If you were to say that President Bush will be recorded in
history as one of America’s greatest Presidents, three out of four
people would either laugh, smirk, or break out in a sweat. Are you
serious? they would say. Have you ever heard him talk? How could a
fumbling talker be called a great President? They’d take your
remark as a personal insult.
Somehow these easily insulted people never think of asking this
simple question: Who ever proved that fluency in speech has
anything to do with intelligence? Only a lack of intelligence would
make someone believe there’s a correlation. The “Bushisms” that
characterize the president’s mixed-up speech have exposed nothing
about Bush. They’ve only exposed and revealed the ignorance of so
many Americans. If it were true that a smooth talker is a better
thinker, the IQ of a used-car salesman would be ten times higher
than Albert Einstein’s. Moreover, the guy on television selling
tapes that will enable you to buy up a whole city of real estate
even without 10 cents in your pocket would win a Pulitzer Prize in
philosophy.
We have all heard the cliché about a man who is a talker
not a doer. That is why personnel directors all know that you
cannot judge a prospective worker simply by the impression he makes
in an interview, because it is not unusual for people to “talk a
good game” who can accomplish nothing. That is why the ability to
talk is always referred to as the “gift of gab” because it is given
freely to people who have achieved nothing to deserve it. If the
ability to talk had any connection with the ability to think, why
is it that the man on the street who is begging for help talks so
much better than Bill Gates? Why does the host of a television show
whose only accomplishment in life is the possession of a clear
throat talk so much better than his guest who just wrote a
best-seller that will cure every disease, except a Jewish woman’s
with a headache?
Almost every time you talk to a parent of two children, you hear
the same story. He has one child who is a genius, but because he is
self-conscious about his other child, who is not quite so bright,
he will always try to save the situation with an emotional outburst
about what a great talker this other kid is. Grasping for air he
will start yelling, “He is not a great scholar (in other words he
is still in high school at the age of 38) — but what a talker he
is! He could sell you anything whether you want to buy it or not.”
You could bet that this parent may even start to believe he’s
telling the truth, though in fact he’s not. It is generally true
that the better the thinker the worse the talker because he is too
busy thinking to waste his time talking.
Watch the most brilliant minds on PBS and try to listen to them
talk, you will find that you will not be awake for very long. By
the time the first one finishes his first sentence, you will have
lost any need for your sleeping pills. However, if you switch to
Jerry Springer, you will find that when his guests are not punching
each other, they are such great talkers that they make an
unbelievable story sound like an epic drama (and they are doing it
the hard way because they are also talking through a kilo of
cocaine still clogged in their noses). Either way, we have here two
more categories of people that are quick to judge a President
according to the quickness of his tongue instead of the sharpness
of his mind.
But the best category we’ve saved for last.
Ironically, we all know that it probably takes less intelligence
to succeed as an actor than at any other profession. Nevertheless,
actors have decided to become the chief critics and judges of the
Bush presidency. If your mind is hardly working, there is no doubt
that you can still succeed as an actor. If you compared the IQ
rating of all the professions in the world, the acting professional
would probably be identified with a lower number than the job of
shoveling snow. At least shoveling snow requires the brains to
handle a shovel whereas acting requires no ability to handle
anything.
Shoveling snow also requires a man to work alone making his own
decisions. An actor is not required to think at all. Before he says
a word the director tells him how to say it and since it takes
three months to shoot a movie an actor only has to learn how to say
a total of one sentence a day and he doesn’t even have to memorize
it. A script girl is at his side to repeat the line to him every 90
seconds because the director does not have enough confidence in his
ability to remember it. If he gets it wrong, he has an average of
three days to correct it, and after spending a month with this kind
of intellectual challenge he comes out an expert on foreign policy,
the chief architect of what to do with the environment, how to
handle North Korea, and, despite his never having read a book
unless there was a part for him in the movie, he also becomes an
authority on the subject of nuclear proliferation.
Moreover, he attacks the President everyday about the war in
Iraq, even though if he were asked to look at a map and identify
Iraq he would probably point to Pittsburgh. An actor is the living
proof that talking has nothing to do with intelligence. And that a
big mouth can work perfectly with a small mind.
