Celebs' opinions don't deserve added clout
Published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 19, 2006

By Mary Grabar

When Rosie O'Donnell claimed that "radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam," she did what the homemakers, sitting in kitchens in housedresses and curlers, in my working-class neighborhood in Rochester, N.Y., did in the 1960s.

The difference today is that her particular kaffeeklatsch, a national program called "The View," reaches millions. But the sad thing is O'Donnell's opinions are given more attention than those of people who have advanced degrees or job experience in such areas as theology, foreign policy or philosophy.

As I watch such programs, I wonder why O'Donnell's -- and every actor's and musician's -- opinion on foreign policy is given a forum-- even if the substance goes no further than calling the president a profanity, as the Dixie Chicks did recently.

My college sophomore students, too, are quick to draw analogies between villainous characters in literature and George W. Bush.

I have to confess my own sophomoric arrogance. In a paper for a political science class, I dismissed then-President Jimmy Carter's qualifications to run the country. "What does a peanut farmer from Georgia know?" I wrote.

The professor took me to task for ignoring Carter's experience as governor and for not providing enough support, and gave me a well-deserved C-. As an 18-year-old, I was hardly qualified to comment on the performance of a

president.

The idea that all opinions are equally valid is what schoolchildren cut their teeth on. And as a college teacher, I have been told that I am a facilitator of the students' innate knowledge.

My seminars in graduate school in the 1990s were largely efforts to debunk the idea that any person might have more expertise than another; the claim that one did was attacked as elitist, a vestige of Western imperialistic thinking.

What is troubling is that we cannot acknowledge the notion that someone might be more qualified than we are.

The problem I have is with the smugness that accompanies the parroting of the sound bites--"no weapons of mass destruction," "cowboy diplomacy," "imperialistic." Bill Maher makes the sophistic claim that the Sept. 11 terrorists showed "courage," and hardly anyone -- on the left or right--can effectively demonstrate how such thinking is faulty.

The sophomore, the second-rate actor, the country-Western singer, the 1960s band back out of retirement, all should remember their own arrogance before they take on the "arrogance" of their president.

And as Bush said in his Sept. 11 anniversary speech, this is not a fight "of civilizations" but "for civilization." I would add, unapologetically, our Western civilization, the one civilization that allows the free expression of opinion.

Yes, everyone has opinions. But to ensure the survival of this Western civilization, we need to recognize that not all opinions are equal.

Rosie O'Donnell and her little kaffeeklatsch should be sent back to the kitchen.