Is Nassim Taleb the only smart man in America?

It’s a sad day indeed, when you realize that all of the news broadcasters that you’ve grown up watching, all of the talk show hosts, all of the pundits on T.V. are dumber than you are.

And I’m 27 and pretty dumb.

How does it feel to discover that Meet The Press host knows absolutely nothing on the issues to which he freely gives his “educated and seasoned” opinion. And his guests whose faces you see every week, know nothing about which they speak. And that Fareed Zakaria is a poser, lightweight and charm boy?

Or that Scott Pelley is a shameless advocate for his corporate overlords and knows next to nothing about journalism or news and certainly feels no dedication to what are supposed to be the grave responsibilities of the Fourth Estate.

It doesn’t feel good. Or even liberating. It’s disgusting. Because I’m dumb, and I’m smarter than all of them. And my girlfriends are twice as dumb as I am, and they are all slightly smarter than all of them too.

So you read Nassim Taleb. And yes, he sounds like an arrogant cocksucker. But it’s only a sound. He knows about that of which he speaks. There is depth, thought, meaning and insight to his essays, speeches and twitter dispatches.

And you listen to these polished newscasters, pundits and talking heads and they sound slick, knowledgeable and professional and it’s also just a sound. Scratch just a millimeter beneath the surface and there is plastic. It is fucking disgusting.

I read about an investment fund that only invests in companies that are run by dorky, disheveled, unpolished CEOs. Through extensive testing, they discovered that the more you looked like the perfect, tall, erect, salt and pepper, patrician, perfect Harvard MBA CEO the more likely it is that you would destroy your company through poor strategic vision, poor hiring, and fraudulent accounting. The less CEO-Looking your CEO was, the more likely it was that the company would be well run.

And when you think about it for just a second it makes sense. If you got there on poise, looks and “gravitas”, superficialities, you really don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. If you rose through the ranks and are short, balding and have a big nose, you must really be good at what you do because you certainly didn’t get there on your looks.

So now if I’m watching a “news” show, and the person they have on is polished, the kind of person that Maria Bartiromo likes to have on, I either turn the T.V. off immediately, or listen and then start thinking about the opposite as a real possibility.