Is Kim Kardashian an Idiot? An Objective Analysis

"Bucholz," Jack said. "We've got an assignment for you."

"I'm not here," I said, immediately regretting it. Who else would have said that?

"Who else would have said that?" Jack asked. I sighed and popped up one of the ceiling tiles, looking down on the smug turbo-genius in the office below.

"How did you know I was up here, you smug turbo-genius?" I asked, carefully adjusting my weight on the frame of the suspended ceiling.

"Well, there's an extension cable going up there," he said, pointing at the extension cable doing that. "And odors coming down here."

"Good eye. And good nose I guess. Well Inspector, now that you've solved the mystery of the lazy columnist, what do you want with me?"

"We've been talking, and we've decided that Cracked, as a stalwart member of the old-media, should probably weigh in on this Kim Kardashian thing. Our readers, whom we presume to be helpless naifs incapable of forming their own opinions, desperately need to know what we think about this."

"Do we think about this?"

"No. That's kind of the problem. We need you to research what a Kim Kardashian actually is, make a thought about it, and then write that thought down."

"Is this because you hate me?"

"It is because we hate you, yes."

I chewed on my thumbnail, considering that. "This could take awhile, Jack. I'll be up here for a few days at least."

"That's perfectly fine with me. Preferable even."

"And I'm going to need supplies. And a hose, and a funnel, and the other end of the hose placed in a bucket beside Brockway's desk."

"You'll have all those things."

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So after getting my supplies and befouling Brockway's workstation, I set to work. The first problem was that I knew next to nothing about this Kim Kardashian, because she only shows up on those magazines and websites and television shows which make my eyes poop.

I had to do the image research for this column looking at the reflection of the screen in a mirrored shield.

Consequently, everything below is based on the tiny fraction of Kim Kardashian news I've been unable to escape on grown up news sites, plus a couple things from her Wikipedia page, plus a couple things that I just added to her Wikipedia page. If that sounds kind of rinky-dink to you, well, from what I can tell, half-assed Wikipedia based research makes this the most journalistically sound celebrity site in the world, so eat me.

So here's what we know: Kim Kardashian is a woman who was summoned to walk the Earth in our darkest hour, because we needed someone to be famous for us. She has her own television network called the E! channel, where she has conversations and tries on clothes and smiles in clubs. Last year she met a basketball player who has his mouth open more than normal.

In the span of about eight months, they fell in love, got engaged, and planned an elaborate wedding that was televised and heavily sponsored by I think one of those teeth whitening companies. It's rumored that the wedding made Kim millions, money which was not apparently invested in couples counseling, as we discovered two and a half months later, when Kim announced her plans to divorce. Twitter has since crashed eight times under the weight of billions of Kardashian wedding jokes.

As I was conducting this painful research, I kept coming back to one question, repeatedly circled on the surface of the asbestos laden duct insulation I was taking my notes on. Good golly, she seems proud of her breasts my notes read.

But underneath that first, hard-to-not-see observation, was a second, deeper question raised by the debacle of her wedding and a number of other incidents. Is Kim Kardashian secretly an idiot? On the one hand she's made an awful lot of money, which if my strict objectivist upbringing was correct, means she is my moral and intellectual superior. But on the other hand, she really kind of seems like an idiot. Below I've outlined some of the arguments for and against the conjecture that Kim Kardashian is an idiot, which I hope you can use to help settle bar bets, or thorny theological debates.

Yes, Of Course She's An Idiot: She Married Someone She Didn't Actually Like Very Much

Kim's 30, and has already been married and divorced once before, so presumably has some idea of the factors necessary for a relationship to work. Like the bit about loving each other. Or a strict religious upbringing. Or when one of the spouses has a valuable dowry necessary to secure the other's political future. Any of the three will do, and it looks like Kim and this guy didn't have a single one of them. I'll be generous, and take Kim at her word when she says she "loved" this guy. But I will question whether she actually knows what that word means. Like she might have confused it with "wedding planning excitement" or "dizzyness." Like her blood-sugar was a bit low when she met this dude and she confused that with love. Or how she might confuse gas pain with hate.

"Man do I hate that Obama after eating burritos."

No, She's Not That Bad: At Least She Caught Her Mistake Quickly

Everyone is up in arms that this marriage lasted only 72 days, but very few people seem at all surprised that it ended up in divorce. I think if we're all being honest here, maybe if after the wedding all of us got around a really big table with a beer and a lot of straws, we'd agree this marriage had at most a few years of life in it. After all, few people expect celebrity marriages to go the distance these days. So with the non-foreverness of the marriage taken as a given, shouldn't we applaud Kim for acknowledging her mistake and getting on with her life? I mean, imagine how much this dude would interfere with Kim's next project, adopting three African babies then giving up on them 114 days later. Can't have him around for that.

"Hi Africa? Yeah, I changed my mind. I'm getting a rabbit instead."

Yes, Of Course She's An Idiot: She Is Surprised People Are Calling Her Wedding Fake

In the week since her marriage went tits-up, Kim has expressed surprise and shock that people are suggesting the entire spectacle was fake, a massive stunt put on for the cameras. The basis for these fake marriage claims lies in the fact that the wedding was completely fake, a massive stunt put on for the cameras. It was a wedding packaged into a sponsored, four hour televised special. Kim reportedly made millions off of it. Does she not understand that profit-making weddings do not exist? That they're not things that happen? And does she not get how bad it looks to throw a profit-making wedding and then back out of it weeks later, like it was a fucking magazine subscription?

No, she doesn't get it, at all. When asked by a reporter why the marriage ended, Kim replied:

"I think when you know so deep in your heart that you just have to listen to your intuition and follow your heart, there's no right or wrong thing to do, so I really believe that."

Obviously the transcript of an off-the-cuff statement isn't always going to be sumptuous prose, and it's a little unfair to hold it up as an example of babbling nonsense, but deep in our hearts, can't we all believe and agree that holy shit that is fucking babbling nonsense?

No, She's Not That Bad: At Least She Made A Lot Of Money From Her Fake Wedding

As any of our married readers are likely to confirm, if they had had the opportunity to sell sponsorships to defray the costs of their wedding, they certainly would have. "What the fucking fuck?" they shrieked when I called them while conducting research. "Was that an option? HONEY!? GET IN HERE AND LISTEN TO WHAT THIS GUY IS SAYING."

If she had the nerve and moxie to make money from her wedding, who are we to blame her? Indeed, the conventional wisdom about Kim is that she's been a pretty savvy businesswoman, who's managed to parlay her dubious, ass-based claim to fame into a massive, not entirely ass-based empire. On the other hand, that empire building mostly involved lending her name to products that other people had created, which makes her most marketable skill "existing" -- a verb which is not normally associated with a great deal of intelligence. Carrots, for example, exist as thoroughly as Kim Kardashian. But carrots are one of the most intelligent vegetables, so I guess that counts as a tie.

Yes, Of Course She's an Idiot: She Dated a Man Named Ray J

Kim famously was involved with hip-hop artist Ray J, with whom she created a sex tape. This is troubling for a few reasons. One: No one who chooses the name "Ray J" for himself can be called wise; and two: Nothing they propose to do with a video camera can be considered tasteful. Someone who agrees to anything involving Ray J and a video camera is either a girl with very low scores on standardized tests, or a busted Speak and Spell which can only say the word "yes."

"You love me, don't you broken Speak and Spell which can only say 'yes'? WHY WON'T YOU ANSWER ME!?"

No, She's Not That Bad: She Timed The Release Of That Sex Tape Very Well Indeed

I'm not saying that Kim deliberately released her own sex tape on the eve of her first reality show hitting the air, even if that would make an awful lot of sense. That kind of statement would be slander, even if basically everyone agrees that's what happened. But hypothetically, if that was the case, it only proves Kim's great intelligence. The public's appetite for ass, and the associated distributors of ass, is such a little known phenomenon that only a marketing genius could have picked up on it.

Yes, Of Course She's An Idiot: She Released a Music Video called Jam (Turn It Up)

Earlier this year Kim released a single called Jam (Turn It Up) in which she made everything worse, everywhere. If anything bad happened to you this year, astrologists and philosophers agree it was probably because of Jam (Turn It Up).

Even her hair seems a little embarrassed by it, as it appears to be trying to escape her head.

The title alone should tell you everything you need to know about the song, that it was composed by someone who knows nothing about irony. Any song with a subtitle is already veering dangerously close to the Ridiculous Chasm, and to then pick (Turn It Up) -- the third most cliched subtitle after (Baby) and (Luvya Luvya Sex Panther) -- is sheer idiocy.

No, She's Not That Bad: She Stopped Making Music Videos

But like before, if she's in a situation where idiots will throw money at her and tell her she can make a music video, why wouldn't she try it out? And when she realized that she had no business making music videos, and that birds would stop attacking her if she stopped, she stopped. The music industry could quite frankly use more of that kind of self-awareness, even if it does hurt the bird-protection industry.

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If I know my readers, it's that they're now desperate for me to conclude this article in a completely unsatisfactory way. And not wanting to disappoint, I've decided to split the difference and not really take a stand one way or another. Yes, if set down in almost any other time and place in the thousands of years of human history, Kim Kardashian would be regarded as an idiot. She's got the kind of skill set and demeanor and grating voice which would immediately motivate her peers to throw her at leopards, even if leopards weren't readily available. But in the modern era, where leopards are protected, and bananas come with warning labels, and a television channel called E! can thrive, she's just not that remarkably dumb. To be clear, that gross spectacle of a wedding was one of the single stupidest events to have happened in human history. But Kim didn't do it alone -- she had a family of idiots supporting her, and dozens and hundreds of professional idiots working to organize it, and millions of idiots, eager to witness a royal wedding (of ass-based royalty), who put her in the position where she could pull it off. Amongst this crowd, Kim's the smartest one standing.

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For more in depth Celebrity analysis from Bucholz, check out Justin Bieber's Favorite Knife Fighting Techniques and 'I hate cancer patients': John Mayer is Too Candid (Again).