How ignorant should Congress be allowed to be?

The Stop Online Piracy Act has been roundly condemned by everybody, and I do mean everybody, who knows jack and s--t about the Internet. Unfortunately, that doesn't include many members of Congress, as Joshua Kopstein writes.

When the security issue was brought up, Rep. Mel Watt of North Carolina seemed particularly comfortable about his own lack of understanding. Grinningly admitting “I’m not a nerd” before the committee, he nevertheless went on to dismiss without facts or justification the very evidence he didn’t understand and then downplay the need for a panel of experts. Rep. Maxine Waters of California followed up by saying that any discussion of security concerns is “wasting time” and that the bill should move forward without question, busted internets be damned.

I can't express my outrage better than by quoting Kopstein further.

But the chilling takeaway of this whole debacle was the irrefutable air of anti-intellectualism; that inescapable absurdity that we have members of Congress voting on a technical bill who do not posses any technical knowledge on the subject and do not find it imperative to recognize those who do.

This used to be funny, but now it’s really just terrifying.

The trope of aw-shucks-regular-guy-or-gal-ness is merely annoying as an affectation to woo voters. Adopting it as your way of analyzing legislation, though, is beyond annoying: it borders on criminal recklessness.

Of course, another interpretation of this behavior would be that Waters, Watts and their allies are simply playing dumb so as to conceal their deep indebtedness, financial and otherwise, to Big Content.

Come clean, Mel. Fess up, Maxine. Are you really as proud of your gross ignorance as you sound, or are you too scared to admit you're screwing Internet users because Hollywood donated big time to your campaigns?

(Steve King, I don't give a damn whether you are as dumb as a rock, which is certainly how you come off: you're a waste of space in Congress no matter what.)

(Thanks to Marco Arment for the link.)