In a new series, which I just decided to start today called “Idiocracy Watch,” I plan to chronicle stories that expose the fact that the U.S. of A. is still a nation of stupid people who blend anti-intellectualism with racism to create ignorance and intolerance.

Today’s entry comes via Editor & Publisher, which has, since the election, been tracking stories of hate and bigotry related to our country having somehow elected a black man to the presidency. Here are some lowlights:

• The Mount Desert Islander weekly in Maine reported [yesterday] that a third effigy of a black man had been found hanging from a tree in the area since the election.
• An e-mail from a student on Iowa (a state Obama carried rather easily):

“I’m not sure who to email on this, but there have been several derogatory things said about Obama in our school, and one of them got a student suspended. I go to a school in a little town called Letts, Iowa. We are pretty down home, country road farm kids out here. But never, in my 11 years at the school, have I ever heard the conversation take such a negative turn.

“The remark that the student was suspended for was this, “Well, it’s called the White House for a reason. We need to get that God damn N—– out of there.”

“There were other remarks, mostly by students who hunt. They were discussing how far a shotgun could shoot, and decided that they could get to a high enough vantage-point to shoot Obama from at least 2 miles away, without anyone ever knowing where the shot came from. ‘Another Kennedy’ they were saying.”

• In Buchanan, Michigan, members of the South County Democratic Club woke up Saturday to find their building vandalized with swastikas and racist comments, spray painted on the side of the structure.
• The Frontiersman weekly based in Wasilla, Alaska, which boosted hometowner Sarah Palin throughout the election campaign, provided column space this week to a local student who alleged anti-Obama racial comments the day after his election:

Finally the campaign was over and I was actively supporting our new president, even though I knew I would be vastly out numbered at school. I expected complaints and qualms about the new president, but I was not prepared for the flat-out racist remarks said openly in the halls and classrooms. I was appalled. While I sat at my desk trying to do my work I could hear my fellow classmates:

“I think we should kill Obama,” one said.

“I hope someone comes up and shoots him in the head,” another would say.

“I hate Obama … he’s black.”

On went the racist words for the full 80 minutes of that class. Angered, I began to think of the injustice of it all and the ignorance of the students I was surrounded by. I wondered where they learned to be so hateful, and I wondered why the teacher never stepped in – why no adult, no student, including myself, had the guts to cut in and say it was not OK. Because it’s never OK for intolerance.

E&P quoted an editorial from the paper in Ossining, in the oh-so-blue state of New York, that pretty much says it all:

Anyone naive enough to believe that Barack Obama’s landmark victory would mean an end to racial bigotry and stupidity need look no farther than Ossining for proof positive that we still have a ways to go. Americans made history by electing Obama the first black president; what they didn’t do, by any stretch, is wipe away years of ingrained racial prejudice, insensitivity and, once again, stupidity.

Welcome to my idiocracy.