Defying The Bell Curve - A Simple, Intellectually Unencumbered Man Finds A Home In Progressive Washington

Barker Phillips was not a bright boy, and in fact a very limited one, but of course he never knew this.  Stupid is as stupid does was his meme, for he never knew just how far off the bell curve he was. 

Now, Barker Phillips was not retarded - no Forrest Gump, Rain Man, or I Am Sam, just a good, honest msn whom God simply chose not to favor with intelligence.  He managed his young life well, was always a few grades behind in reading and math, but eventually could add a column of numbers and read slowly if hesitantly from simple books. 

Barker was too slow to know just how intellectually distant he was, and that was his saving grace, for he never lacked social confidence. In fact, he was one of most gracious, charming boys in Miss Golfin's sixth grade.  He took a bit of guff, needling, and teasing in stride, always ready with a smile and a laugh, good at running, a snappy dresser (thanks to his mom who felt that her boy needed every possible leg up in life), and a kind, thoughtful person. 

Mr. and Mrs. Phillips suspected that their son was intellectually challenged but refused to accept it.  He was a slow learner, that was all, a boy who took his time with problems or long sentences, but who eventually got to the finish line. 

And so it was with special help - after-school tutors, home prep, special needs extra time on exams, leeway on overall academic performance - his life was filled with  the hopeful means to live up to his native ability and make it prosper if not shine. 

No such luck, of course.  The boy's synapses simply didn't fire with a charge, and no matter how much extra help he was given, he remained miles behind other students. 

Thanks to a school system that focused on multiple intelligences, cooperative learning, and inclusivity, he was never held back, and graduated with his class in primary and middle school.  It really made no sense to make the boy sit through algebra and Charles Dickens in high school, but if not school, then what?  

So his parents kept up their hopefulness, and enrolled him in Montague College, known as MK because the majority of its students couldn't spell.  There too, given the zeitgeist of inclusivity, he was given leeway, his grades were marked up, and generous teacher comments were noted on all his work. 

Based on what his parents thought was good academic progress, they decided to enroll him in a four year college, and chose a modestly demanding one in the Midwest.  Facing serious academic demands for the first time, even though placed in remedial courses, the boy could not keep up and after one year flunked out. 

Undaunted and still sanguine about the boy's potential, they enrolled him in another college, and he majored in chemistry of all things thanks to the conviction of his father that all he needed was structure and discipline.  Of course he was not up to the rigor, and flunked out again. 

Yet, the boy was not without ability and undaunted by the frustration of making neither heads nor tails of the indecipherable equations before him, he found himself.  He had a silver tongue, a gift of persuasion, a God-given talent for charming others.  His happy ingenuousness was irresistible, and he was asked to speak 'from the heart'. 

 

The Young Progressives Club had heard him speak about love, compassion, and good will - the heart and soul of the liberal worldview - and felt that he would be an ideal spokesman.  They would leave the harder political issues for others to sort out.  Barker Phillips would warm up the audience with his natural innocence, before turning the microphone over to the movement's firebrands. 

Audiences loved him and his allusions to nature, the world around him, and the mysteries of life.  He of course had no idea about life's mysteries, or mysteries of any kind.  He had always taken life as a series of things he didn't understand, left resolving them out to others, and went on with his own happy existence. 

 

The more he spoke, the larger the audience, for it seemed that emotionally starved people were hungry for his encouraging words about goodness, hopefulness, and progress.  They did not come to hear about social reform, redistribution of wealth, communal values, and the villainy of the political Right; but to be soothed, comforted, and calmed. 

He never prepared for his speeches, never parsed and pored over structure, internal dynamics, rhythm, and import.  He just spoke from the heart.  It didn't matter that he was clueless about the political agenda of his sponsors - in any case he would have understood none of it.  His life was one of feeling, not intellect, and that hit the right chord with his progressive audience. 

The university's Young Progressive Club was an affiliate of a much larger organization, and before he knew it Barker was speaking to regional and then national audiences.  He in fact had become a star, a man who espoused and embodied liberal principles and who expressed them with conviction and personality. 

He talked naturally about community - his friends and family - but those references were taken as metaphors for communalism and the need for establishing a new order, a new social configuration in which the individual was simply an interchangeable part.  When he talked about his love for nature, referring to his walks in the woods and love of birdsong, fox trails, and falling leaves, his audience took it to mean his passionate environmentalism, his love of Planet Earth, and his commitment to global reform. 

He had groupies - young women who found his disingenuousness irresistible. Middle aged women, longsuffering at the hands of insensitive husbands saw in his beautiful emotional honesty what they had always been looking for. 

Barker, as intellectually unencumbered as he was, saw no ulterior motives in these women's fondness and sexual attention.  He was as clueless about women as he was about everything else, but took life as it came, and enjoyed the attentions of Margaret S., Priscilla B., and Amanda R. 

Politics has never been a thinking man's game.  It has always been a shell game, now you see it, now you don't, and every politician has gotten to the top not through brains but thanks to a silver tongue, the ability to fool most of the people most of the time, to avoid facts and figures to get to the heart of the matter, a resonance with feeling, need, and desire. 

Good politicians work hard on their speeches, tailor their personae to suit the tenor of the times, and to present themselves as of and for the people, in tune, compassionate, and caring.  

Barker Phillips did not have to work at it - he was naturally devoid of any consistent, challenging thought.  He didn't avoid the hard issues for political caution.  He had no understanding or grasp of them whatsoever, which is what made his speeches all the more seductively engaging. 

'This is a man that tells the truth', said many in the audience; and so it was that this intellectually challenged, simple, and quite dumb man became a fixture in progressive Washington, feted, honored, and revered.  

He was mentioned as a possible candidate for public office to add to the ranks of the equally committed, but progressive operatives knew that they were stretching the limits.  Let sleeping dogs lie, they concluded, and so it was that Barker Phillips stayed within his comfort zone until his fifteen minutes of fame were up and he went back to Chillicothe. 

He got a job in a feed store which required some totting up and some toting, but nothing too challenging.  Few people in the town, conservative to the core, traditional and concerned only with town and farm affairs, had heard of his Washington success.  So much the better, for Barker was able to lead the life that God had intended for him -  a very, very simple one.