The political flap du jour is the accusation that President Obama is spending $200 million a day to visit India, and that the administration has ordered the navy to deploy 34 ships for the event, i.e. one tenth of the entire US Navy (See Sacramento Bee, Nov. 6, 2010). The source of this outlandish accusation is an obscure Indian agency, and American conservatives eagerly ran with it, and magnified it. Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Backmann, the frightening candidate for House Majority Leader, has repeated these allegations as facts. Glenn Beck has multiplied the number by ten, to arrive at a total price tag of $2 billion for Obama’s entire trip. The problem, once again, is stupidity: We live in a culture which is increasingly illiterate and innumerate.
Most people - and this apparently includes radio and TV demagogues with millions of followers, and congress people who represent millions of people - barely understand the difference between words such as “million” and “billion.” After all, it’s only a one-letter difference.
In her blockbuster movie “Contact,” Jodie Foster says that “she traveled billions and billions of light years away,” or something to that effect. Of course she meant millions, since the total size of the Universe is only about 10 to 13 billion light years.
But what the heck, a million and a billion are both “a lot,” so who cares if one is a thousand times larger than the other, right?
It’s the same with the current flap about Obama’s travel expenses. The trip may very well cost over $10 million a day. That’s roughly what President Clinton’s overseas trips cost. It’s a lot. But it’s one twentieth of the accusation.
In my book, even $10 million a day is extravagant. I know, security is very expensive, the President has a huge entourage, setting up such a trip takes months of expensive preparations, etc. Still, the extravagant expenses of today’s heads of state, CEOs and other big wigs will be remembered, centuries from now, the same way that we recall pharaohs, Roman emperors, the French Louis Kings and other despots from the past: squandering grotesquely, while the masses barely get by. But this is another topic.
My topic today is the cacophony of our illiterate and innumerate culture. And what else do you expect, when education is one of our country’s lowest priorities?
I realize that many people struggle valiantly to go to college, and that millions who would desperately want to get an education beyond high school are deprived of it due to circumstances beyond their control. At the same, radio and TV blowhards like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck announce the fact that they never went to college as a badge of honor. Even comedian Jay Leno proudly reminds us of this sometimes. They probably feel that this, somehow, makes them part of “the common people,” as opposed to pointy-headed intellectuals like Obama and all those liberal professors. The insinuation is that being uneducated is cool.
Years ago I read about a stone-age tribe in New Guinea called the “Dani.” They knew three numbers: “One,” “Two,” and “Many.”
But don’t worry, most of my students are way, way better at math than that. leave comment here
