Just one of the piquant fragments from this farewell-to-2012 essay by Charles Simic:
“Are there more idiots in the world today percentagewise than in some earlier ages?” asks Teofil Pancic, a columnist for Belgrade’s weekly Vreme. His answer is that it only seems so, because today they are more visible, more audible, and, of course, connected by the Internet. In the past, he wittily observes, everyone was his own idiot, isolated not only from the rest of mankind, but also from his fellow idiots, so that when something stupid occurred to him, there was no chance of it instantly becoming known to idiots in Tasmania and Uzbekistan.
Oh, I don’t know. Surely you remember the convention scene in Woody Allen‘s Love and Death:
Someone always finds a way to get them together.
A little earlier this evening I found, in someone's Facebook feed, a George Carlin quote:<br /><br />"Think about how stupid the average person is… and then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that."