D'oh

We are dumber than you might imagine.

Folks hoping to gin up some publicity for a new online game called "Gold Rush" ordered a Zogby International poll of Americans' knowledge of popular culture versus, say, things that one might pick up in school.

Yes, you might have heard the headline, U.S. citizens are more versed in Homer Simpson than the Homer that wrote The Iliad.

I asked the people at AOL and Mark Burnett Productions to generate some local results. They came back with what the pollsters were told by respondents from the metropolitan area that includes PA and Jersey burbs. It's not pretty.

They polled 355 adults in the region between Aug. 1 and Aug 4. Results are accurate plus or minus 5.3 percentage points. Here's the worst part -- it's not like pollsters got a bunch of dolts to answer questions. Half the respondents spent at least some time in college.

67 percent knew Homer was the name of the father on The Simpsons. About 29 percent could name either The Iliad or The Odyssey. (It should be some consolation that more Philly folks knew the answers to both these queries than did Americans as a whole. This was true in general of all the questions. We should be less ashamed than the rest of the country.)

65 percent knew Superman was from the Planet Krypton. 44 percent knew Mercury was the planet closest to the sun.

59 percent correctly answered that CSI stands for Crime Scene Investigation. And -- trumpets, please -- even more, 61 percent, said that CIA stands for Central Intelligence Agency.

If you're a little disappointed at that last result, take heart in this:

A blazing 72 percent could identify the Three Stooges, which makes sense given their Philadelphia lineage.  And extra 3 percent knew Shemp. But only 56 percent could tell the names of the three branches of the U.S government - Executive, Judicial and Legislative.

71 percent could identify Harry Potter, the boy wizard created by J.K. Rowling. But only 55 percent were able to name Tony Blair, the boyish British prime minister.

Philadelphians were better at naming Snow White's dwarfs than Supreme Court Justices. Sleepy came in first - 54 percent knew him. Dopey (pictured above, left) placed with 45 percent. The Supremes? The best score - 56 percent - went to "not sure." Among actual justices, Clarence Thomas scored best with 23 percent name recognition. Antonin Scalia came in second, with 14 percent.

17 percent could name the federal judge from Philadelphia who became the 110th Supreme Court Justice this year, Samuel Alito. (Why he placed lower than Scalia in the earlier question is one of the poll quirks. Maybe people were checking the ball scores while answering.) And the winner of American Idol in May? A larger share, 24 percent, correctly named Taylor Hicks.

There's more, but it's too depressing to detail. More than half the respondents could not name a single member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the Philadelphia area. The second highest share, 24 percent, named someone who didn't actually represent the Philadelphia area. Robert A. Brady scored highest with 6 percent name recognition.

But there's a limit to how dumbed down we've become.

38 percent knew the name of the CBS reality TV show where hundreds of microphones and cameras eavesdrop on house guests -- Big Brother.

Yet 79 percent could name the person who authorized the real reality show where the National Security Agency eavesdrops on U.S. citizens and foreign nationals -- President Bush (pictured above, right.)

Thank you for clearing up the Shemp question. And I'm cracking up at the Bob Brady thing -- those people were probably all at his barbeque.

i did an exercise like this with my friends a little while ago with the brady bunch and the supreme court justices.  i could name more scotus justices than brady bunch members.

I was crossing the street at Broadway and Columbus in San Francisco one day in the mid '70s, and nearly walked into the girl who played Marcia Brady. A brush with greatness. 

I don't think it's dumbed-down at all.

I don't see what the issue is here.
Are we supposed to be appalled that people don't know history and literature, and are instead knowledgeable about things to which they are exposed on a daily basis? They are paying attention to things to which they are constantly exposed. When is the last time "The Iliad" was released to a thousand movie theaters, or a Supreme Court justice appeared on television?

I guess I'm supposed to weep for the intelligence of the general public, but instead I think that people are aware of their surroundings. Popular TV, movies and modern culture are important to people. Isn't that what we are sold on a daily basis?

If you want us to know about the inner workings of our government, make it interesting and convince us that it matters - otherwise, move out of the way, "The Simpson's" is on three times a day.