cthomas

Cal Thomas

This page was created by me, Jeff Opal, on 19-JUN-2003. I last updated it on 26-JUN-2003.

    Cal Thomas has published some of the stupidest claims I'm sure I've ever seen in anyone's writings about politics. Perhaps the stupidest was one expressed by his editorial what was titled, "Dumb and dumber, it's the big media". The editorial begins with this amazing sentence: "Ted Turner thinks you're dumb."   The evidence Thomas gave to support this claim about Turner didn't support the claim at all. His evidence was this quote he attributed to Ted Turner: "The United States has got some of the dumbest people in the world. I want you to know that. We know that. It's a disgrace. I mean there are times when I have been so discouraged about my own country."
     Of course, the quote does not support the amazing claim at all. I'm sure that Ted Turner really does believe that some of the dumbest people in the world are Americans. Why should that suprize anyone?. It is frankly difficult for me to imagine that anyone in the world doesn't believe that some of the dumbest people in the world are Americans. I'm sure that Cal Thomas himself believes this.
     I believe it. I'm certain it is true. Yes...surely...some of the dumbest people in the world are people who are citizens of my country, the United States of America.
     What is noteworthy about the claim isn't that it is false or outrageous in any way, but rather how trite (i.e., "ordinary", "obvious", or "commonplace") the claim is. Of course some of the dumbest people in the world are Americans! How could it be possible that this isn't true?
     Recent estimates say that there are over six billion people alive on planet earth now. Let's say that one out of 6,000 people can be definitely and fairly regarded as "dumb". That would mean that there are around 1 million dumb people worldwide. Since around 5% of the earth's population are US citizens, by chance alone we woulld expect that 5% of a that million (50,000) are Americans. 50,000 is far, far more than "some". It's at least 10,000 times larger than small numbers that meet the definition of "some" (such as five).
     Hence, if only five of the million dumbest people in the world are Americans, then Turner's claim is true.
     Does Thomas really believe that Turner's claim isn't true? Does he imagine that Americans have some kind of special immunity to being dumb? What could be the causes of such immunity? Good genes? A culture that prevents dumbness?
    It's very difficult for me to imagine that Thomas himself doesn't also believe that some of the dumbest people in the world are Americans.
    I suspect that when Thomas wrote this claim about Turner he was hoping that readers would allow him to treat Turner's claim as if it were a very different claim...such as this one: "Americans are some of the dumbest people in the world."

    This claim of Thomas's, and other similarly-stupid claims of his, appear to me to be evidence of brain damage or some other such problem. I have in fact written to Thomas expressing this concern of mine. I really believe that such claims can be reasonably be construded as evidence of Cal Thomas having brain damage.
     In this instance, witness how obvious the false inference is. If Ted Turner thinks that some of the dumbest people in the world are Americans...how can anyone possibly imagine that "Ted Turner thinks you're dumb" (intended for persons of a general audience) can be reasonably deduced from those words? I'm sure that not even the vast majority of small children would make such an elementary error of reasoning.
    The only way I've been able to make sense out of this claim by Thomas is to assume that he was basing his criticism of Turner's remark on the assumption that when Turner used the word "some" Turner was referring to a particular subset of Americans, such as "American Catholics" (Thomas is both an American and a Catholic).
    If Thomas was thinking this, he should have revealed it to his readers.
    Note: if that really was Thomas's assumption, then he did another severe stupidity: he used the assumption that only American Catholics read opening statements of his editorials.
    It occurs to me that perhaps Thomas has been trapped by his own lack of candor. I've noticed that he doesn't reveal to readers that he is Catholic even when the subject matter of his editorial is something affecting the status of the Catholic Church. [E.g., in his editorial that responded to the pediphile-priest scandal he didn't reveal that he is Catholic.] But if he had told readers that he was assuming that his words and Turner's applied to Catholics, he would have been tacitly admitting that he is a Catholic too.