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Monday, January 16, 2012

The Huffpost and mockery

Reading about dumb criminals is a little like reading those lists of stupid mistakes that high school students make: it's fun because it makes us feel smart. (Okay, I may not have gotten an 800 on my math SATs, but I'd never be so stupid as to make prank call to 911.)

Reading about the criminals listed in the posts below has the added benefit of making us feel normal as well. (Sometimes I feel like a little bit of a freak for liking women's feet, but Geez, that guy actually had sex with a dog!)

Admittedly, making fun of dumb people is not very sporting. (After the last four posts, the bottom of my fish barrel is riddled with bullet holes.) But this blog has never shied away from acknowledging that there are IQ differences between people -- and peoples.

The Huffpost, by posting all those mugshots in the first place, was also mocking dumb people. Yet the Huffpost is a liberal publication which in other circumstances finds the concept that there are differences between people absolutely anathema.

In fact, they fully subscribe to the notion that those who look too closely at IQ differences are evil. And they regard people who see homosexuality as an abomination as reactionary, intolerant trolls.

But in the meantime, their collection of mugshots essentially mocks both dummies and perverts.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is there any correlation between substandard intelligence and substandard looks? I realize the mugshots were taken at a time when they weren't in a position to put their best foot forward, but still. Most of those mugs are not very aesthetically pleasing.

John Craig said...

None that I'm aware of, unless you're talking about microcephaly or Downs Syndrome, and none of the people in the mugshots had either of those.

At the opposite extreme, if good looks were correlated with intelligence, our Hollywood stars would have worthwhile political opinions, and we know that's not the case.

I think with these mugshots it's more a matter of the people being under the influence at the time of the shot, plus in many of the cases, a lifetime of dissolution to boot.