Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Combatting the Bush is a dumbass meme
After seeing a number of "Bush is a dumbass" statements in rapid succession today, see Amy Tan "I'm voting for Kerry, because I have a brain and so does he." See this flyer: "Voting for Bush is Like Running in the Special Olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarded." See virtually the entire left side of the blogosphere (and some of the libertarian right).
MENSA had a long habit of using SAT and GRE scores as proxies for IQ scores (for conversions see here). So if Bush is such a dumbass, you would expect his score to be fairly low. Well Time surveyed a bunch of famous people for the SAT scores a while back and here's some relevant excerpts:
Paul Allen 1600
Bill O'Reilly 1585
Ben Stein 1573
Rush Limbaugh 1530
Al Gore 1355
George W Bush 1206
John Kerry 1190
Bill Clinton 1032
Al Franken 1020
If you're calling W a dumbass, by the dumbass transitive property, you're calling John Kerry a dumbass too. While there can be significant variation in SAT scores due to educational background, both Kerry and Bush had very similar upbringings (rich, white, well-connected families), so I think those considerations can be safely excluded and comparative aptitudes can be evaluated.
Side note: check out that Bill O'Reilly score.
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MENSA had a long habit of using SAT and GRE scores as proxies for IQ scores (for conversions see here). So if Bush is such a dumbass, you would expect his score to be fairly low. Well Time surveyed a bunch of famous people for the SAT scores a while back and here's some relevant excerpts:
Paul Allen 1600
Bill O'Reilly 1585
Ben Stein 1573
Rush Limbaugh 1530
Al Gore 1355
George W Bush 1206
John Kerry 1190
Bill Clinton 1032
Al Franken 1020
If you're calling W a dumbass, by the dumbass transitive property, you're calling John Kerry a dumbass too. While there can be significant variation in SAT scores due to educational background, both Kerry and Bush had very similar upbringings (rich, white, well-connected families), so I think those considerations can be safely excluded and comparative aptitudes can be evaluated.
Side note: check out that Bill O'Reilly score.
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