Blog 35 - Commonplace Article

Let me say from the get go that I honestly couldn't find the right commonplace website for a good five minutes until I finally caved into finding the file on how to purchase commonplace on Carmen. Anyway, the article I want to talk about is titled "I Can See Stupid From My House." When I saw it on the site I knew right away that it was based off the SNL spoof from their presidential debate specials, which I loved. The article talks about how a lot of people are misinformed by the information they are revealed to, and that they use this very minimal knowledge to make inferences on important issues. The writer was trying to say that in such a society where so many people know little about important issues, it would be better to have a world where there were few experts instead of many uninformed. He used Tina Fey's spoof on SNL from one of Sarah Palin's interviews where Tina Fey says "I can see Russia from my house!" and references a poll that asks those who voted whether or not they knew who said the quote. The poll shockingly revealed that 87% of the people who heard this quote thought that Sarah Palin had said this, not Tina Fey impersonating Palin. Now, I'm not a big fan of Palin myself, mainly because I don't think she's qualified, but it really is shocking that some people can be so clueless as to not know the source of the information they hear it from. If you are going to make an argument or reference something you've heard about, you better be damned sure of what the argument really is and where it came from, otherwise you look just like clueless fool.