[jenius]

Honestly, I'd be significantly more likely to know Snowden's name than the vice president. I feel like he made a major impact on society that will be written about in history books for years to come. If you don't follow politics closely, the vice president is simply not relevant. The only way you'd know their name is by remembering it from the last presidential campaign, where the his and the president's names were everywhere, or if a vice president happened to do something extraordinary, which if I'm not mistaken is not super common.

I hear people citing this specific stat all the time as a proof about how stupid or uninformed americans are, and every time I hear it it bothers me. Knowing the vice president's name is something that is neither useful nor relevant to most americans, and therefore not knowing it makes sense entirely. I honestly don't see how that makes them uninformed at all.

[eropple]

Given Joe Biden's long and fairly distinguished career in the Senate, I would think most adults should know who he is, at least in outline, and know that he's the Vice President. And I don't follow politics any more closely than I think any basically educated American should.

But then, there's that "basically educated" thing, isn't it? Our aggressive willingness, as a society, to not know things about how it actually works, and then excuse ourselves for it, troubles me pretty deeply.

[jenius]

Do you honestly think most adults follow what the senate is doing? On top of that, do you think most adults follow what the senate is doing to the extent that they know the names of individual senators, and whether one is more or less distinguished than another?

This would be like me saying that due to X's long and distinguished career in tennis, most americans should know who they are. The problem is that most americans don't follow tennis at all, especially not to the extent that they are familiar with particular players, unless they are superstars that always have their name all over the news (I can think of two for which this might be the case). And senators seem to have their name in the prominent news less frequently than tennis stars, honestly.

[Larrikin]

I consider myself relatively informed about politics and had never heard of him until he became Obama's running mate. Senators and Congressmen are relatively unknown outside of their state for the most part.

[mreiland]

You may consider yourself relatively informed, but you'd be wrong.

Joe Biden was a very well known senator before he became Vice President, any criteria you use to call yourself relatively informed about US politics when you had never heard of Joe Biden is flawed.

[yyyyes]

I disagree completely. Knowing Joe Biden's name is nothing more than trivia for 99% of Americans and has little to do with knowing "how it actually works".

I had to struggle to recall the name. The man is utterly unimportant to me, though I do hope he is eventually punished for the crimes of his administration.

[Certhas]

If you don't recall the name of Joe Biden, I very much doubt you know what the administration has done in enough detail to judge whether they were crimes, or if he had any involvement in them.

[yyyyes]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulrahman_al-Awlaki

[rhizome]

He's essentially a famous white person in the grand scheme of things. How many people in the US are even "basically educated?"