America harbors some of the dumbest people on the planet.

Despite free public education and ubiquitous mass media and communications, some large number of our fellow citizens are hopelessly clueless. You can see them in action everyday on Jerry Springer and Maury.

Ken Burns is going around saying that part of the inspiration for The War was a survey that found that an inordinate number of high school graduates believe Germany and the U.S. were allies in WW II. (Of course, if Burns were really interested in this bunch, he wouldn't be partnering with PBS. He would be staging the Nuremburg trials as special episodes of Judge Judy.)

How dumb are the dumbest?

They are so dumb they believe the government is hiding the fact that we have been visited by extraterrestrials and made up the story about our visiting the moon.

They are so dumb that OJ and Phil Spector are still not behind bars.

They are so dumb that on Feb. 18, 2009, they are going to wake up, flip on the TV, find nothing but snow and wonder what the heck is going on.

No matter what broadcasters and cable operators and CE manufacturers and retailers and government do to educate the public, the analog cut-off is going to surprise a lot of people who simply aren't paying a lot of attention about what's going on around them.

I'm guessing the number of such homes could be as many as one million, about 5% of today's 20 million over-the-air-only homes.

I say, so what?

So what if the people in those homes lose television for a few days.

As dumb as the dumb are, after their TV sets stop working, they will soon figure out what's going on and restore their service.

Most will go next door and their neighbor will say, “Boy, you are dumb. Didn't you know you had to sign up for cable or get a new TV set or converter box? Call this number. The government will send you a coupon you can use to buy a converter box down at Wal-Mart.”

No damage done.

Unfortunately, the Democrats can't accept this scenario.

They believe that everybody, no matter how dumb, can be saved, which is why they are now threatening to create a bureaucracy to manage the transition and to turn the industries' now voluntary DTV educational efforts into forced labor.

At the prompting of Democratic Representatives Ed Markey and John Dingell, the FCC last July proposed new rules that would, among other things, require broadcasters to air PSAs and regularly report all they are doing under threat of “civil penalties.”

Those proposed rules appear to be two-thirds of the way to becoming actual rules.

Democratic Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein have more or less said they don't trust the industries to inform the public without mandates and FCC oversight.

“We're on the road to a cold winter blizzard of outraged consumers,” a hyperbolic Copps said at an FCC DTV symposium last month.

“We cannot afford to have some licensees in a presidential election year decide that they can make more money selling political ads and figuring that someone else can pick up the DTV transition outreach slack,” he said.

Meanwhile, Herbert Kohl, the Democratic senator from Wisconsin, introduced a bill last week that would do by law much of what the FCC is thinking of doing by regulation.

We can only hope that all these Democrats are not really serious, that they are just threatening laws and regulations just to keep the industries' volunteer efforts on track.

Which they are, as far as I can tell.

The NAB alone is putting together a massive awareness campaign, with out-of-pocket expenses that will surely run into the millions. We will get the full story next Monday (Oct. 15) when the trade association reveals all at a Washington press conference.

The NCTA has pledged $200 million in PSAs and the CEA is running Web sites and encouraging members to put converter boxes on store shelves that qualify for the government discount coupons.

And check out the site of the DTV Transition Coalition, which lists more that 150 associations, companies and interest groups that are committed to spreading the word. The information tickle down of all those group will be enormous.

Was I the only one encouraged by an APTS survey that found that only 51.3% of Americans are unaware of the DTV, down from 61.2% a year ago?

The industry campaigns have barely started and yet half the population is already in the know.

The Democrats say they are concerned about the elderly, speakers of foreign language and the disabled. I'm not sure why. My hunch is that the percentage of dumb people among these groups is | More …