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Tag: stupidity
Ben Carson’s Map Shows He Doesn’t Care About New England, Basic Geography

Ben Carson’s Map Shows He Doesn’t Care About New England, Basic Geography

Dr. Ben Carson has no respect for New England.

The retired neurosurgeon running for president released a map of the United States Tuesday evening to show his support for “the majority of our nation’s governors in saying no to Syrian refugees.”

The map, which highlights in red the states whose governors took such a stance, unfortunately bears the mark of a clumsy or geographically challenged graphic designer, and apparently poor oversight on the part of Carson’s organization: Dr. Carson’s America fuses Vermont and Connecticut together, and moves Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire several hundred miles to the northeast, deep into the Gulf of St. Lawrence and into the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec. He also inaccurately labeled part of Virginia as Maryland.

In theory, this could damage Carson’s image, but the map is pretty consistent with the good doctor’s history of gaffes and blunders on subjects such as history, geopolitics, and the U.S. Constitution. In other words, Carson has been in danger of losing all respect for months now, and it’s unlikely to see the map changing anyone’s mind. Ever since he entered the race, his detractors have been wondering how a man who was named the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University at the age of 33 could be so colossally stupid.

Between trying to defend his supposed violent behavior as a youth, his belief that the ancient pyramids in Egypt were built for grain storage, his remarks on how he would have handled the gunman at the Oregon community college shooting (and that’s just the start), Carson may have exhausted his credibility — among those voters who care about credibility.

But Dr. Carson, whose base largely consists of evangelicals, is polling second to Donald Trump, and wouldn’t seem to have much use for New England anyway, it being the least religious area of the country.

Carson’s numbers have fallen to 11 percent among likely New Hampshire Republican primary voters from 17 percent in September, according to a poll by WBUR, while Donald Trump’s lead at 22 percent has held steady.

The map was posted on Carson’s Facebook and Instagram pages last night, but after criticism, was replaced by an accurate representation of the United States.

This U.S. map howler comes just one day after a devastating report in the New York Times that Carson cannot seem to get a grasp on foreign policy, despite his campaign’s most earnest efforts to “make him smart.” The homeland isn’t much easier, apparently.

Illustration: Is this the work of a five-year-old or just a geographically-challenged campaign? Images via Wikicommons/Ben Carson Facebook page.

Kanye West, Traitor To His Class

Have the Occupy Wall Street protests become such an unstoppable cultural force that Kanye West — the rapper and self-proclaimed “Louis Vuitton Don” whose recent top single included money-loving lines like, “They ain’t see me cause I pulled up in my other Benz / Last week I was in my other other Benz,” — is jumping on board?

On Monday the hip-hop mega-star — wearing gold chains and a Givenchy designer flannel shirt — took a tour of the scene downtown with former record executive Russell Simmons, an outspoken supporter of the cause. His visit came on the same day that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who last week attacked the “99% Movement” for threatening to wreck the financial sector, conceded that the downtown crowd could stay indefinitely (although he seemed to hope that winter would drive them out).

But, more importantly: Kanye West! The rapper who, before he was the walking symbol of “luxury rap,” had shown a political side in 2005 when he told a live television audience watching a charity telethon for Hurricane Katrina relief that George W. Bush “doesn’t care about black people.” (And his earlier singles, before his embrace of “luxury rap” lost its tinge of irony, included ruminations like, “We’ll buy a lot of clothes when we don’t really need ’em.”)

Of course, one could argue that in 2007’s “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” he eloquently expressed the reasons extremely wealthy investment banks need to be regulated:

I had a dream I could buy my way to heaven / When I awoke, I spent that on a necklace / I told God I’d be back in a second / Man, it’s so hard not to act reckless

Which is all to say we shouldn’t be shocked to see more pop culture icons making their way down to Zuccotti Park in the coming days. Whether or not super-wealthy celebrities will embrace the movement if and when it emerges as a progressive economic force and not just a cultural phenomenon is a different story.

Anna Codrea-Rado at The Brooklyn Ink used Wordle to put together a word map of the most common demands on the Occupy Wall Street Forums:

(Visualization: Anna Codrea-Rado/ The Brooklyn Ink)

Here’s to Kanye dropping a single making use of them.