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Selective Stupidity: Difference between revisions
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Unfortunately, when shows do this to people from another country it tends to encourage bouts of [[Misplaced Nationalism]], as it feeds the egos of those who believe people from the given country really ''are'' that stupid.
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* ''[[Private Eye]]'' has a regular feature called "Dumb Britain", which lists wrong answers given to supposedly simple questions by quiz show contestants.
** Often criticised in the letters pages. One 'dumb answer' was to the question 'Where do Panama hats come from" which was answered with 'Luton'. A letter pointed out that this was a perfectly reasonable response since the answer was obviously not 'Panama'.
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* Rick Mercer's ''Talking To Americans'' features segments in which passers-by are asked questions like "Do you find it appalling that 70% of Canadian children can not name the state they live in." Very few people caught on. A particularly memorable example was a mother going on about how shameful it was only to have her very young son pipe up with "Waita minute! Canada's got provinces!"
** Mercer's also managed to dupe Mike Huckabee, George W. Bush, an Ivy League professor, and nearly every member of the Canadian Parliament since the early 1990's into saying or doing asinine things. He's a national treasure.
* ''[[The
* The book ''Non Campus Mentis'' features hundreds of amusingly flawed statements on world history, supposedly taken (out of context) from actual essays written by college students.
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* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q566ys0sqVQ The Brits seem to like this], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY8u54jFubM a] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuKMtLOKG8k lot].
** Those guys are Australian, as reported in the next entry.
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* Australian satirical news show ''CNNNN'' (made by the same guys who would later make ''The Chaser's War on Everything'') had their roving reporter in America ask passers-by which country America should invade next by placing flags on a map. A lot of people put their flags on Australia, which had been mislabelled as "Iran", "France" and "North Korea". [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuKMtLOKG8k Watch it here].
** Julian did this with general knowledge questions in most episodes. A particularly memorable one was a man who was asked "Who was the first man on the moon?" His answer: "You know, some people don't think that happened, they think it was [[Malaproper|reincarnated]] in Arizona somewhere." [[Flat What|What.]]
* On
** Perhaps people should try a different name next time? "Hydroxic acid" has a nice ring to it. (For the pedants: water is a perfectly good proton donor, therefore by definition a pretty good acid. That it's also a perfectly good alkali makes no difference.)
*** Since it's also a proton acceptor and thus a base, "Hydrogen hydroxide" is another fine name.
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* Documentaries about the past (''[[The Atomic Cafe|The Atomic Café]]'', for instance) often try to show how (supposedly) ignorant or naive people in, say, the [[The Fifties]] were by showing stock footage of people doing or saying [[Values Dissonance|now-ridiculous things]]. The fact that the same handful of clips seem to be used in multiple documentaries demonstrates the weakness of this position.
* Played with in the introduction to ''[[Dave Barry]] Slept Here'':
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[[Category:Stupidity Tropes]]
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