You got to know the basics. He’s not the only one who doesn’t.

So the president made an appearance on Jay Leno the other night. Because he refuses to answer questions for the White House press corps, it was covered like news. Turns out he doesn’t know what events are involved in the Winter Olympics (give him a pass on that), and he also doesn’t know what American ports are on the Gulf of Mexico:

If we don’t deepen our ports all along the Gulf — places like Charleston, South Carolina, or Savannah, Georgia, or Jacksonville, Florida — if we don’t do that, those ships are going to go someplace else. And we’ll lose jobs. Businesses won’t locate here.

But just to show you how beaten down even the new media are about this kind of appalling ignorance, the story reported by Hotair was about how the Associated Press covered for him, inserting a forgiving parenthetical where nothing indicated it should be. This after four years of relentlessly tracking the Obamateurism of the Week. (Do take the time to read them. Eye opening and dismaying.)

[Something grim has just happened. The post was complete except for the insertion of links. I made one small change in link assignment and two-thirds of the post disappeared, even though I have scrupulously saved every change. Should I be paranoid? Well, at least I can ask for your help…]

My point was that the elite of educational credentials are actually proud of what they don’t know about the dross they see as the the rest of the nation — except when it embarrasses them personally. For example, writers for the New York Times haven’t even read the Bible, which is, you know, one of those educational checkboxes they’d like to get credit for, especially given their utter contempt for it.

Two other things most of the so-called elite don’t know anymore. History and geography. I’m old enough to remember that in the sixties, history was jettisoned in favor of Social Studies, where we learned about Pedro and Paula in Ecuador, and their fun with colorfully costumed gauchos. Nothing about the long march of time that brought us from Sumerians to the Cold War, even though we were taught to hide under our desks as the Cold War reached its zenith. (NB. Made up for this in prep school, thanks to one “Tank” Rankin. American and Modern European AP history. Two years of study, argument, and learning. Brutal.)

Geography. Fugeddabout it. What little I learned I got from my dad and his insistent fill in the states puzzle of the United States, dinnertime drilling on the state and national capitals, and the lovely detail of the National Geographic globe in the family library, referenced every time a nation showed up in the news. My dad could, given the name of a state, tell you exactly what other states bounded it. He could do almost as well with nations in the world he grew up in. Today, my wife and I, playing along with Cash Cab, hang our heads on many geographic questions. But we do know that Charleston and Savannah aren’t gulf ports. We screw up on questions about the Cascade Mountains and the course of the Colorado River.

I’m here to tell you that the most prestigious and expensive educations in the United States are no guarantee of knowing anything about the 50 states of the union, their history, and their way of life. The map above is instructive. The map is of the places Obama has lived during his time in America. West coast, Northeast, and one urban megalopolis in the middle. Most of the powers in the mainstream media are even more limited. They know everything from New England to the Middle Atlantic states. And they don’t give a damn about anywhere else, unless they have contracts in L.A.

Go ahead. Find your local Ivy know it all and quiz him or her about the states in the middle. They don’t know squat and they don’t care, either. Press them and they’ll be proud they know nothing of Indiana, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Alabama, Nebraska, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas. They’re just better than that. Like our president. It was clear from the start that his American experience consisted of a tiny fraction of the nation he purported to speak for. I made a suggestion early in his candidacy about how to correct his deficit.

Yeah, I know he’s criss-crossed the nation as a candidate and president on campaign planes and Air Force One. But I submit he’s a victim of a syndrome I described long ago with respect to New York taxicabs. You just don’t look outside. You get in, announce your destination, and emerge at the end of the ride with no real sense of distance travelled. To this day, I — who have taken many many cabrides in New York City — have absolutely no sense of New York geography. Air Force One is the ultimate taxicab.

Much the same is true of elite education regarding history. I recall that Obama pronounced his lack of interest in history courses as a young man (Help me find the links, please…) But if you have no sense of the continuum, the backbone of human history writ large, you have no sense of context. I’m quite sure Obama has a sense of the last 150 to 250 years, but his context is the propaganda of grievance and social injustice, not the grand sweep of human moral maturation. He’s got a community college associates degree in the greatest story on earth. Whether the diploma says Columbia or Harvard. Why he’s such a pitifully ignorant and small minded man.

Why I’ll close on another link. I trust you to get it without quotes or expatiating comments. The title says most of what needs to be said. The Front Man. The article text says the rest.