you.
MCGRUDER: It is a pleasure. Thank you for having me on.
BROWN: Come back, too.
MCGRUDER: If you let me.
BROWN: I will. We're equal opportunity around here.
MCGRUDER: There you go.
BROWN: In every respect. Thank you.
Kudos to Aaron Brown for having the guts to have McGruder on the show. I hope that he really means it when he says "Come back."
Posted by Dwight Meredith at October 1, 2004 03:10 PM | TrackBackIs the President dumb, or does he just play a dumb guy on TV?
At a certain point, I think it stops mattering where the stupidity comes from. Whether it's direct from Dubya's cerebellum, or if it arises as a gestalt whenever you have a quorum of neocons, is eventually beside the point. The main thing is that these people keep deliberately blundering into catastrophes, and so we need to get them away from the levers of power. ASAP.
McGruder is right on the money with one thing - Bush and Co. have directly targeted the ignorant as their most important source of votes.
Posted by: jimBOB at October 3, 2004 01:19 AMjimNON is right. Maybe he's not dumb, but he has a lot of really dumb ideas. In practice, it is the same thing.
Posted by: Avedon at October 3, 2004 04:37 PMMcGruder is right. The President is not a smart man. Barely got C's in college. Skated by in Graduate school. Only got into those schools because daddy got him in. Ran 5 companies into the ground before becoming governor of TX. Ran Texas education and air quality into the ground when in office there. The man is NOT smart. Come on...
Posted by: Rob Austin at October 4, 2004 06:34 AMRob:
You forgot "traded Sammy Sosa." But seriously, I do not disagree with your characterizations but I suspect that we are simply applying different scales. I do not think That GWB has the intellectual capacity of Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson or his dad etc. Unlike many liberals, I also think that Ronald Reagan was quite smart in his own way. If measured by the standards of past Presidents, I would rate him at the very low end of the scale.
If measureed by the scale of folks we encounter in everyday life, I think he would be at the top end of the scale. Many, many people could not skate by at Yale and Harvard B school.
In addition, running a major league baseball team, being elected governor twice, and being elected President are all exceedingly unlikely if a person is actually stupid when compared to the general population, family connections or not.
Sure, he had a lousy performance at the debate, but imagine what it would look like if you picked a randon person from the line at McDonalds and put them on stage before 60 million people with Jim Lehrer asking questions.
"Now, I do not agree with McGruder that Bush is particularly dumb. Incurious, inarticulate, isolated, stuborn, medacious, and impervious to facts, yes."
Right, Bush is not dumb, he's just a whole bunch of synonyms for dumb.
okay not all of those are synonyms for dumb. but that incurious one, I've heard it for a long time now, he's not dumb, he has very little curiousity about things, which always sets a bell off in my head as it calls to my mind all the examples of intelligent people through the ages that had very little curiousity about things. When you say someone is incurious you are not only saying they are fucking stupid, but also that they are determined to stay that way.
Impervious to facts is also a new one which basically means STUPID!!! Except that where incurious means determined to stay stupid, impervious to facts means incapable of being improved.
Posted by: bryan at October 4, 2004 04:42 PMDwight is correct here. Don't kid yourselves, Bush is no idiot. He could say nuclear correctly if he wanted to. He has an agenda, and he knows how to execute it. To assume otherwise is to underestimate the opposition.
Posted by: Andrew at October 4, 2004 07:27 PMI honestly don't think he's stupid. I think he's ignorant, disdains book learning, has poor social skills and language skills, etc. But I also think he's shrewd and arrogant, can manipulate people well, etc. and those aren't characteristics of a moron.
Posted by: Elayne Riggs at October 5, 2004 08:40 AM