After years of hand-wringing about the deterioration of the once-mighty American intellect, the National Endowment for the Arts now, dramatically, claims that after 25 years of precipitous declines in reading, we finally have turned a corner.
Apparently, "literary" reading among Americans is up 7 percent over the past six years. Which, a well-read person might deduce, only is making us dumber, considering the growth is directly attributable to inane books about teenage vampires in love.
"There has been a measurable cultural change in society's commitment to literary reading," said Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. "In a cultural moment when we are hearing nothing but bad news, we have reassuring evidence that the dumbing down of our culture is not inevitable." 
The NEA released a scary 2004 study titled "Reading at Risk." We heard that a drop in reading was a "cultural catastrophe" waiting to happen. And despite the fact that fewer Americans are reading fewer books even now, the NEA mysteriously is celebrating some sort of triumph in literacy with a rollout of its new report, "Reading on the Rise: A New Chapter in American Literacy."
Like many of you, I've watched "Living Lohan," so I, too, profoundly fear for the future of the galaxy. But the truth is we probably never have been as clueless as eggheads at the NEA maintained, nor are we any less dimwitted for picking up another Nora Roberts "book."
Reading, in and of itself, holds no extraordinary significance -- or no more than watching a smart television show (and fortunately, there are many of them around these days) or surfing the Internet. In fact, one could argue that by picking up a heartbreaking work of staggering garbage, such as "The Da Vinci Code," you can effectively knock 20 points off your IQ.
We understand that all books are not created equal. There are, in fact, books that peddle complete nonsensical and, sometimes, dangerous ideas. Take, if you will, one of the best-selling books of all time, "The Little Red Book" by Mao Zedong, or anything ever written by Michael Moore or Michael Savage.
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