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Posted on 09/07/2001 2:00:38 PM PDT by mikeb704

I don’t read newspaper comics much anymore. Dilbert once in a while, and Peanuts and that’s pretty much it.

Doonesbury has been around for more than 30 years and, carried in over 600 papers, maintains its popularity. I never cared for it. For one thing, it rarely seemed even mildly amusing. For another, its leftward tilt appeared obvious.

Cartoonist Garry Trudeau admits: "It’s no secret, of course, that the strip is written from a generally progressive perspective . . ." Progressive has long been a code word used by liberals slick enough to avoid the liberal tag.

Sunday’s Doonesbury was hilarious, although Mr. Trudeau may not be chortling over it. The strip has an empty cowboy hat, one representing President Bush (how’s that for comedic subtlety?) asking an advisor, "What’s this presidential intelligence quota (sic) study I’ve been hearing about?"

The aide breaks the news that Mr. Bush ranked last with an IQ of 91. The recently departed Impeached One racked up twice that. The assistant additionally points out to the president that his working vocabulary is much smaller than his predecessors. The boss asks how that’s possible, setting up the punch line from the staffer: "Well, maybe they refused to count your special words." A real knee-slapper, huh?

The genuinely funny part is the presidential IQ study on which the cartoon is based. It’s an Internet hoax that eventually was reported in some papers, most notably Pravda, that beacon of journalistic accuracy.

According to the hoax, in July the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton Pennsylvania, a think tank made up of high caliber historians, psychiatrists, sociologists, scientists in human behavior, and psychologists, released its evaluations of IQs of presidents in the past half-century.

The highest IQs were Bill Clinton (182), Jimmy Carter (175), and John F. Kennedy (174). The lowest IQs were President Bush (91), his father (98), and Ronald Reagan (105).

Hmmm. Possibly, just possibly, we see a pattern emerging here. All the smart guys are Democrats, and the stupid fellows are Republicans. The average for all Republican presidents was 115; the Democrats boasted 156.

Sounds reasonable. Especially if you believe that Democrat liberals have a moral obligation to instruct us lesser mortals on how to live. It helps if not only are they ethically superior with infinite amounts of compassion, but also are smarter than most of us. Elitism is alive and well.

Even if it’s not true, so what? It makes little difference that there’s no such place as the Lovenstein Institute in Scranton, Pennsylvania or anywhere else. It doesn’t matter that the one president for whom there is an IQ record – John Kennedy – had an intelligence quotient 55 points less than reported in the bogus story. It isn’t important that both the Associated Press and U.S. News & World Report reported the "study" is pure fiction.

What really counts is that in a fair world, in a truly just society, the story would be true. Democrats are smarter. That’s why they have the right to control our lives with laws, regulations, red tape and higher taxes.

Still, we’re left to wonder if Garry Trudeau knows the Lovenstein Institute is a phony. Maybe he doesn’t. He just picked it up in Pravda or someplace and it sounded right, so why check into it further? It’s not like he owes it to his readers to maintain some modicum of accuracy. Besides, he can always say it was a joke. That’s what he does for a living. Despite evidence to the contrary.

Then again, perhaps he does realize the whole thing is a hoax. Yet he’s so eager to harm the reputation of a Republican president, that he used it as a story line anyway. His partisan passions just got the best of him and he couldn’t allow a conservative in the White House without taking action. Progressive action, naturally.

Either way, the laugh’s on him.

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