Overthinking shouts and murmurs

More often than not, the New Yorker's "Shouts and Murmurs" section is forgettable. Once in a blue moon--usually when Paul Rudnick is involved, it's hilarious. I've also come to expect good things from Simon Rich, and I certainly won't describe his most recent column as forgettable--since it keeps coming back to mind, weeks after I read it--and I wouldn't describe it as unfunny, but I also can't wholeheartedly endorse it.

First of all, there's that unfortunate rape joke. Please consult Jezebel's guide to rape jokes for a refresher on when/how such things could possibly be funny. I'm really struggling to phrase this aptly, for obvious reasons, but here it goes: it's not that the rape joke in the column is offensive in and of itself, as rape jokes go; it's that rape is not funny, and he's making a joke about it, in a humor column. Yes, it's in the context of making the perpetrator sound like even more of a douche bag, but it just mars the whole column in terms of being humorous.

That aside, the overall message of the column--yes, yes, I'm reading too much into it--just doesn't sit well with me. I read that message as, "women don't mind dating men who are kind of dumb as long as they are kind. They prefer dumbness to pretentiousness." Okay. Nobody likes pretentiousness. But is it unreasonably picky for a woman not to be attracted to someone who's dumb as hell? I'm not trying to date Nobel laureates, but a basic grasp of spelling and grammar shouldn't be too much to ask, right?