Bill Cosby is still pissed off by young slackers:

I can't even talk the way these people talk, 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... and I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk... And then I heard the father talk ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.

But you can become President. Has anyone told Mr. Cosby that we are experiencing a Renaissance of Anti-Intellectualism? Did anyone explained to him that there is a crisis in higher education? It would seem as though he thinks that waggling his finger at young black kids is the answer to a trend that's as endemic to the Oval Office as it is to an Appalachian outhouse: stupidity. In launching his angry attacks, Cosby has more in common with bloggers and pundits than with the civil rights leaders he longs to emulate: unable to effect substantive change in decaying systems, our impotent, bleating rage is all that we can profitably offer.

All the more so does punditry diffuse a debased version of intellectual life, cornering intellect in the name of chat, operating by a sort of Gresham's law of discourse. Punditry is concerned with reviewing performances, rating "presidentiality," itemizing themes, relaying and interpreting spin, not thoughtfully assessing politicians' claims, evaluating their evidence, judging their reasoning. To assess the quality of what politicians say would require intellectual work for which the pundits do not demonstrate competency. Pundits are hired, rather, for the facility and pungency of their presentations and the ferocity and acceptability of their opinions.

The most bookish of pundits, George Will, was hired for the Anglophilic elegance of his sneers, not for logical mastery or historical depth. The punditocracy, as Eric Alterman calls it, does not assess either reason or reasons. Its job is simply to declare which issues are discussable, which positions presentable. It makes up for its intellectual deficits by supplying precooked opinion. The point is not to clarify: It is never to be at a loss for words. Surely the English infusion into American journalism -- the premium on corrosive wit, the fusion of intellectual name-dropping with tabloid meanness -- belongs to this trend: the show of intellect without the demanding work.

And so, Mr. Cosby, you can take your latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont where it belongs. The brainless are here to stay – and we've got the microphones to prove it.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: If God is inside of each of us, like some people say, I sure hope he likes enchiladas, because that's what he's gonna get.