"Unlike the Washington journalists, who all but wore cufflinks inscribed with their I.Q.s..."

"... 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.