My Idol: Maureen Dowd: Dowd's piece today "Making Ignorance Chic"(link below) was so good and so on target with what I have been reading and about which I have thinking that I sent a letter to the New York Times below.

Maureen Dowd's excellence never ceases to astound me. Who writes better and more eloquently, incorporating great literature, music and art in her editorials than she? I salivate with jealousy at this astoundingly intelligent interesting woman. I try ALWAYS to read what she writes. Her editorial today "Making Ignorance Chic" on the Palin paucity of intellect and the national pride it evokes is no exception, indeed. It was brilliantly written. Beyond that it is chilling.

In keeping with the content of her article may I make a reading suggestion to both her and others who read and love learning as I do. A book was recommended to me by my ever so astoundingly brilliant physician and friend. It is entitled: "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free" by Charles P. Pierce. I have begun to read it and cannot put it down. I think both Ms. Dowd and the rest of us who cannot learn enough each day and wish the hours would stretch to be able incorporate the works of Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Toni Morrison and Shakespeare all one day will LOVE it. This book speaks to the issue of the screaming ignorance of a part of the American public. It is both profound and sad that this nation of 350 million has such an overabundance of ignorance and worse it is proud that it does!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/opinion/20dowd.html?_r=1&hp