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Comment by mortehu | Hacker News Reader

I think the being known to a majority of the US population is a way too high bar. In a 2010 poll[1], only 59% knew the name of the vice president, as mentioned in a Greenwald article[2] about this issue.

1. http://www.pewforum.org/2010/09/28/u-s-religious-knowledge-s...

2. https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/06/john-oliver-in...

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Honestly, I'd be significantly more likely to know Snowden's name than the vice president. I feel like he made a major impact on society that will be written about in history books for years to come. If you don't follow politics closely, the vice president is simply not relevant. The only way you'd know their name is by remembering it from the last presidential campaign, where the his and the president's names were everywhere, or if a vice president happened to do something extraordinary, which if I'm not mistaken is not super common.

I hear people citing this specific stat all the time as a proof about how stupid or uninformed americans are, and every time I hear it it bothers me. Knowing the vice president's name is something that is neither useful nor relevant to most americans, and therefore not knowing it makes sense entirely. I honestly don't see how that makes them uninformed at all.

Given Joe Biden's long and fairly distinguished career in the Senate, I would think most adults should know who he is, at least in outline, and know that he's the Vice President. And I don't follow politics any more closely than I think any basically educated American should.

But then, there's that "basically educated" thing, isn't it? Our aggressive willingness, as a society, to not know things about how it actually works, and then excuse ourselves for it, troubles me pretty deeply.

Do you honestly think most adults follow what the senate is doing? On top of that, do you think most adults follow what the senate is doing to the extent that they know the names of individual senators, and whether one is more or less distinguished than another?

This would be like me saying that due to X's long and distinguished career in tennis, most americans should know who they are. The problem is that most americans don't follow tennis at all, especially not to the extent that they are familiar with particular players, unless they are superstars that always have their name all over the news (I can think of two for which this might be the case). And senators seem to have their name in the prominent news less frequently than tennis stars, honestly.

I consider myself relatively informed about politics and had never heard of him until he became Obama's running mate. Senators and Congressmen are relatively unknown outside of their state for the most part.

You may consider yourself relatively informed, but you'd be wrong.

Joe Biden was a very well known senator before he became Vice President, any criteria you use to call yourself relatively informed about US politics when you had never heard of Joe Biden is flawed.

I disagree completely. Knowing Joe Biden's name is nothing more than trivia for 99% of Americans and has little to do with knowing "how it actually works".

I had to struggle to recall the name. The man is utterly unimportant to me, though I do hope he is eventually punished for the crimes of his administration.

If you don't recall the name of Joe Biden, I very much doubt you know what the administration has done in enough detail to judge whether they were crimes, or if he had any involvement in them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulrahman_al-Awlaki

He's essentially a famous white person in the grand scheme of things. How many people in the US are even "basically educated?"

I've always hated how celebrities join up causes, but I'm now beginning to understand why - exposure to the masses. Maybe the biggest way to get Snowden's name out there and make eveyone listen is to get the Kardashians on board.

I used to feel that way until I heard Angelina Jolie speak on the issue.

I'm not going to google the quote right now but the heart of it is that when they care about an issue, their celebrity can bring more attention than the righteousness of the cause.

We have an abstract understanding of the fact that, in different parts of the world, people are facing hardship but a celebrity can get television cameras to show us what is happening.

> I've always hated how celebrities join up causes

Why?

I can understand disliking some of the particular causes, or disliking the disproportionate attention given to celebrities, but why would you hate the fact that people who happen to be famous also advocate for causes they care about?

> Why?

Because most of the time it's celebrity endoresment - appeal to authority, without having authority. Why should I trust George Clooney's opinion on coffee let alone what he thinks about Darfur?

At least in Jolie's case, she's visited those places. Regardless of her celebrity (and entourage), she has more personal experience than I do. Exposure should at least count for something, even if you have to take resulting comments with a grain of salt due to other factors.

I imagine Clooney's also had more access to finer coffee than myself, but I can safely assume that adverts aren't expressing personal opinions in the slightest. :)

> I imagine Clooney's also had more access to finer coffee than myself..

I saw an interview where he mentioned this (probably Inside the Actor's Studio). Words to the effect of: "realistically the studios are not going to fund a biopic about Edward R. Murrow. So if I can fund it by doing coffee ads, that's something I can live with".

> access to finer coffee

Not sure about that. Great coffee isn't that expensive.

Speaking of celebrity endoresment and coffee - Al Pacino did an ad for Vittoria (Australian coffee brand) which is IMHO burned-tasting, low quality coffee. There was an interview with the marketing people who made the commercial, and the reason why they chose him was purely because he was a well known Italian... making him a perceived authority on good coffee. Spoiler alert - he isn't.

Because of idiots like Jenny McCarthy who advocate things like not using Vaccines for one.

Celebrities often use causes to further there career, which makes many of these things seem less important. Also, the often advocate pointless solutions which can be either pointless or even harmful.

I don't see either of those, particularly the latter, as different than non-celebrities. Non-celebrities often use paid or unpaid association with non-profits to advance their careers, and non-celebrities often advocate solutions which might be ineffective or harmful to the stated goal of the cause they are supporting, because, celebrity or not, advocacy for a cause doesn't require expertise in the domain necessary to design solutions.

Or get Oliver Stone to direct your biopic.

This isn't new, incidentally. "I wonder how many of you here tonight remember Hubert Humphrey, he used to be a Senator."

only 59% knew the name of the vice president

It doesn't help that he's been probably the most invisible Vice President in god knows how many years. I bet you if you asked the same question during the G.W. Bush years a lot more people would be able to answer.

By what metric has he been invisible?

Which is sad. The damage Biden inflicted on US with the non circumvention provisions of the DMCA means he should be tried under high treason and not being vice president.

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