America loves jocks, and that’s why we don’t have any good engineers… or something.

By AJ Dellinger Published December 26, 2024 | Comments (2)

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The unholy union between the Trump-loyal MAGA right and the opportunistic grifters of the Tech Right have found their first major clash: H-1B visa policies. As the two groups try to sort themselves out, stumbling across new strands of racism and xenophobia along the way, Department of Government Efficiency co-grifter-in-chief Vivek Ramaswamy has blessed us with a new theory for why America has supposedly fallen behind in its ability to produce elite engineers: we worshipped Stefan instead of Steve Urkel.

According to Ramaswamy, “Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence,” and it all dates back to 1990s sitcoms and America’s preference for the jock and prom queen over the “math olympiad champ” or valedictorian.

“A culture that venerates Cory from ‘Boy Meets World,’ or Zach & Slater over Screech in ‘Saved by the Bell,’ or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in ‘Family Matters,’ will not produce the best engineers,” Ramaswamy tweeted publicly in a message that can be read by other people and everything.

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This whole thing is so incomprehensible that it’s hard to really know where to begin, but I guess it’d be worth starting with the fact that this isn’t even an accurate recounting of Family Matters. Steve Urkel was so popular with audiences that the show got re-written to center the character. It went from a run-of-the-mill family sitcom to a sci-fi-dipped comedy centered around America’s favorite nerd. Even the Stefan character was the product of Urkel’s whole nerd shtick. (If you aren’t up on Family Matters lore, Steve alters his DNA to be a cooler version of himself and woo his love interest Laura, and eventually he creates a clone who can be cool guy Stefan full time instead of requiring Steve to transform between the two. Laura ends up choosing Steve over Stefan anyway.)

Frankly, this isn’t even the most egregious example of Ramaswamy’s piss-poor media literacy on display in this tweet. He says “More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of ‘Friends,’” presumably because he falls into the camp of people who think the abuse J.K. Simmons’ character levies on his young students in Whiplash is justified because it pushes them to greatness rather than viewing him as a tyrannical lunatic.