[Qualman]

It's a fair point, but the issue is agnostic to the subject matter. Rather, the root problem is that a person or people is/are inclined to look to a fictional comedy as a point of reference on social issues. I think it is unfair to the film.

[breadbox]

I guess the problem for me is that the lazy thinking that's required to accept the general premise is uncomfortably close to the kind of lazy thinking that people are prone to anyway, that makes it all too easy to treat each other badly.

Almost the exact same article could have been written about the original story "The Marching Morons" written in 1951 (with the much-smaller SF community of the time replacing the movie's audience). It makes similar lazy errors of casually mixing indicators of poverty with those of low intelligence, and of implying that fine degrees of intelligence (and not just the grossest levels of mental fitness) are strongly hereditary. In the story the problem is resolved via mass genocide of 99% of the human race. Kornbluth intended it as uncomfortable black satire, to be sure, but that hardly means that the premise can't be taken seriously.

The story was widely popular in the SF community despite its serious logical flaws (ironic given that community's ostensible preference for "hard SF" that rigidly adhered to good science). It's really all too easy to read it and think that because you "get" it, you are clearly not one of the marching morons. You can argue that people didn't take it that seriously, but my own experience wouldn't support that conclusion. (I think Asimov made similar observations as well, at some point in his career.)

[walterbell]

Some people also look to Daily Show and Colbert Report as points of reference for social issues. Is that a commentary on those people, or the editorial postures of mainstream journalism?

[Qualman]

Hmm, indeed. I would still argue that this is an issue of the individual, since they are ultimately the entity responsible for deciding what is a valid point of reference, regardless of if the source is more or less justifiable.

[walterbell]

If millions of individuals independently make the same decision about which media they trust, it may be a social signal.