Look around you because we, the elite, the cream of the crop Ivy-League-educated pioneers and leaders of tomorrow, are the ignorant idiots of today. Most students on campus might know that Michael Phelps won exactly 8 gold medals at the Olympics. Unfortunately, I doubt whether half of them could say who started a war during Phelps’ gold medal marathon (Russia), or even where the war took place (South Ossetia). I’d bet my Big Red Bucks that the average Cornellian could name more American Idol than nations with suspected illegal nuclear arms programs. But I’m not suggesting that heading to Yahoo or MSN for news is the solution. It takes a stretch of the imagination to argue that you can become an informed person by reading the headlines du jour. Recently, I was horrified to see that CNN’s most popular story read, “50 foot Mechanical Spider moves 2 mph”. AIDS, people. Darfur. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are serious problems that need fixing in our world.

We live in a globalized society and what happens in, say, Tehran will affect all of us in some facet of our lives. Maybe knowing about the wars we are involved in, the crises in the Middle East, and our presidential candidates’ respective energy policies will enlighten you to the turbulence in the price you pay at the pump. Some might say I’m pessimistic about the cognizance of our generation when it comes to the complexities of our globalized world. To the optimists: ask the person sitting next to you right now who the president of Russia is (hint: it’s not Vladimir Putin).

Recently, I took my curiousity to the streets to determine exactly how in the dark the average Cornellian is on world affairs. Utilizing a very informal and unscientific method, I harassed a few groups of people outside of Trillium to answer a few quick questions. How many students knew what state Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin is from? Everyone. In fact, most students volunteered additional info about Ms. Palin: She is a beauty queen from Alaska, she looks like Tina Fey, and in her free time she enjoys fighting the polar bear population to extinction and preaching the efficacy of abstinence education (see: Palin, Bristol). They knew about the Hottie from the Artic, but what about the seemingly more relevant info about the man actually running for president? Do you know any legislation John McCain has sponsored? What is his position on the conflicts in the Middle East? I received unanimously blank stares. After playing hardball, I threw a softie their way: What state does John McCain represent as a senator (Arizona)? Strangely enough, after demonstrating a wealth of knowledge of his second in command, no one knew squat diddley about Big Mac, the Numero Uno man on the Republican ticket. My theory: Our student body’s knowledge of world leaders is directly related to their prominence in People Magazine and Cosmo.

I followed up my questions with a little research by folks more scientific than myself. My findings might not astonish you, but they should scare you a little. First off, more Americans read Cosmo, Maxim, and People each month (approx. 9.1 million) than the top three news magazines in the country combined: Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report (approx. 8.5 million). More people watched Deal or No Deal and America’s Got Talent than John McCain’s acceptance speech the week of the Republican convention. Is it the media’s fault that we are inundated with this crap rather than real news?

As young adults, we are the most sought after demographic because we are the biggest consumers in the country (sorry mom, sorry dad)! This means that it is not the latte liberals at the New York Times who control what we think, nor is it Big Oil and the religious right over at Fox News who determine how our headlines read. It’s you and me, we control the media! America has a free and independent press, which means that all of our newspapers and television stations are owned by private corporations seeking to generate a profit for their shareholders. The only reason trash about Lindsay Lohan’s lesbian lover (note the alliteration) is considered common knowledge is because so many of us follow these absurd stories. Whenever I read about the paparazzi snapping photos of starlets going to take a dump, I blame the public’s unquenchable thirst for celebrity gossip for this gross intrusion of privacy.

Cornell is a great university full of a lot of ridiculously talented and intelligent people. But booksmarts ain’t everything. Everything from our taxes, to our civil rights, to the quality of the air we breathe is affected by elections, accidents, and attacks halfway around the world. Avoid the tempting headlines about Sarah Palin’s baby’s baby’s daddy, and flip to the bottom of page seven. That’s where you’ll read about ethnic cleansings, economic turmoil, and the rest of the news that should be prominently splayed across page one.

Gabriel Dobbs is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at gvd6@cornell.edu Guest Room appears periodically.