"... Carr never needed people to think that he was the smartest guy in the room. He could be self-deprecatingly funny."
From "Postscript: David Carr (1956-2015)," by Jelani Cobb (in The New Yorker).
... Washington journalists, who all but wore cufflinks inscribed with their I.Q.s...
Good lord! I'd love to know the details of the I.Q.-pride that Cobb witnessed. Cobb's short piece mourns the fallen media critic David Carr, and we are not told about that larger context within which Carr was an outlier. I want to hear what underlies that snarky cufflinks inscribed with their I.Q.s image. It's hard even to understand. If there were cufflinks inscribed with I.Q.s, there would be no point in displaying neediness about being regarded as the smartest guy in the room. We could check your cufflinks and see a number that everyone in a room with such cufflinks would regard as a statement of the actual fact.
I don't live and move amongst the journalists of Washington. I've been embedded in academia here in The North for 30 years. If anyone displayed neediness about seeming to be the smartest guy — only guys, Jelani? — in the room around here, he'd be regarded — I think — as a little embarrassing and less intelligent than the rest, and someone behaving in the Carr manner would be far more likely to be suspected of being the most intelligent. Self-deprecation seems perfectly normal in my habitat.
So tell me, Mr. Cobb, how insufferably obnoxious are these Washington assholes?
I mean, it is altogether fitting and proper that we should honor the humble and brilliant media critic who has departed, but it is for us the living to be dedicated here to the unfinished media criticism which he so nobly advanced.
ADDED: In the I.Q. cufflinks system, at what point on the I.Q. spectrum would it be wise to wear cufflinks displaying a lower I.Q. than your actual I.Q.? How much would people deviate from their actual, tested I.Q.s as they sought business, political, and social advantages? What would be the optimum I.Q. for getting along and getting ahead and how would it vary from Washington to NYC to Madison or wherever? I mean, let's say the best I.Q. for these purposes was found to be 120: How far below 120 could you be and still con people into believing you're a 120? How far above 120 could you go and still pull it off? This hypo is horribly complicated by our suspicions that I.Q. isn't a useful enough metric, but deal with it. In the hypo, people believe in the significance enough to wear I.Q. cufflinks. So the subjective judgments would have a very real effect even if the numbers were junk science.
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Cuff links have always seemed a bit dumb to me. You pretty much have to wear them with a tux. And, so I have a couple pair that match studs. But, even when I have had shirts tailor made, I got buttons.
But, that isn't the case in D.C. A friend who works as a lobbyist there was given a dress code the first day he showed up for work, many years ago, and it included cuff links. In their case, they are often used as a signalling device to indicate party affiliation, since otherwise they all look alike in their pin stripe suits, white shirts, etc. So, he has a large selection of elephant cuff links, and his counterparts have donkeys on theirs.
My father worked for a petrochemicals company and had cufflinks made from fossilized dinosaur shit. He was pleased with them.
I can't picture my father going to work wearing a shirt with button cuffs. That would have just seemed wrong for him.
I see a business opportunity for the douchebags at Apple, or maybe Google: Wi-Fi cufflinks.
They would broadcast the wearer's IQ so everyone would know who they are talking to by IQ. That way they would know whether to snark or be humble.
Add LEDs that detect the IQ of everyone in the room and light up accordingly. If you are in the top 2%, you cufflinks light up green. If in the bottom 98%, red.
Everyone would know who to talk to and who to avoid.
John Henry
Any caste system requires markers to keep a hierarchy in line. Clothes are used for that. The Army uses insignia of rank...like cufflinks on your collar.
That is also what the Ivy League schools are used for: caste markers. And why univerities such as Duke and Emory calls themselves "The Harvard of the South."
The Midwest-North likes to be hard working neighbors, and neighbors are equal in caste.
Joe Biden would probably cheat and just rewire his cufflinks so he was always green.
He has the highest IQ in the room and is not ashamed to tell everyone about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TKa2eFfhtY
In the same clip he also tells us that he had a 1.98 GPA. In my school, that was close to a C-. You had to have 2.5 overall GPA to graduate. Grad school, it was 3.0 or better.
And Walker is unqualified because....?
John Henry
Carr had the skinniest neck I've ever seen on a person. I'm surprised he didn't snap it slamming on the brakes sometime.
"They would broadcast the wearer's IQ so everyone would know who they are talking to by IQ. That way they would know whether to snark or be humble."
You've got to factor in lying -- lying by cufflink.
Cobb renders females invisible, not just by saying "smartest guy in the room," but also with this cufflinks business.
And the games played around intelligence are very different for women than for men! Have you ever been in a situation where a woman was showing the need to be regarded as the smartest person in the room? What woman (in what room) would be dumb enough to think that would work out well and yet not so dumb that she could believe she had a shot at seeming to be the smartest?
Wow,
Being a woman is really hard work.
My head is spinning just thinking about it.
GQ UK recommends the handed cuff links by Cartier, £405.
http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/style/dresser/galleries/accessories/best-cuff-links/cartier
Cary Grant wore light blue initialed cuff links and a gray silk tie with his Kilgour French and Stanbury suit (tailored by Arthur Lyons, tailor to Edward, Duke of Windsor) in "North by Northwest."
http://clothesonfilm.com/cary-grant-grey-kilgour-suit-in-north-by-northwest-1959/844/
Thank God for not making me a woman.
I'd go with the number 99 because it has a visceral beauty. (If you don't know what visceral means, I'll be happy to google it for you.)
Also, 99 is below average but not so far below that it would evoke pity. (I hope I used "evoke" correctly.)
At 99 folks would at once find me unthreatening and amazingly able to exceed their expectations. By adding a warm, cheerful disposition people would be whispering, "no, he's not quite a happy idiot nor a tortured genius but he does seem nice."
Don't you think it's more than a little vulgar, though, to write "Cartier" on a pair of cuff links?
This post reminds me of a this scene.
So tell me, Mr. Cobb, how insufferably obnoxious are these Washington assholes?
Judging from the way they interview politicians about science, I'd say infinitely obnoxious.
The smartest person in the room is almost always a guy owing to their having a broader distribution of IQ, albeit with the same average.
" Is that a Phi Beta Kappa key in your pocket, or are we just having an unusually stimulating conversation?"
Meade,
Just be careful not to wear them upside down.
There was a movie where sexual compatibility was identified through a colored crystal. Perhaps an IQ inscribed on a ring serves the same or similar purpose. It provides a shortcut in mating rituals.
CWJ,
Thanks. I've already underlined them. See what I mean by exceeding your expectations?
I'm not sure if you thought he was being literal or not on the cufflinks, thing, but they do exist - of a fashion.
Here they are
Regrettably not available through the Althouse portal to Amazon.
I only wear cufflink knots because I like to get the color I want.
David Carr was contemporary of mine at the UofM. I didn't know him, but reading his early writing in the then relevant alt weekly, "City Pages" you could tell he was a cut above the other young writers in town. If I recall correctly he did movies reviews as well as other commentary. He was and remained crisp, insightful and unsentimental. I haven't read him as much lately, but his writing style remained with me as aspirational.
He was certainly living uphill for a good many years and seemed to do it with some grace.
RIP to a soul who was pretty obviously trying really hard.
Cobb renders females invisible, not just by saying "smartest guy in the room," but also with this cufflinks business.
I noticed that as well, but the IQ cuff links is a variation of the biggest penis game.
Women play a different game...and no, I haven't any idea what that game is......because I have the biggest penis in the room.
For modesty reasons I always attend an event with someone smarter than me. Unfortunately, Stephen Hawking is getting tired of me dragging him around everywhere.
I do not mean 'dragging' literally, of course: it is pretty much run-of-the-mill pushing.
I am Laslo.
I'm a grower, not a show-er.
"Women play a different game...and no, I haven't any idea what that game is......because I have the biggest penis in the room."
That reminds me of a hypo I thought up yesterday. What if men could choose their own penis size? How big would they go? How many would oversize to the point where it would cause various problems? My guess is: 90%.
What are the problems? Think about it!
. . . .and as the saying goes, "If you're the smartest guy in the room, you're in the wrong room".
Fuzzy hypo questions. Might take a John von Neumann to figure them out. He wouldn't need any cuff links.
"Don't you think it's more than a little vulgar, though, to write "Cartier" on a pair of cuff links?"
Looking at the photograph, I'm thinking the part that has "Cartier" connects the 2 end pieces and would be concealed within the cuff. So you'd know and have that feeling of security, but others couldn't read it.
Scarlett Johannson says I'm the perfect size, and that is good enough for me.
Plus, I don't want to dislocate her lower jaw.
I am Laslo.
The average penis is already longer than the average vagina, so you're already into cervix jostling.
In North Carolina, Harvard is referred to as the Duke of the North.
"The average penis is already longer than the average vagina, so you're already into cervix jostling."
That's right: you can have sex with a women in that orifice, too.
I am Laslo.
"This post reminds me of a this scene."
Interesting. (Though I can't imagine sitting through that movie.)
"Fuzzy hypo questions. Might take a John von Neumann to figure them out. He wouldn't need any cuff links."
Ha ha. Thanks. I knew you people would need something to chew over on a Saturday morning, and nothing's chewier than fuzzy hypos.
"Just be careful not to wear them upside down."
You mean: just be careful when to wear them upside down.
I saw a news headline the other day about the first ever penis reduction surgery.
Talk about ultimate, lifelong bragging rights.
Pretty sure the original story is talking about something like this (with US News providing the numerical translator):
http://www.bensilver.com/Colleges-and-Universities.html
This is Meade's set:
http://www.bensilver.com/Hard-Knocks,18281.html#.VN-Tf033-iw
And these are the ones they wear in the White House:
http://www.bensilver.com/Unicorn,18432.html#.VN-UAE33-iw
Few things are more painful than knowing how smart you're not.
"smartest guy in the room,"
Ann, have not you and Meade gone into a restaurant only to have the greeter or wait staff (how's that for gender neutral) call you "You Guys"? I use to replay that does my wife look like a man? But nowadays, what with gender bending who know.
Carr was witty and had an interesting take on technology. Yet, he was not above IQ comparisons:
David Carr: "If it's Kansas, Missouri, no big deal. You know, that's the dance of the low-sloping foreheads. The middle places, right? [pause] Did I just say that aloud?"
Laslo Spatula said...
Please don't let this go to your head, but you are one funny guy! :)
Being a woman is really hard work.
My head is spinning just thinking about it.
I comment about this on a regular basis. For one thing - the effort every day to put the bed back together, and get all the real and fake pillows just right. Fake pillows are stupid in the first place, even if you didn't have to rearrange them daily. I am told that they are "pretty". My response is that they are grossly "inefficient".
Meade said... [hush][hide comment]
I'd go with the number 99 because it has a visceral beauty. (If you don't know what visceral means, I'll be happy to google it for you.)
Well?
IQ is one of the most useful, yet neglected (because of PC), metrics we have.
For example, you want a damn good predictor as to whether a relationship has a good chance of lasting over time - long after initial euphoria fades? Just make sure there is not much more than a 20 point IQ difference between you. Greater than 30 points and it's pretty much doomed. The closer the better.
Wouldn't work for me. They don't make cuff links with room for four digits, especially when the first number isn't a one.
I'm sure that was meant metaphorically. Althouse should not be so aroused.
David Carr: "If it's Kansas, Missouri, no big deal. You know, that's the dance of the low-sloping foreheads. The middle places, right? [pause] Did I just say that aloud?"
I'm happy he's dead.
You should put 105 on there, so they never see you coming.
David Carr was an obnoxious asshole, representing virtually everything that is loathsome about the mandarin media establishment.
What woman (in what room) would be dumb enough to think that would work out well and yet not so dumb that she could believe she had a shot at seeming to be the smartest?
I'm going to guess that the people who most often do this are in the 120-130 range.
A higher IQ is much better. With a high IQ, when you do something really stupid, you have a much better chance of explaining that it was someone else's fault.
I wonder who was the last man to wear spats? Did he leave them to his son, along with his cuff links and morning coat?.....Maybe cuff links are like bad rock groups: if you bonded with them at a certain age, you stuck with them forever. I'm not a traditionalist so much as an intertialist. It takes effort to change so I stick with the old ways. Except for cuff links. It takes too much effort to put them on. Bad enough you have to wear a tie.
Ann Althouse said...
My father worked for a petrochemicals company and had cufflinks made from fossilized dinosaur shit.
I believe that is the best set of cufflinks I have ever heard of.
"They don't see me coming."
"Don't get too cocky my boy. No matter how good you are don't ever let them see you coming. That's the gaffe my friend. You gotta keep yourself small. Innocuous. Be the little guy. You know, the nerd... the leper... shit-kickin' surfer."
"I'd love to know the details of the I.Q.-pride that Cobb witnessed."
It's like bragging you graduated first in your class.
"A higher IQ is much better. With a high IQ, when you do something really stupid, you have a much better chance of explaining that it was someone else's fault."
What -- THESE stupid tyietcuff links with the 99s? Oh, these aren't MY cuff links. Mine are in my suitcase the airlines lost. These are just some cuff links my friend David let me borrow. Mine are 105ers.
You're going to need that 99 IQ to convince those who claim it's a 66.
What if men could choose their own penis size? How big would they go?
I'll guess 80% would oversize, and then realize the associated problems.
In 7th grade, we all had to take showers after gym class. One of my good friends had a huge penis. Everyone gawked and pointed. He was so humiliated by his endowment that he contemplated cutting it off. He moved away before the 8th grade, and I've lost contact with him.
I suspect most journailists wore cuff links with somebody else's IQ on them. Only in certain crowds would you want to claim a lower IQ, and those crowds tend not to wear cuff links.
If men had the opportunity to custom-size their endowment, then women are really going to have to be straight with us about how big they want. No more of this, "oh honey, yours is just right for me" hokum. I mean, I appreciate it and all, but I don't really believe it.
If only I really did graduate first in my class. Then it would no longer be bragging.
Better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and humble the "expert"
I presume they are talking about MENSA cufflinks or tie tacks or pins.
http://foximaging.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=275
I had a Texas lawyer once say to me, "You know what the difference is between New York lawyers and Texas lawyers? Put a bunch of New York lawyers in a room, and each will try to convince the rest that he's the smartest one in the room. Put a bunch of Texas lawyers in a room, and each will try to convince the rest that he's the dumbest one in the room." I've been working closely with lawyers for 15+ years, and I'd say there's a lot of truth in that statement.
If I were a lawyer I'd want all the other lawyers to think I was stupid and had been lucky in the past.
Hey, it worked for me Freeman.
Some years ago a brand of high-priced gin conducted a promotion that included a set of gaudy cuff links with their logo. I thought that was so tacky as to be really camp, but I could not bring myself to wear them. For all I know they still sit in my accessory case, which I have not opened since retirement. No cufflinks, no tie tacks, no neckties. Maybe it's time to put on the gin cuff links!
Journalists having a swordfight over IQ? Could you imagine?
Journo 1: I have a 75 IQ!
Journo 2: Hah! I have a 78!
Journo 3: Well. I had the highest IQ ever. 84!
Journos 1 and 2: ooohhh...
If Tiffany's curator will agree, I'll be buying a set of cuff links engraved with the word "minitiae." Sui generis cuff links are high art, man.
Never mind. He's now fixed that word -- that word so incredibly intellectual that I'd never never heard of it -- "minitiae."
"[Carr] was allergic to euphemism and a believer that journalism was the art of curating minitiae."
But Julani remains right in at least one respect: journalists are indeed the cullers -- and then "curators" -- of the "facts."
I have read about an "IQ hat."
Not long ago, according to two neuroscientists I interviewed, a firm called Neurometrics sought out investors and tried to market an amazing but simple invention known as the IQ Cap. The idea was to provide a way of testing intelligence that would be free of "cultural bias," one that would not force anyone to deal with concepts that might be familiar to people from one culture but not to people from another. The IQ Cap recorded only brain waves; and a computer, not a potentially biased human test-giver, analyzed the results. It was based on the work of neuroscientists such as E. Roy John, who is now one of the major pioneers of electroencephalographic brain imaging; Duilio Giannitrapani, author of The Electrophysiology of Intellectual Functions; and David Robinson, author of The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and Personality Assessment: Toward a Biologically Based Theory of Intelligence and Cognition and many other monographs famous among neuroscientists. I spoke to one researcher who had devised an IQ Cap himself by replicating an experiment described by Giannitrapani in he Electrophysiology of Intellectual Functions. It was not a complicated process. You attached sixteen electrodes to the scalp of the person you wanted to test.
It would be really funny if it worked to put one on Brian Williams, I think. Survey says it is probably bunk, but even if it worked, there would be huge resistance to it since it wouldn't take into account the privilege of the wearer and would not know when to lower and raise the result to enforce that privilege.
It sure would be interesting to pass one around a gathering of journalists though, complete with LEDs on top.
I am sure Gail Collins would do grate!
Anywho, there are different IQ tests and each has it's own scale.
If you're going to invest in the engraving you may want to insert, not your IQ score, but the percentile in which your score placed you.
A Jewish Mother joke: When her son's IQ was measured in the 99th percentile she demanded "Who got 100?"
"That reminds me of a hypo I thought up yesterday. What if men could choose their own penis size? How big would they go? How many would oversize to the point where it would cause various problems? My guess is: 90%.
What are the problems? Think about it!"
The problems are obvious.
As to whether men would go oversize? Look at what most women who go for breast implants choose, and you have the answer.
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