A Case for Homeland Security

I think we've lost the war on terror.

I was skipping around the TV channels last night in a fruitless attempt to find something to watch. I was not interested in the "gorenography" of CSI, I find figure skating uninteresting, and I was simply too tired for the thinking that The Agenda would have required of me, so I paused on a new show called Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? (I know I only mentioned four choices, but I don't have cable so my options were limited.) The ten minutes I spent watching the show have convinced me that the American empire is doomed.

When I watched the show, a female contestant was asked the following question: "If y=3x and 3x=12 what is the value of y?" As is always the case on these game shows, she milked her 15 minutes of fame by describing the thought processes running -- or perhaps "ambling" is the better phrase -- through her head as she sought the answer. (Note to English majors: consider contrasting the stream-of-consciousness monologues observed on shows like Fifth Grader and Deal or No Deal with those of novels such as Tristram Shandy.)

Had she answered correctly, the contestant would have won $100,000. Instead, she wisely chose to quit the game with $50,000. "Why was this a wise decision?" you may ask. Because she thought the answer was "4". She had solved for x instead of y. The correct answer was "12".

I know that some of you are probably thinking, "Give the lady a break. Lots of people have trouble with math." And you are right -- a lot of people do have trouble with math -- but this was not just a math problem. It was a logic problem, and even a reading comprehension problem, as much as it was a math problem. The question was even written across a screen, for heaven's sake.

The worst part of the game, however, came after the correct answer was revealed. In order to actually receive the money, the contestant had to face the camera and admit, "I am not smarter than a fifth grader." Apparently, one is only exempt if one clears the board and answers every question.

So what does this have to do with losing the war on terror? Perhaps it doesn't. But if I were a radicalized and underemployed university graduate chafing under what I perceive to be indignities and oppression from the United States, I would think "If this is how stupid Americans really are, I can take them!"

In a perfect world, people judge cultures by their best representatives, much as we associate Elizabethan England with Shakespeare and not bear-baiting. Most people, however, take the same approach that the Fox network chose when it decided to produce this dreadful show: they look at the worst and tell themselves it is representative of the entire society. And that is the real danger.