I have to admit, I didn't know who Leslie Jones was before today. Apparently, she is supposed to be a "comedian" (as though there was anyone doing any real comedy these days) and was a staff writer and cast member on Saturday Night Live, which hasn't been funny since John Belushi was a cast member.

What Leslie Jones isn't is a constitutional scholar. When she recently appeared on that bastion of fair-and-balanced commentary, "The View," she admitted that she had been laboring under the misapprehension that the Electoral College was a place. As in, an institution of learning. Yes, really.

ABC’s The View has never been a place for smart and informed discussions about politics. And that certainly wasn’t the case on Monday’s episode when Daily Show guest host and so-called “comedian” Leslie Jones openly admitted that before she joined Saturday Night Live in 2014, she seriously thought the Electoral College was a real place where politicians went to school. In 2014, Jones was 47 years old.

Consider that for a moment. When I first read that, I was honestly at a loss for words. Are our educational institutions really doing that bad a job? Do they not teach Civics anymore? (That's a rhetorical question; they don't.) Miss Jones is only fifteen years younger than me, and I learned how the Constitution and presidential elections worked when I was in junior high school. Is she just ignorant? How can anyone achieve adulthood and not know some of the most fundamental things about how their country works?

But wait! There's more!

According to Jones, she wasn’t into politics before moving to New York and that New Yorkers were “really smart about politics and stuff” compared to Californians:

Well, honestly, because I just learned about it. When I went to SNL – Okay. Before SNL, just New York, period, you guys are really smart about politics and stuff. Like y'all really are on that. Like California, we’re over there smoking weed, you know, swimming pools, sun tanning. We ain't really into it, right?

“So, when I got to SNL, there were so many things I listened about that I didn't even know. Like seriously, the Electorial [sic] College, I didn't know about that,” she recalled while mispronouncing it. She then admitted: “I did think it was a college-college. I thought, you know, people got to go there before they become a politician.”

New Yorkers. Really smart about "politics and stuff." So smart, in fact, that they elect leaders who promptly proceed to drive every productive person out of their state.

Leslie Jones isn't alone in her staggering ignorance. (Especially not on the set of "The View," where staggering ignorance appears to be a job requirement.) My colleague Nick Arama recently laid out the analphabetic meanderings of the Barney Fife of the House of Representatives, Adam Schiff, and Nick also brought us some ignorant statements by author James Patterson on the founders and the Second Amendment. Don't get me started on presidential press secretaries, either; although these people have the unenviable task of defending the indefensible, they are likewise famous for issuing great steaming piles of the stuff one finds in feedlots. So Leslie Jones isn't alone in her ignorance, although that is of little comfort to the rest of us.

Maybe some kind of education in the basics of how the country works would be helpful for politicians since many of them seem to have very little idea of what the Constitution says or how it works. Leslie Jones could certainly use such a course. But then, we used to have such courses; they were called "Civics," and they were required teaching in junior high schools, middle schools, and high schools across the land. Maybe a return to that would be just as good an idea?

I keep coming back, though, to the idea that Leslie Jones said this on a show that is ostensibly about discussion of the issues of the day. It's amazing that "The View" has made it this far; just when you think they've plumbed the depths of ignorance, they yank on the "DIVE" handle and explore further into the depths.

They say an empty vessel makes the most noise. Given that, Leslie Jones sounds like ten thousand lunatics beating on the sides of an empty oil tanker with pick handles.