The XX Factor: What women really think.

Quantico, Guantanamo

Is Paris Hilton the New Einstein?

You probably wouldn't have known it by looking at him, but your Dunkin' Donuts clerk this morning wasn't thrumming his fingers to the latest Soulja Boy bastardization. According to John Parker's sprawling piece in the Economist's quarterly offspring, Intelligent Life, he was probably pumping a little Pavarotti—maybe a This American Life podcast, a choice bit of Faulkner, or some Sartre on the side.

Or it could have been Soulja Boy, but only if he'd already finished Atlantic.

We know this is true because Parker says, thank God, that we're all getting smarter. It's the age of mass intelligence, where high culture reaches low IQs, transforming the ignorants into erudites—or at least ignorants with erudite taste, as in the piece, intelligence seems to be quantified by cultural consumption:

"Millions more people are going to museums, literary festivals and operas; millions more watch demanding television programmes or download serious-minded podcasts," Parker writes, and a festival director notes that her "audiences increasingly want 'the buzz you get from working that little bit harder.' "

Parker quotes Ira Glass, This American Life creator, to reassure us that it's not as bad as Paris Hilton & Co. have led us to believe. "When people talk and write about culture,” says Glass, “it’s apocalyptic. We tell ourselves that everything is in bad shape. But the opposite is true. There’s an abundance of really interesting things going on all around us.”

Glass lost me when he cited the fact that there are "really interesting things going on" as evidence for the fact that we're all doing just fine, but nonetheless, I'd love to believe Parker. I'd love to side, like he does, with Philippe de Montebello, director of the Met, who apparently "is fond of saying 'the public is a lot smarter than anyone gives it credit for.' ”

Which is why I was willing to stick it out for Parker's reasoning:

"It’s unlikely people are more intelligent than they used to be. [Blogger's note: Yes. Yes, it is.] Perhaps the elites that enjoy high culture are now bigger for some reason? Perhaps popular tastes have changed in such a way as to benefit high culture? Or perhaps it has nothing to do with changes in the audience, and more to do with the artists and institutions, who have become more skilled at attracting people? Answer: all of the above."

Unfortunately, Parker doesn't figure his explanation along the lines of his "all of the above" but instead goes on to note, among other things, that "educational standards have risen appreciably over the past 40 years" and that (shock!) people with degrees are more likely to visit museums than people without degrees.

He does take a paragraph to point out that the smartest among us often make stupid—blissfully stupid—choices when it comes to culture, which explains many of my otherwise brilliant friends' addictions to Gossip Girl, which I totally cannot relate to at all, ever. *cough*  Apparently, Parker's "elite market" is more likely to be nondiscriminating "cultural omnivores," rather than "univores," devouring both high and low culture with unquestioning enthusiasm. "One of the features of the market for mass intelligence," says Parker, "is its heterogeneity.

Which is exactly what de Tocqueville, who basically predicted this entire phenomenon, found so terrifying—that the consumer would begin to consume art produced at the lowest, most consumable level, and that art would deteriorate accordingly. He writes in Democracy in America:

"Many of those who are not yet rich begin to conceive [ a taste for the fine arts ], at least by imitation; and the number of consumers increases, but opulent and fastidious consumers become more scarce.... No longer able to soar to what is great, they cultivate what is pretty and elegant; and appearance is more attended to than reality."

And this is why I don't share Parker's self-described "Pollyanna-ish" outlook on the revitalization of mass intelligence. Yes, I believe that society is consuming more high culture, but why? Is it because we desire to learn, or because we want to appear that we've learned—that we're cultured, intelligent, and eclectic? Since, particularly due the hipster oeuvre, intelligence is the new chic.

Chic, and easy to attain. Learn to pronounce Foucault, drop a well-placed Freaks and Geeks reference, read a few Great Books, subscribe to HBO and the Economist, mix in a little ironic Lil Wayne appreciation, and suddenly, you've got class, intelligence, and culture. And everyone perusing your Facebook knows it. Appearance, not reality.

So, my question to you ladies: Are we, the masses, getting smarter, or are we just omnivorous culture frauds—plain-bellied Sneetches who sewed on our own stars?

Continent First?

Juliet, Melinda, Lauren, and Rachael, I'm perplexed by your certainty that Sarah Palin did indeed know that Africa was a continent not a country. On what are you basing this assumption? Sarah Palin's denials? Forgive me if I find her credibility lacking. This is the same woman who said she never wanted all those expensive clothes purchased for her by the RNC and insisted she would gladly go back to wearing her own clothes. Now we learn that the price tag for those Neiman/Nordstrom's duds was even higher than the $150,000 originally reported and that the RNC had to dispatch someone to Alaska to retrieve the clothing from Palin.

We have no information to indicate or prove that Palin knew the difference between a country and a continent, but we have plenty of well-documented news stories and televisions interviews showing how little she knows about geography and how little interest she has about the rest of the world. Remember that she could not name a newspaper she reads and that she shamelessly revels in a "real America" type of anti-intellectualism. (And by the way, she's not the first person to make this mistake. I've heard other Americans refer to Africa as one country.) I also believe she really did not know the NAFTA signatory countries.

Melinda, you characterized my past criticisms of Palin's intellectual challenges as elitism, but as the New York Times' Judith Warner recently correctly noted, there are plenty of Americans "who respect intelligence and good grammar." They also believe their president and vice president should be smarter, better-informed, and more versed in international affairs than the average American. This does not make them elitists; it makes them pragmatists. I still believe that Palin was woefully unqualified for the job and apparently so did millions of other voters who rejected the McCain-Palin ticket because they were insulted that McCain tried to pass her off as his, and Obama's, intellectual equal. I'm pretty well-informed and well-educated—and I can even speak in full sentences—but I still don't believe I'm qualified to be vice president or president. Knowing one's limitations is a sign of intelligence. That's honesty, not elitism.

I, for one, am very glad to see Palin leave the national stage, at least for now, and heartened that the voting public saw through her fake heartland authenticity. Apparently, I'm not alone. Check out this ode to Sarah.

Average Mom or Brainiac?

Debating Palin's wardrobe was fun, but now we're back to the woman herself. Does her "claim to fame [lie] in her repudiation of Clinton-type exceptionalism," as Judith Warner wrote in the New York Times Week in Review Sunday, or in being a "brainiac," as Elaine Lafferty, former Ms. editor-in-chief and longtime feminist, writes on the Daily Beast? At least the first can be supported with words from Palin herself. What's strange about Lafferty's praise is how, well, elitist—and even sexist—it sounds.

This former Hillary supporter pays tribute to "a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had." And for her clinching assessment, she invokes as a standard a down home man who kept his Harvard Law pedigree quiet: "Senator Sam Ervin, the brilliant strict constitutional constructionist and chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee whose patois included 'I'm just a country lawyer.' ... Yup, Palin is that smart."

This calibration of Palin's candle power is the result of one plane ride with the vice-presidential candidate. Am I wrong to think that a little more exposure might be required to thoughtfully assess a mind deemed so thoughtful and curious—-and that such a far-fetched comparison wouldn't get invoked for a man, at least not with a straight face? Like McCain's patronizing expressions of pride in his running mate, Lafferty's curiously condescending flattery helps explain the rogue impulse, I would say.

Misunderestimating Palin

Please tell me that this conversation re: the "small-town mentality'' and presumption of intellect based on proximity to the great minds of the Ivy League is some kind of parody; the whole smarter-than-thou thing is part of why people at those McCain-Palin rallies are so angry. (Well, that and the shameless fear-mongering.) It's why the GOP's Lee Greenwood and pork rinds schtick stuck—and why until the disaster of the Bush years, the little guy had been trending Republican for quite some time. What I never understand is why smart people don't see that, so feel free to fill me in.

I don't agree with Palin on most matters, or think her qualified for the presidency, but why would I assume that's because she "never heard of the books that Bush didn't bother to read'' or surrounds herself with those "just dumb as her''? Those who knew young Sarah, the teacher's daughter, in fact remember her as a voracious reader. (And dumb as she we too can be; misunderestimating her is a whopping error, and one we should have learned to steer clear of by now.) Anti-intellectualism and elitism are both unattractive, but only one of them is damaging the Democratic Party.

Liberal Self-Scrutiny

For those who want something other than dismal polls to pore over and need a dose of underisive pointy-headedness, check out the Web site Edge. Over there a so-called Reality Club of liberal social scientists and others is discussing a very interesting essay by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt called "What Makes People Vote Republican." And the Republicans say elitists only sneer!

On the contrary, Haidt (author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom) argues that it's time liberals examined the self-righteous assumption that people vote Republican because they're narrow-minded and rigid. Perhaps there's something in the Republican moral vision that people prefer and that Democrats might learn from. "[M]orality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way. When Republicans say that Democrats ‘just don't get it,' this is the ‘it' to which they refer." XX fans might check out the response of one club member in particular, Berkeley psychologist Alison Gopnik (author of The Scientist in the Crib), which is especially apt in the Palin era. Gopnik writes about how liberals don't really know how to talk about the moral intuitions of child-rearing—the ethics of family caretaking—because those don't rest on individualist or universalist ideas. She points out that conservatives are confused, too, and urges joint thinking and talking.

It's all fascinating—yet also frustrating. Here's a club displaying the opposite of elitist condescension, yet in the process, they can't help opening themselves up to anti-elitist condescension. It might sound something like this: If you have to think this hard, you'll never really get it.

Gender and Experience, Again

Like you, Emily, I've been trying to figure out how Hillary pulled off the feat of becoming the candidate of the non-elite. How did she conquer the social condescension that, as Jeff Greenfield's smart piece points out, Orwell diagnosed as an occupational hazard of high-minded liberals? Much as I hesitate to play the gender card again, I think maybe the secret lies in sex—and age. Yes, Clinton went to Wellesley and to Yale Law School, and people in Arkansas felt she put on airs. Back in the '90s, people in D.C.—and across the country—joined in finding her a snooty and patronizing reformer, and what efforts she made to tone it down convinced nobody. Here's what has changed. She was younger then—her White House years began when she was Obama's current age. She's a postmenopausal woman now. As a credential for membership in (or at least solidarity with) the non-elite, hormonal shifts fit the bill—certainly when the candidate in question is up against a vigorous, handsome young guy whose upward trajectory shows no signs of slowing. I could riff some more about how the post-fertile identity alters a woman's social status, how menopause is about coping with change that isn't chosen—is beyond one's control—and how that might speak to those who feel unprivileged, as though perks have passed them by. Or is this ridiculous?