(Photos from The Book Buff and famecrawler.)
This morning I read an op-ed article in the New York Times by Maureen Dowd entitled, "Making Ignorance Chic." In it, Dowd makes the comparison between Marilyn Monroe's self-aware brand of "dumb blond" who, despite her looks also strove to be book smart, and Sarah Palin's unwitting campaign to make ignorance fashionable through her fumbles and misspeaks.
I see what Dowd is getting at, but I don't think that Sarah Palin and the other female politicos that Dows lists are at the forefront of this movement of stupidity. There have been plenty of examples in pop culture, old and new, that point to the idea that dumb equals cool. A short list of examples:
- Christina Applegate's character, the vapid and promiscuous Kelly Bundy, in the TV series Married with Children.
- Movies like Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, Bring it On, The House Bunny
- Megabimbos Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson
- Male examples: Joey on Friends, Dumb and Dumber, Finn on Glee
- Diesel's "Be Stupid" campaign (Worth a look, very interesting. To their credit, they use "stupid" as a synonym for spontaneous, leaping without thinking, much less looking.)
This is not to say that counter examples of smart females don't exist (see: Ariana Huffington, Hilary Clinton, Diane Sawyer, Natalie Portman, Hermoine Granger). They just don't receive the same type of mass embracing that the ignorant receive. The irony is that their intelligence is what keeps them from the spotlight. The dumb are less intimidating to the layman (thinking: Palin endorsed a candidate for the Pennsylvania Senate seat who is the nominee in West Virginia...but I can't name any senators whatsoever, so she's just like me!), and thus more accepted.
Dowd isn't wrong in saying that Palin plays a hand in making ignorance chic. What's scary is that Palin is taking an old pattern from for-entertainment-only pop culture and applying it to politics.
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