Discussion Main / KnowNothingKnowItAll

Removed:

• Vizzini from The Princess Bride is openly enamored with his perceived intellect, but it is clear that he knows far less than he pretends. He belittles the known great thinkers, he comes up with several far-fetched justifications for either cup the masked man may have poisoned (and fails to consider a third option), and keeps misusing the word "Inconceivable". It's implied that his long-winded logic behind which cup was poisoned might have just been a cover, and the real point was to get a reaction out of the Man In Black that would reveal something (the Man In Black directly accuses him of doing so), but the whole exchange still proves Vizzini isn't as smart as he thinks he is.
  • Neatly encapsulated in this lovely quote:
  Man In Black: Truly you have a dizzying intellect.
  Vizzini: Wait til I get going! [beat] Where was I?

In spite of his inflated ego, Vizzini isn't a know-nothing, so this isn't really an example. Vizzini also isn't misusing the word "inconceivable." The joke is that Inigo thinks he's using it as a swear word.

You know, I'm still not sure why the name was ever changed from "The Clavin" considering the sister trope Ted Baxter remains. I can generally pin any character/real person named tropes, but I've never been able to figure that one out.

• Bill O'Reilly. Whether you agree with his views or not, his grasp of facts is, to put it kindly, supremely frequently in question.
  • This O'Reilly fan can agree with the above statement to a point. O'Reilly, though he has his factual hiccups, is a lot better informed than most of the other FNC pundits * cough* Hannity* cough* and other Right-Wing commentators * cough* Limbaugh* cough* . In this troper's opinion, the best-informed pundit is Glenn Beck, who does extensive research on whatever topic he speaks on. His problem, though, is that he draws these immense conspiracy theories from said information and then says that they are GOING to happen no matter what... O'Reilly's admitted, himself, that he's not a smart man. He's simply a man doing his best to observe the situations around him and draw his own conclusions.
  • To add some left wing examples, pretty much every Democrat in power (and the media pundits that support them) know next to nothing about firearms or how they work, including labelling semi-automatic AK-47's as "machine guns" that spray bullets everywhere, thinking that .50BMG rounds are death projectiles that can down an aircraft in one hit, to barely knowing what half the things on the Assault Weapons Ban actually did (Note that not all Democrats buy all these myths, but the ones that usually have influence seem to do). And yet, these Democrats still seem to think they know everything about firearms and use that "knowledge" to justify their call for gun control.
    • And then we have Keith Olbermann, who is apparently able to know how the Tea Party movement is like despite not attending any of their rallies and then labelling the movement as a 100% white racist movement (which this troper can testify is BS). Plus, he (and indeed other commentators on pretty much every channel except Fox News) also labels Guantanamo Bay as a torture asylum, even though people who have actually been there will testify otherwise. In fact, a study done by the Pentagon showed that Guantanamo Bay obeys the Geneva Convention.
      • Isn't GTMO a joint operation of the department of defense and the department of homeland security e.g.: Isn't the Pentagon at least partially responsible for the goings on in the facilty? If so, having the Pentagon stating that 'nothing violating the Geneva convention' is going on after investigigating its own facility kind of... you know... biased? I'd rather have an independant (inter)national watchdog (Redcross? Amnesty Internation?) check the base out.
      • 1. The Pentagon is currently a liberal-run building. So I'd probably take their assessment seriously. 2. Conservative comedian Steven Crowder actually went to Gitmo and took and in-depth investigation into both the Detention Facility and the actual city of Guantanamo. What he found is that Cubans attempt to flock in droves to Guantanamo in whatever they can find(which directly contradicts Michael Moore's statement that Americans from Gitmo actively flock to Cuba for their "excellent healthcare" * sidenote: In Cuba, their healthcare system has about one doctor taking care of roughly four hundred patients* ), and that Guantanamo is one of the best-run cities in U.S. territory due to the Military actually running the city DIRECTLY as opposed to the government. Meanwhile, most terrorist detainees in Gitmo's Detention Facility are allowed a good three square meals a day, the daily cost of which is about 50 bucks, several hours of recreation time a day, time on a beautiful Cuban beach, and additional television and video game time a day. Hell, they get their own goddamn SOCCER court to play in.
        • I think the above post fails to acknowledge the fact that Gitmo is a hotbed of controversey in America's "intelligence gathering," and one should be suspect of the Pentagon's study as, liberal or no, no one's going to own up to being a complete fuck regarding Geneva, and it's not like they've allowed much of any access by any human rights or non-US investigation groups. And a city being run well since it's done so by the military, rather than the government? Being a good thing? You Fail History Forever, You Fail Current Events Forever, You Fail Politics Forever, good day sir.
        • The only reason Gitmo's such a hotbed is because of the over exaggeration courtesy of Liberal Moron-in-Chief Keith Olbermann and his idiotic posse of monkeys consisting of Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, and other Liberal Talking Heads going on and on and on and on and ON AND ON AND ON AND ON about Gitmo and how it's the "Anti-Statue of Liberty." Also, mind telling me what kind of history you were citing in saying the military running Guantanamo is a bad thing? You think our military is run like Nationalist Japan or something? Or that our men are Wacky Nazis? Way to compare our armed forces to the perpetrators of Pearl Harbor and the Holocaust, respectively. Also, WAY TO IGNORE THE ENTIRE SECOND POINT OF MY ARGUMENT.
      • The fact is that a lot of people with influence act like a Know-Nothing Know-It-All. It's an unfortunate side-effect of having said influence.

I'm unsure of adding this to Real Life..

• People who feed their cats and dogs vegetarian diets, claiming they "love it". They eat it so fast not because they love it, it's because they're hungry. Dogs and cats can't digest vegetable matter directly! They have pointy teeth because they're carnivores! CARNIVORES BY DEFINITION EAT MEAT ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY.

Because A) It's not entirely relevant and B) It's kinda my Berserk Button, along with declawing of cats for non-medical reasons. (Let's cut the tips of their fingers off and see how they like it.)