Bill Press gets taken in by Lovenstein IQ hoax

billpresssshow.com ^ | July 18, 2006 | Bill Press

[lowbridge]

From the page of Bill Press' podcast website:

July 18, 2006 Parting Shot

Nate wrote this at 8:56 am:

In six years in the White House, George W. Bush has screwed up so many things, you have to wonder: Is he unlucky or incompetent?

Well, now we know.

Thanks to the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania, which just released a study of the IQ of twelve American presidents, over the last 50 years. And the results are – well, not surprising.

The average IQ of six Republican presidents – Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43 – was 115.5. President Nixon topped the list, at 155.

The average IQ of six Democratic presidents – Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton – was 156. With President Clinton leading the class at 182.

The smartest president of the last 50 years?

You guessed it: Bill Clinton, with his 182 IQ.

The least intelligent president of the last 50 years?

You guessed it again: George W. Bush, with his rock bottom IQ of 91: seven points lower than his Daddy.

So now we know. Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Social Security, Medicare, Stem Cells, FEMA, the deficit, immigration…

The reason George Bush has screwed up in so many areas the last six years.

He’s not just incompetent. He’s just plain dumb – the dumbest president in the last 50 years. And, probably, the dumbest president ever!

That’s my parting shot for today. I’m Bill Press.

*****************************

(Yes, his article also accepts readers comments)

Also archived on google

Be sure to get screen caps before he censors it! :-)

[mollynme]

Thanks for the link. I took the test and my IQ was only 3 points lower than when I took it in Jr. High. (My Mom worked part time in the school office and checked out our scores for us.)
I wonder how accurate that test really is?

[RightWinger]

Only an idiot would believe a moron like Bill Press.

[Echo Talon]

I wonder how accurate that test really is?

no ideas...

[woofie]

Clinton did have a firm grasp of zippers

[Andy from Beaverton]

Press pulled his own post!!!

[DManA]

It always amuses me that people think they can reduce something as ineffable as intelligence to a natural number.

[Echo Talon]

I just took it again, because i know i must have done something wrong... :D here it is.

[DManA]

Silly boy thinks he can just make it go away. Probably has been captured on 1000 web sites by now.

[Fiji Hill]

LOL! It is, indeed, a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

[rlmorel]

You gotta love it! Can you say:

"Hoisted on his own petard"?

[cmet]

Well i took the test and failed

actually i think i did pretty good until i got to the end and saw they wanted my email. Then i remembered i had taken the test some time ago and did not get a score because i dont give out my email for no reason. So, just as before i did all that thinking for nothing. I guess if i had an IQ over 100, i would have remembered the test from before

[Prost1]

Yeah, a guy who does not know what "is" is.

Real bright!

And 125 would be about right. Hillary pulled him up that high.

[Echo Talon]

you vould have just put in a false email like bilboma4884@aol.com or something...

[Echo Talon]

lol

[Cementjungle]

An IQ of 125 is nearly two full standard deviations above the average Caucasian IQ of 100.

Anyone with any understanding of IQ distribution knew this "study" was a raving idiocy at the time it was published.

IQ scales vary from test to test. The only way to make sense of the score is to look at the percentile ranking a test's score represents. If you look at the entry requirements for organisations like Mensa, you will see different score requirements depending on the test. They require one to be in the 98% percentile on any of their approved tests.

[Reactionary]

"IQ scales vary from test to test."

Is that so? Tell me, which "tests vary?"

Does the WAIS vary with the Stanford-Binet? Or does Mensa use astrology to measure IQ?

[Zakeet]

"And Gore flunked out of a Divinity School Master's program. That's the media's genius golden boy for you."

Our boy Bonehead also worked as a golden boy reporter in Nam where his main accomplishment was inspecting his rifle by looking down the barrel (as per a famous photo). Then back in the States, he worked as a crack reporter for a Nashville newspaper (as I recall) where he did an investigative piece with information fed to him by a source named Erog Trebla (he didn't figure out that some darned old mean Pubbie had tricked him until after the story ran).

Of course, all of this was caused by his traumatic childhood of living in the Biltmore Hotel by night and chopping, stripping and hanging tobacco by day.

Fortunately, the ever resilient one recovered enough gray matter to invent the Internet, become a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism, and produce a cutting-edge scientific crocumentary movie.

And to think, had the Democraps only managed to manufacture a few more dimpled, hanging chads, this genius would have become president.

[Cementjungle]

Does the WAIS vary with the Stanford-Binet? Or does Mensa use astrology to measure IQ?

Yes indeed. They all have different (slightly in some cases) scales so the only way to compare is to go by the percentile for a given score for that test.

Saying something like "my IQ is 123" is meaningless unless the test used is known. This is a popular misconception about IQ scores.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Clinton certainly has a facile mind; he's incredibly glib and seems to understand and grasp concepts easily. He's clearly intellectually lazy and not particularly given to reflection. It's his character that bothers me. It would not be true to say that his character borders on the pathological; it's clearly crossed the border and is somewhere south of Vera Cruz and heading further south.

Gore, otoh, is ponderous and exhibits the tendency of people who struggle with basic concepts to cleave tenaciously to some single insight and inflate it all out of portion, drawing unwarranted and unsound conclusions. IOW, he is a natural bore cultivated to monumental status by a fawning media. He is a weak and opportunistic character.

President Bush can be painfully inarticulate, but he is certainly above average in intelligence, while hardly a genius. He would have been modestly successful in his own right, but would have been very unlikely to have aspired to high political office except for his heritage. His one outstanding trait is his character. I believe he puts principle before ambition, and never weighs his own interest, but always tries to advance the right, as it is given to him to see it. What more can we ask for?

[Republican Wildcat]

This guy is so stupid. Talk about old news - I had forgotten about this hoax. And now he writes an article in 2006 on it again? LOL - how ironic he does this in an attempt to question the President's intelligence and demonstrates himself to be the one that is stupid.