It’s the most dreaded time of the year for insecure narcissists everywhere: the announcement of the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius award” winners. Selected in a mysterious process for which you can neither apply nor get your mom to nominate you, MacArthur fellows each receive $500,000 over five years, money they can spend on books or research or a new Ferrari. On Monday, 24 new fellows were named, meaning that millions of other self-proclaimed, would-be or tragically undiscovered geniuses found themselves shunned once again.

What is, of course, especially insulting about this particular injury is that the category of “genius” is increasingly overcrowded. Blame it on the democratization of intellect, the influence of HGTV or the same kind of etymological pandemonium that led to “sick” suddenly meaning “cool,” but these days, it seems, every third person is a genius.

A casual stroll down the rhetorical path of contemporary life reveals more geniuses per square mile than plain old talented people. In the last few weeks alone, the “genius” moniker has been applied to NFL coach Bill Belichick, the rapper Ludacris (courtesy of Jennifer Lopez), the famous mime Marcel Marceau and Alex, the African grey parrot who knew 100 English words, could count numbers up to six and who died at age 31. (Alex, who never received a MacArthur fellowship, was rumored to have flown -- literally -- into a rage every year when the awards were announced, once throwing an empty Scotch bottle at his keeper and other times phoning 1990 winner Susan Sontag to ask if her refrigerator was running.)

As if the Earth isn’t already buckling under the weight of human and animal geniuses, there now appears to be an influx of inanimate objects that are also possessed of preternaturally gifted traits. As viewers of makeover and home design shows well know, pencil skirts, shag haircuts, wall stencils and the candles inside a faux fireplace can all fall into the genius category.


So too can anyone who thinks of, comments on or (better yet) spends money on any of these things. This is partly because the word has branched out into adjectival territory -- “that fiberboard credenza is genius” -- which has made it as hyperbolically generic as “fabulous” and “awesome,” so everyone has a chance to get in on the action. Gone are those dark days when the term was parsimoniously reserved for the scant few whose IQs or truly exceptional creative or intellectual abilities warranted such a label. Today, “genius” is an equal-opportunity exaltation.

How did we end up in a world in which Albert Einstein falls into the same category as spray-on tans? A phone call to linguist Geoffrey Nunberg (possibly a genius, but it’s hard to tell without getting a look at his shoes) shed light on a couple of points, namely that the original meaning of “genius” referred to the prevailing nature of a person or an idea. (It’s a cousin of the word “genus,” which has to do with taxonomic rankings within species.)

“In Roman mythology, everybody had a god assigned to him at birth,” Nunberg said. “So your tutelary god was your genius. It had to do with the true character or nature of something and, even though it wasn’t inherently complimentary, it was a way of naming an extraordinary gift. Later, in the German Romantic period, people loved to talk about Goethe and Schiller and Milton and Shakespeare as if they were another race or something.”

Nunberg said that in the 19th century, no one was considered famous until he was dead. The debasement of fame, like the debasement of the term “legend,” has likely fed into the sudden ubiquity of geniuses. But even if we accept that the definition of genius has expanded to roughly the size of the West Siberian Plain, how do we decide who is a genius? And is it possible to become one through sheer force of will?


“I think there’s always some mental component,” Nunberg said. “To say that Shakespeare is a genius is pretty much lodged in the language, but now baseball managers are geniuses, though that does not strike me as problematic. But someone whose achievements are chiefly physical, where there’s no mental agility involved, is perhaps not a genius. More likely a quarterback than an offensive tackle -- though I’m not sure I should be saying that since they’re very big.”

Ironically, even though the MacArthur Foundation has been saddled with the “genius” nickname since the awards began, it’s never endorsed it because, as has been frequently reported, it sees the term as “too limiting.”

“Limiting?” Has no one at this ostensibly esteemed organization watched HGTV’s “Design on a Dime”? Have they not experienced the virtuosity of Ludacris’ “Pimpin’ All Over the World”? If they think certain spider-silk biologists and medieval historians are geniuses, they should see what a zebra-print ottoman can do for a room. If next year’s winners don’t include at least one foot stool, someone’s going to have some explaining to do.

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mdaum@latimescolumnists.com