Timothy Egan and Leonard Pitts, Jr. on American ignorance

Timothy Egan on twenty-first-century know-nothingism:

A growing segment of the party poised to take control of Congress has bought into denial of the basic truths of Barack Obama’s life. What’s more, this astonishing level of willful ignorance has come about largely by design, and has been aided by a press afraid to call out the primary architects of the lies.

Building a Nation of Know-Nothings (New York Times)

Leonard Pitts, Jr. on Glenn Beck’s march on Washington:

The fatuous and dishonorable attempt to posit conservatives as the prime engine of civil rights depends for success on the ignorance of the American people.

This is who “we” really is, Glenn (Miami Herald)

(Thanks, Daughter Number Three, for pointing your readers to Pitts’s column.)