We’ve been saying for a quarter-century that Americans are Aggressively Ignorant: It’s not that they can’t handle the truth, they just don’t want to know it. Fox News exploits that information gap, not by being deliberately misleading — well, lying, to be honest about it — but by telling its audience what they want to hear. First rule of business: Find a need and fill it.

CNN, on the other hand, still styles itself “The Most Trusted Name in News”. Which makes this one of the most self-damning headlines they’ve ever run:

CNN Poll: Americans flunk budget IQ test

In particular, this item was getting some attention Friday:

According to our poll the public estimates that the government spent five percent of its budget last year on public television and radio.

Not even close. The real answer is about one-tenth of one percent.

Not even close! Stupid, stupid public! Where do you pick up such foolish ideas, anyway?

We don’t have Jon Stewart’s squad of interns to review every second of coverage the past few weeks since the O’Keefe video put NPR in the crosshairs, but let’s see what we can find at the CNN Transcripts site by searching all their news programs for NPR stories…

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv5TPY7j4Pc

Scott Adams, who has a made a career out of being marginally more humorous than the drone in the next cubicle, decided March 7 that it was time to deliver his own very special take on the War Between the Sexes, a topic you might remember as wonderfully fresh before you were born, because you either read Thurber or watched William Windom play Thurber on TV.

(NBC, Mondays at 7:30, right before Laugh-In. But we digress.)

What Scott Adams actually wrote is lost to history, because Scott Adams subsequently deleted the post. But just like one of those hilarious moments in his comic strip that proves talent is irrelevant in America, it turns out somebody helpfully preserved the text. So let’s dip our toes:

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[via Mashable]

The world you grow up in is the world you take for granted. It’s the baseline for all that follows. That’s what fascinates us about generations — the world of foiks ten or twenty years older or younger than us is a different world than ours. They overlap like circles in a Venn diagram, but they’re not identical.

When we were ten, we saw live video from the surface of New Mexico the Moon. We were old enough to know it was Important, but TV itself was a given. It’s not like we grew up in a radio culture. Or with gramophones.

As we grew aware of these things, it was a commonplace observation that folks a few generations older had really been on a ride — from the Wright Brothers to Apollo 11. We had missed most of the Twentieth Century action. We were late to the party.

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“Anybody who’s been halfway around the block is aware of In-N-Out’s secret menu,” we are told, forcing us to admit that after a dozen years in California, we’ve only traveled a quarter or a third. In our defense, we have visited an In-N-Out once in somewhat recent memory, which is more than we can recall visiting any other fast-food joint. It’s been a long time since we regularly skipped high-school lunch for McDonald’s.

To join the Cult of The Secret Menu, apparently you just knowingly order a standard item not found on the printed version. Pictured here is what appears to be a “4×2” — four patties, two slices of (optionally unmelted) cheese — the sight of which is sufficient for us to maintain a healthy distance from In-N-Out for another dozen years.

The Ultimate In-N-Out Secret Menu (and Super Secret Menu!) Survival Guide [A Hamburger Today, via Kottke]

Our guest columnist shares responsibility for the deaths of 108,866 Iraqi civilians.

April 7, 2003   11:46 AM

TO: Doug Feith

FROM: Donald Rumsfeld

SUBJECT: Issues w/Various Countries

We need more coercive diplomacy with respect to Syria and Libya, and we need it fast. If they mess up Iraq, it will delay bringing our troops home.

We also need to solve the Pakistan problem.

And Korea doesn’t seem to be going well.

Are you coming up with proposals for me to send around?

Thanks. 

What It’s Like to Work for Donald Rumsfeld [Atlantic]

Sit down. Relax. Now take a deep, deep breath:

How can the stranglehold on humanity’s digital communications be broken? One media studies professor has a revolutionary idea.

We don’t know where to begin. Well, actually, we do, but once we get started, we fear it’ll be five thousand words before we see daylight. And that’s just for the first sentence, never mind the institutionalized horrorshow that is Media Studies.

Our excuse for bringing this to your attention is that it hails from an alternate universe a website that will soon be under the desperately needed firm hand of Megan Carpentier, a veteran journalist whose proud credits apparently don’t include Wonkette, Cynics Party, or getting really pissy about us.

We wish Megan the best in her latest endeavor, and promise not to tell anybody we’ve seen her beaver.

Media futurist: Time to replace the Internet [Raw Story]

Talking Points Memo editor moves to Raw Story [Raw Story]