Are polit­i­cal attack ads such a bad thing? John G. Geer, author of In Defense of Neg­a­tiv­i­ty: Attack Ads in Pres­i­den­tial Cam­paigns, doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly think so. He main­tains that they often enrich, rather than cor­rode, the polit­i­cal process. And now his pub­lish­er has assem­bled The Attack Ad Hall of Fame. Includ­ed on the list is the most famous/controversial one — the “Daisy ad” from the 1964 John­son-Gold­wa­ter cam­paign. John­son’s ad, which was only aired once, nev­er men­tioned Gold­wa­ter by name, but it raised fears about whether Gold­wa­ter might bring us to the nuclear brink. For more ads, see the Muse­um of the Mov­ing Image, and watch Geer him­self get swift-boat­ed on YouTube.

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This bit of audio (MP3 — Feed — Web Site) lucid­ly explains what hap­pened at Bear Stearns, and why the Fed act­ed as it did. It’s worth a good lis­ten if you’ve been try­ing to piece togeth­er the log­ic. The audio comes from the News Hour with Jim Lehrer.

[Update: I’d also rec­om­mend this piece from the New York Times. It does a good job of explain­ing the big­ger pic­ture.]

On a less seri­ous note, we also have a video that explains the cred­it cri­sis with the help of a coun­try music jin­gle. More astute view­ers will note the name of the singer, Mer­le Haz­ard, is an allu­sion to the con­cept of “moral haz­ard” that’s men­tioned in the audio above.

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Here’s a quick fol­low up to our post on Susan Jacoby’s new book, The Age of Amer­i­can Unrea­son.  Since the orig­i­nal post, we have pulled togeth­er some media fea­tur­ing Jaco­by and her views on Amer­i­ca’s drift toward anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism.

First, you can watch her recent inter­view with Bill Moy­ers: Video — Mp3 — iTunes — Feed.

Next, lis­ten to this radio pro­gram — “Anti-Intel­lec­tu­al­ism in the US” — that fea­tures Jaco­by and a pan­el of thinkers: Mp3 — iTunes — Feed — Web site.

There is a lot of pub­lic­i­ty this week around Susan Jacoby’s new book, The Age of Amer­i­can Unrea­son. The new work fits into the tra­di­tion of Richard Hof­s­tadter’s 1963 clas­sic, Anti-Intel­lec­tu­al­ism in Amer­i­can Life. And it seem­ing­ly moves in the same orbit as Al Gore’s The Assault on Rea­son (2007). The upshot of Jacoby’s argu­ment is that “Amer­i­cans are in seri­ous intel­lec­tu­al trou­ble — in dan­ger of los­ing our hard-won cul­tur­al cap­i­tal to a vir­u­lent mix­ture of anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism, anti-ratio­nal­ism and low expec­ta­tions.” As she goes on to say in this op-ed appear­ing in The Wash­ing­ton Post, we’re now liv­ing in a moment when Amer­i­cans are read­ing few­er books than ever, and they know stag­ger­ing­ly lit­tle about the world: Only 23 per­cent of Amer­i­cans with some col­lege edu­ca­tion can iden­ti­fy Iraq, Iran, Sau­di Ara­bia and Israel on a map, even though the US has a tremen­dous amount at stake there. (Source: NY Times book review.) And one fifth of Amer­i­can adults think that the sun revolves around the Earth. This is all pret­ty bad. But what makes mat­ters worse is the “alarm­ing num­ber of Amer­i­cans who have smug­ly con­clud­ed that they do not need to know such things in the first place.” Igno­rance has some­how strange­ly gone from vice to virtue.

What are the solu­tions? I guess you’ll have to get the book, or get mil­lions of your friends to read Open Cul­ture (wink).

UPDATE: You can catch Bill Moy­ers’ inter­view with Susan Jaco­by here: video — mp3 — iTunes — feed. This will let you take a clos­er look at Jacoby’s argu­ment. Thanks Muriel for the tip!

Relat­ed Piece:

Amer­i­ca’s Philoso­pher Pres­i­dent

Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion

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