A Question for Kelly Pickler: Do People in Hungary Eat Turkey?

“I’m thinking about selling everything I got, buying a car and driving to Germany. They say it’s nice there.”

In many settings, the above quote would be perfectly reasonable. However, these words were spoken by a fellow soldier during basic training in 1989 at Fort Benning, Georgia and he was from Louisiana. See the problem now? If not, you just might be a “typical American” (if I can borrow that phrase from Barack Obama) like former American Idol contestant Kelly Pickler in the following video.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that modern-day Americans’ grasp on geography is absolutely abysmal compared to 50 years ago. Ironically, that was about the same time that state and federal bureaucrats started interfering in local schools. The result? In 2006, in spite of being at war and having lost over 2,000 American soldiers, 63% of young people surveyed in a National Geographic-Roper Public Affairs 2006 Geographic Literacy Study could not locate Iraq on a map. Worse, 75% could not correctly identify Iran – a country which ranks high on  John McCain’s lame joke list.

What does this mean? It means that in an increasingly integrated world the future doesn’t look so bright for some of us. My Dad was right when in the mid-80’s he looked at my mediocre report card and said “there are tens of millions of kids in China that are going to eat your lunch” (true story.) Competition from India, China and a slew of other countries is getting hotter than a public bathroom at the Republican National Convention. Does anybody care? Or are we collectively too dumb to notice?

As this young lady makes a complete ass out of herself, apparently without her even noticing, it should make America cringe and our competition smile.  There’s only so much lunch to go around. Turkey, anyone?

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