I spent the entire summer travelling. Much of it back in Europe and the last bit in Quebec, Canada, so I had missed much of what passes as news stateside.  As I started skimming through the back issues of newspapers left in my absence and watched the episodes of the Daily Show that were clogging my DVR, I was left numb.

I watched Lou Dobbs question the validity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate and eligibility to be in office 24 hours after his own show had already completely disproved all claims of impropriety.  I saw a young lady use the word, “Nazi” to a gay Jewish man who was live during the Holocaust.  Forget about free speech; if anyone mentions a bomb or terrorism at the airport in any context, they can be detained for an indefinite period of time. And yet the same people who told anyone that would listen how criticizing the president during the time of crisis have called the current Commander-in-Chief everything from a socialist to a racist.

Locally in New York, the entire state senate decided to simply stop working for over two months, fighting like schoolchildren while important legislation involving actual schoolchildren, as well as other key political proposals such as gay marriage equality fell by the wayside. Nationally, democrats forgot they carry an overwhelming majority and continued serving their collective terms on the defensive. Republicans are not faring much better, as the rise of the town hall meetings have exposed too many of its participants as passionate and boisterous but also largely uninformed or misinformed. Where do these people get there faulty intelligence? Before we head over to Fox News with pitchforks, outlets likes CNN and MSNBC are more culpable because Fox News has consistently been a right-wing mouthpiece, providing more entertainment that substance, while most of the channels responsible for reporting news made a conscious decision that news could be subjective.

Talking heads that scream and self-serving lobbyists dominate news programs instead of educated, nonpartisan journalists. People who listen to Chris Matthews, Bill O’Reilly, Glen Beck and similar blowhards are unaware of the brain cells they are sacrificing in the quest for knowledge. What you get are people with facts like this. To compound this, newspapers, which consistently provide more credible news are drying up.

There is no widspread answer to combat the silliness that continues to pervade common sense, but everyone--everyone--must begin to work under the assumption that we don't know as much as we would like to think we do. Then we might start to recognize the stench we mistake as knowledge that comes from our mouths.

EJ Jacobs, Editor-In-Chief