"Are You Smarter than [an American]"

Just watched my first episode of the popular television show "Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader," and by "watched" I mean I made it through seven minutes. I would like to note that said seven minutes of air time consisted of 90% dead air with 5% tense background noise and 5% actual content randomly strewn through over the base 90% dead air.

The show opened with background highlights from the end of the previous episode. Turns out the show last left the leading contestant in quite the conundrum (no it did not have to do with spelling, defining or properly using that last word, that must be sixth grade). Contestant was given the question, "which of these is a palindrome: a) vroom; b) jumbo shrimp; c) racecar?" Apparently the contestant needed to use his elementary school child helper to answer this one (her answer was correct: racecar). Fine, not everyone is into those fun poetic instruments of language, in contestant's defense, when do we really need these types of facts in our day to day?

The issue began with the question that followed. Contestant was given a sentence his task being to pick out the preposition. Contestant did not (or pretended he did not) know, outright, what a preposition was so he had what we call a problem on his hands. Contestant proceeded to think out loud spewing out a stream of smart sounding deductive reasoning in an attempt to narrow down the sentence word by word ruling-out those less likely to be this mysterious preopsition. He did in fact narrow the sentence down to the correct word, thus gaining another 100k.

Problem, contestant's "deductive" reasoning stream was too clean. This created an environment of scholastic question to me. It reminded me of the little kid that hides his mothers keys just to be naughty. The mother, fed up with the situation, decides to play into the child's silly game presenting the child with an irresitable deal, "whoever finds mommies keys gets a prize." Child, lacking the development of a good poker face and drunk with greed for the prize, immedietely "finds" mommies keys; child is punished. A more expereinced child may have had more reign over his or her greed and remembered the game by spending some time "looking" for these "missing" keys thus preserving the sharade and avoiding punishment and perhaps even forcing mommy to produce a "prize."

Contestant did no such thing. Contestant was child number one and should thus be punished. This amazing reasoning conjurs two questions, 1) how could one with such amazing reasoning skills not know what a preposition is in the first place?; and 2) as I mentioned earlier, could it have been that contestant was simply acting as though he did not know the answer to play it all up? I believe that 2 is the answer. First clue is the amazingly quick and clean reasoning line spit out as if rehearsed (nothing is that clean when there's 100k riding on it). Second clue comes from the climate of the show at large, the 90% dead air and anxiety creating "music."

Yes, we all know that the word "on" is the preposition, get ON with it. No, the host proceeds to prance around the stage smoozing with the fifth graders forming the background and hamming it up (anxious music continues in the background). We wonder why we're all stressed out. Perhaps entertainment should

What do other countries think of us? Adult Americans now need to compare themselves with fifth graders to maintain the staus quo. Everyone is a genious when compared the the right thing. Yes, I can run logicaly circles around a kindergardner; really doesn't help me sleep at night, not going to find me testing this out, don't need proof of it.

This brings to mind a show that is based around the host traveling around the world eating strange foods. The host has eaton everything from live bugs to raw pork, smiling all the way. I have this horrible feeling that the host's show may be doing double duty without him knowing it. Yes, in the US the show is about this courageous foodie trying exotic dishes as we all sit back and think, "those foreigners, so strange, so backwater." While other countries are tuning into their favorite show (same show), "What Won't Americans Do?" or some such title, sitting back thinking, "stupid, stupid Americans, they'll do anything for money."