Pro-War Politicians Cost Teenager $275,000 (USD)

Tonight, October 4th, 2007 the first episode of Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader aired with the new class.  The first contestant of the new series was an eighteen year old high school valedictorian named Katie Barossa (sp).  She was noted to be the youngest contestant to ever appear on the show on which contestants make an attempt to answer ten grade school questions with the help of  five ten year old classmates to win $500,000.  If successful, the contestant can opt to try to answer one additional grade school question and double their winnings to one million dollars.  The opening series of shows ended last week without a single contestant winning the top prize.

Katie got off to a  great start and chewed through the early questions quickly and confidently.  She only used one of her three "cheats" as she answered question after question correctly.  Over the course of the one hour show she racked up an impressive $300,000 US dollars in prize money with the help of her precocious classmates.  With two cheats left, and one question remaining for the $500.000 prize she was asked which nation opposed England in the Hundred Years War of the 14th and 15th centuries.

As is the norm on the show, the contestant was encouraged to talk out her reasoning before committing to an answer.  She spoke for a couple of minutes before committing to Spain as her answer.  She was wrong.  England fought France in the Hundred Years War.  By answering incorrectly, she had to give back all but $25,000 of her prize money.

Keep in mind that this contestant is 18 now in 2007.  Four years ago, when she was at the tender and impressionable age of 14, Republican Bob Ney was using his committee chair to change the name of French Fries and French Toast to Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast in the House of Representative eateries.  His action reflected the anti-French sentiment among some lawmakers who felt President Jacques Chirac is betraying the US by opposing its policy on disarming Iraq.   In 2006, Ney took time off from France-bashing to plead guilty to a charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States and to a charge of falsifying financial disclosure forms.

Talk of French cowardice and nasty name calling like "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" was rampant at the time.  The surrender monkey term originated with The Simpsons in the 1990′s before being picked up and used predominantly by Republican American politicians and publications, led by Jonah Goldberg’s online column for the National Review.  These sentiments obviously took their toll on this young lady’s intellectual development.  In her vocalized reasoning for selecting Spain, she disqualified France with "I know its not France because the French aren’t any good at war and couldn’t have kept up a war for a hundred  years." She obviously failed to recall or learn about Napoleon’s many successful endeavors or about French support for the US in our War for Independence.

Our politicians need to remember that the children of America occasionally look away from their IM clients and cell phones and listen to what they say.