Here’s what I learned from the balloon-boy incident.

We not only have a widening gap between rich and poor in this country, we have a widening gap between intelligent and not-so intelligent.

Last year, the Congressional Budget Office reported that income for the bottom half of American households rose 6 percent from 1979 to 2005, but the income of the top 1 percent rose 228 percent.

This year, American citizens numbered 11 among 13 Nobel prize winners. Then we had a family in Colorado who pretended to send their 6-year-old child aloft in a balloon as a publicity stunt in order to get on reality TV.

If this balloon incident was isolated stupidity, it would not be reason for concern.

However, we not only tolerate sub-mediocrity in America, we promote and honor it. We laugh and talk about it at great length. We survey how stupid we can be — twice as many people know Paula Abdul was a judge on American Idol than know the phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people” comes from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, according to a recent poll.

Wasn’t America supposed to be the place where everyone had the opportunity to better themselves economically and educationally, and they tried?

Now we’ve become the place to make much less of ourselves.

Television used to be an object of pride. The big three broadcast networks used to produce quality TV shows. The actors who appeared on those shows proved they had the talent to be there.

Not so anymore.

You only need a gimmick to get on TV — pretend your 6-year-old child floated off in a balloon; marry a man or woman who went through a sex change that you didn’t know about; reveal your worst hang-up, that you can’t kiss a woman without thinking of your dysfunctional, alcoholic mother who used to beat you, and you’ll find your way on reality TV, sitting next to your mother with switch in hand.

Television and radio news used to be a thing of pride in America. We used to report the things of consequence and importance.

Now a person can have a news or talk show because she or he knows how to be loud and obnoxious. The news is filled with trivial and insignificant happenings. We not only report non-events, we analyze them, follow up on the analysis, and ask experts what they think of such nonsensical happenings — such things as wayward balloons that supposedly hold children whose feeble-minded parents think they’d make good TV material.

How’s this for analysis? Those Colorado parents don’t deserve anymore time on TV. Send them off in a balloon. Just let me know when they’ve repaid the cost of two helicopters tracking a silver balloon held together by duct tape that couldn’t even produce enough lift to raise a child off the ground.

I could go on, and I will. Nowadays, a person doesn’t have to know a thing about journalism to blog, and many bloggers don’t. They only want to be seen and heard.