Willful Ignorance

I've written about this before, but can't find the post. Conor Friedersdorf covers it nicely here. Money quote:

[T]he problem with Ms. Palin's op-ed[s] wasn't bombast or contrarianism. It was a dearth of qualifications to write the piece, and a lack of persuasive reasoning within it. What plagues public discourse in America is an audience that mostly wants its beliefs reinforced. That is a far bigger problem than bombast -- if Fox News stayed bombastic but departed from what now passes for conservative orthodoxy its audience would flee. It is downright strange to cast contrarianism or ideological disloyalty as grave problems, given the ongoing trend toward cocooning.

Andy Warhol, if he had foreseen the advent of the internet and the information age, would also have predicted that in the future everyone would be an expert on world affairs. This is why Conor's correct: we already have the solutions to our problems, and we want to hear Rush articulate them in ways we cannot, and we want Sarah to go on TV and thumb her nose at anyone on the "serious" side of political debate. It really, really is that simple for them.