1. Grant Penrod uses examples from internet discussion boards as well as “harmful social stereotypes”. He goes on to point out the glorification of celebrities who have dropped out of school and the seemingly low intelligence level of our own President (Bush, I assume?). His claim is that these sorts of things further develop the anti-intellectualistic views of society. I agree with the core of his claim, that society “ostracizes its best and brightest”. I don’t necessarily agree with the examples he has used, though. I think I could write an essay on the subject myself, but the core of what I would have to say is that this is part of a cycle. For several years now, intellectuals have been putting themselves above everyone else. This succeeded in creating is a society that resents its intellectuals for making them feel dumb. I believe the Einstein quote goes something like, “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its entire life believing its stupid”. I believe this sums up what we have successfully done to a large portion of the population. The problem is that they figured out how to manipulate and pander to other people who are like them, which is…show more content… I don’t know if it is that the success of these celebrities is responsible for anti-intellectualism, so much as it is that anti-intellectualism is responsible for the success of these celebrities. I think that many celebrities, some mentioned by Penrod, take advantage of anti-intellectualism and decide to capitalize on it by creating music, movies, doing speeches, writing books, etc. that pander to the lowest socio-economic portion of society. I suppose if I were to further my argument, I may have to play Devil’s advocate, and point out that these people are famous, regardless of how they got there. They must be smarter than initially given credit for. I only use that argument because I hear it so much whenever I criticize the Kardashians. I think it is an obvious case of ignoratio
