Desiring Machine

A few years ago Stephen Colbert gave a brilliant and stirring performance at Bush’s White House Correspondent’s dinner. This time around John Hodgman was out to do the honors.

I found Hodgman very compelling and deeply insightful on the age old question of Jocks vs Nerds. It is one of those things that is so often caricatured in the media. But Hodgman’s rendition here is absolutely brilliant, to my ears he is doing serious work. To propose that it is a philosophical difference does more than merely point to the metaphysical divides. It presents the deep chasm between those who get it and those who don’t. While the term Nerd is relatively recent vintage, a derivative of Dr. Seuss’s phrase “a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too”, the debate is old. In the 50s and 60s before the term Nerd had gained much prominence the term used to cast aspersion on the intellectual was “Egghead”. Nixon famously deployed the term against Adlai Stevenson in the 1950s. Boffin is the British equivalent of the concept. One might go so far as to say that this division belies Rene Descartes dualism, between the process of mind and the material fact of bodies. Is not Cogito Ergo Sum, I think therefore I am, a nerd’s existential assertion and fundamental justification of existence?

The battle between the intellectual and anti-intellectual is a timeless battle. The tension between these forces is deeply ingrained in much of human history. And is a remarkably convenient shorthand to characterize the basic source of conflict that lies behind so many conflicts. Hodgman to call the Bush administration a “Jock” administration lead by a cheerleader is self evident at this point. But to point it out as he does is cast a light on the deep differences.

As evidenced by some comment threads I have read many will point out that Hodgman was not that funny. Or that “Colbert was better”. To my way of thinking this entirely misses the point. Hodgman was not try to be “funny” that is far too jocular of a concept. He was being serious. Deeply serious. And the delivery was both enlightening, and profoundly satisfying. Now sure not everyone will get the esoteric references, I certainly didn’t. And while we can all laugh at the spock jokes, there is a varying degree of those who get it and those that don’t. Those whose believe there are only two classes of the people in the world and those that look with pity on the failure of others to recognize the validity of the third term or class that so obviously separates them from the first two classes. I have never particularly subscribed to binary thought patterns and classification systems. But Hodgman’s “age old conflict between nerds and jocks” rings deeply true.