Retards in Disguise

My friend JPG over at Robots and the Like posted yesterday of Waspinator winning a place in the Transformers Hall of Fame. For those of you who don't know, Wasp is an underdog character from various Transformers story lines who begins as a Predacon hoping to overthrow Megatron, and is used as a punching-bag / whipping-boy in most episodes, often being crushed to a cube or blown to pieces, only to reappear seemingly undamaged later on; Transformers' answer to South Park's Kenny. His language is broken and simple (think Jar Jar Binks, and nearly as annoying) and its quite easy to think of him as an idiot. He was listed as one of 12 most ridiculous Transformers of all time by Wired Magazine.

Now he's in the hall of fame! Waspinators fan-favourite status is hard for me to understand. I could never get over that annoying, stupid voice. However, Wasp does develop as a character throughout the stories, ultimately "quitting" being a Predacon in the last episode of Beast Wars (although for selfish reasons of not wanting to be blown up, rather than moral reasons,) and shows some intelligence at being the first to realize that they were in fact on Earth; as everyone is leaving for Cybertron, Wasp stays behind and is worshiped as a God by early tribal humans.

Anyway. This really bugs me. (Pun kind of intended.) I think it's because of the comparison to people in the real world. I know a few people who I consider to be rather dumb - dumber than average, certainly - but who get high grades / good jobs / etc because of some kind of weird social magic that I don't understand. I've always referred to these people as retards in disguise. Deep down, they have no clue what's going on. But they can talk / flirt / luck their ways into achievements that they don't deserve. Anyone else ever notice this? I'm not the only one, am I?