I find it ironic that while Mr. Zmick expressly chooses to refrain from calling America stupid in the first sentence of his Nov. 11 column, I couldn’t help but notice he then went ahead and did just that (excepting, of course, intelligent Kerry voters like himself). Still, perhaps it might be interesting to note that while IQ is one indicator of intelligence, level of education is another. By that measuring stick, according to CNN exit polls, Bush won fairly substantial margins among high school graduates (52 to 47 percent), those who had attended some college classes (54 to 46 percent) and those who graduated college (52 to 46 percent). Only those with no high school education (50 to 49 percent) or those who have attended a postgraduate institution (55 to 44 percent) voted more frequently for Kerry than for Bush. What can I say? Politics makes strange bedfellows.

I wish people would stop trying to rationalize this election in terms of their own intellectual superiority. Perhaps if academics didn’t spend so much time walking around with their collective noses raised up near their IQs, they could have spent more time convincing the average voter that they had better ideas. Then we could have editorials explaining what a good thing it is that only 40-something percent of this country is so stupid.

Richard Hoopis

graduate student