Comedians, Fools, and News Anchors

On Wednesday the 10th of this month Norman Solomon wrote an article for Truthout.org entitled, “The Sickening Praise for The Daily Show.” In it he suggests that the media’s overwhelming praise for Jon Stewart’s “A Daily Show” might really be a tacit form of convoluted self-loathing. He points out that while most journalists consume themselves with examining the emperor’s embroidery Mr. Stewart blatantly goes after the big and relevant issues of the day, speaking naked truth to powers that would otherwise be clothed in lies.

In a nation where, in truth, mainstream media neither swings right nor left but rather has no substance at all, how does the Daily Show get away with reporting the real news?

Because it’s a comedy show!

In the past you could tell the horrid truth that everyone knew but no one wanted to utter, and if you did it with a “wink, wink, nudge, nudge, witty tongue-in-cheek,” you could become a famous playwright (Google "Shakespeare"). You could sing a little song, do a little dance, tell the truth and put seltzer down your pants. Why? Because comedy frequently provides a rather impervious armor for truth.

Consider the fools of the medieval court. They could hurl insults, laugh out loud at the preposterous, bring greed and ignorance into the light of day, poke fun at the nobility, break with convention, speak for the poor, and do a little tumbling all in a day’s work. All you had to do was claim to be stupid and wear a funny hat with bells.

Today you can still insult a president of the United States through an act of comedic mimicry and maybe even get a lucrative advertising contract (Google "Frank Caliendo"). And if you report the real news beneath a thin veil of joshin’ and jivin’ then you just might have the best comedy show of the season.

But addressing the important issues with straightforward and unbiased investigation on prime time; forget it! Only recently during the many-pronged bailout debacle has the news taken a breather to report a few facts about some really important issues. But for the most part I suspect that the media will soon slip back into its bog of pablum with barely an air bubble to show that it had surfaced.

Therefore, since we apparently have a postmodern mediascape where real news has been consigned to the dustbin, where conglomerates control the dispersal of public information and salivate at any opportunity to pull independent sources into the fold, where real journalists have been shackled to a news machine that serves up cold oatmeal with no milk or sugar, where the Fourth Estate is now a business unit that fills the airwaves with Lindsay and Michael and Brittney and Rush, perhaps the best we can do is to designate all news as comedy and insist that all news reporters wear a hat festooned with bells.

Maybe then we could get the real news.

Posted by Paul on September 22, 2008

Which Will Come First in the Presidential/Veep Debates, the Chicken or the Egg? Answer: The Lemon Juice

With the formal debates between the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates about to begin, what better time to revisit Justin Kruger and David Dunning’s 1999 article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, “Unskilled and Unaware of It”?

These Cornell University psychologists asked a group of undergraduates to take a battery of tests, including one to assess their skills of logical reasoning. What the researchers confirmed are probably among the most important findings in the history of the study of the mind.

What they found was that:

• The more incompetent people are, the more confidence they have in their own competence.
• The more incompetent people are, the less competence they have in recognizing competence in others.
• Even very competent people tend to overestimate the competence of others.

Neurologist Robert Burton makes the Kruger-Dunning article the centerpiece of an article in Salon.com warning that the upcoming debates are going to tell us next to nothing about what we really need and deserve to know about the candidates for the nation’s highest offices.

Even though it will likely never happen in a Presidential debate, here is what Burton would like to see happen:

• How the candidates respond when they are stumped. In his words, are they evasive, flustered or straightforward in admitting what they don't know or understand?
• How they each would respond when shown evidence that they are wrong. Burton wonders, “Is he or she capable of admitting to having made an error? Would he or she be flexible enough to change an opinion?”
• How adroit is each candidate’s intellectual grasp of scientific method when it comes to answering “difficult, complex questions about aspects of science such as global warming, stem-cell research or alternative energy sources for which they may not have adequate knowledge”?
• How does each candidate explain “faith-based” beliefs that he or she continues to hold that are in conflict with traditional reasoning and scientific method?

Burton says that knowing about such qualities of mind are critical in deciding which leaders are most capable of making the best decisions in bad times.

Americans’ experience with their current President is much on Burton’s mind as he reflects on the issue of how leaders adjudge their own levels of competence and the competence of others.

He writes, “Many of the failures of post-9/11 American policy were caused by or aggravated by the inability of our president to recognize his intellectual limitations (including his choice of advisors), keep an open mind, evaluate evidence such as the presence or absence of weapons of mass destruction, and listen to all sides of a complex issue. Perhaps this could have been avoided if Bush had been forced to publicly answer serious multifaceted questions prior to the election.”

Kruger and Dunning wrote about a person who held up two Pittsburgh banks in 1995 in broad daylight with no effort to disguise himself. He was quickly arrested after the surveillance tapes were shown on the 11 o’clock news. When the robber saw the tapes, he was incredulous. “But I wore the juice,” he mumbled. He had been under the impression that if he smeared lemon juice on his face, he would be invisible to the cameras.

We have had a President for the past eight years who appears to be a strong believer in a version of “the lemon juice effect.”

Because the upcoming debates will be conducted the way these debates are usually conducted—in controlled conditions that have been rehearsed to a fare-thee-well—we can have little confidence that we won’t get another President with the same susceptibilities.

Because whatever happens in these debates, we won’t be able to take a very good measure of the candidates’ thinking abilities when they must confront complex situations for which they don’t know the answers.

But then would it really matter if we all did get a genuine look at the candidates’ competency level at handling the kinds of issues that Presidents of the United States must handle. Dr. Burton isn’t sanguine. That’s because we nearly all will bring such strong feelings about the candidates to the debates. Again and again, Dr. Burton points out, feelings trump reason. (That is, "felt knowledge" triumphs "reasoned knowledge."). Because of the way our minds work, we all tend to rub lemon juice on our candidate’s face.

It is not a situation calculated to build confidence in our ability to select as President the person best equipped to keep lemon juice—and egg—off the nation’s face.

For Justin Kruger and David Dunning’s article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, go here: Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments
For Robert Burton’s article in Salon.com, go here: My candidate, myself

Posted by Dudley on September 22, 2008

The Only Real Mystery in the American Presidential Campaign Is Who’s Going to Win. Otherwise, the Whole Campaign Makes for a Great Fish Story

In the tumultuous wake of the GOP Convention in America and the startling veep candidate selection that could put the likes of Alaska’s No. 1 hockey mom within one aging heartbeat of the so-called “most powerful job in the world,” we’ve had more than one of our readers remark among the lines of this Colorado non-hockey-mom: “I honestly can't still understand how they [the Republicans] get away with so much. I think I spent most of the night [watching Gov. Palin speak and the run-up activities] just shaking my head at the bravado and BS.”

But then, as we reminded this concerned Colorado mother and community organizer, who was an Obama supporter at the Democratic convention, she really shouldn’t have been surprised at either the behaviors or content of the GOP Convention (or the Democratic Convention either, for that matter) or a lot of the other developments in this showcase of political marathons. Much of the story line is actually as predictable as hurricanes in warm summer waters.

That's because one of the most real things in the world is the way nature works. And people are part of nature. And people’s beliefs are a part of nature. And people’s beliefs, especially in the aggregate, are hugely more predicable than most people believe.

In terms of the Yo!Dolphin! Worldview Survey™ model, which we at Brain Technologies believe to have few peers in its ability to explain “the inner ecology” of people, the dynamics driving the Republican Party and the McCain campaign’s strategy can be explained quite simply as shark belief users skillfully manipulating Carp belief users.

In an as yet unreleased book, my colleague, Paul Kordis, and I have prepared extensive descriptions of the American Carp belief structure’s internal dialogue—the one that the user of this worldview turns to, moment by moment, day in and day out, to explain the world to her/himself. Here’s some of that self-referential inner American Carp dialogue from our unpublished work:

“I don’t go in for a lot of highfalutin talk about airy-fairy social causes or the like. I simply do my share to eradicate the obvious evils that are plaguing our families, our jobs, our schools and our neighborhoods.

“I am against abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex, atheism, high-and-mighty science and the separation of church and state.

“I think our religious values should be taught in school and kids should be made to behave accordingly. I think that criminals should be afraid of the law and that harsh punishment is the only deterrent to crime.

“I’m not afraid of laws that invade people’s privacy because I have nothing to hide and these laws keep me safe from people who do. I think sex offenders are the worst people in the world and that more people than you could imagine worship Satan in secret and that these people all too often infiltrate every level of the secular world to spread their poison. The media is especially in the hands of bleeding liberals and hardened atheists. The minds of our children are being turned against us and it is our responsibility to do what it takes to keep them in line and on the right path, even if we have to administer harsh punishment.

“I also believe that the poor and the outcast have become so because of their impurity, non-belief and unrighteousness. Their sin has driven them from the creator and their earthly pain is the result, plain and simple. Therefore, those who have achieved authority, power and success are examples of the divine favor due to those who have kept the word of the prophets and followed the path outlines in our holy texts. They are just in their judgment of others, as am I. We are the righteous and the pious and have every right to incriminate against the sinner. We all have our place in creation; we should follow the commands of those above us and those beneath us should likewise follow our direction and moral authority.

“In the same sense my country is favored by the Almighty and is fated to reign supreme among the other nations. Our wars are pure and right, our forms of government and economic activity are by far the best in the world. We have discovered the true path in all things and other nations must be made to be like us if they are to avoid our wrath and the just punishment for their transgressions. There are many enemies in the world who hate us and envy our righteousness, our freedom and our possessions. But our leaders will crush them and our military power, therefore, must be unequaled. There are also many among us who would destroy us from within. Therefore, our national and local authorities will root them out and punish them and thwart them from their evil plans. And if this means that we must give up some of our liberties then the price is worth it. Our security is more important than our freedom and our obedience is more important than our dissent.

“Evil will continue to threaten our faith and our existence until the Almighty reappears, along with the holy prophets and the departed faithful, and takes the throne of this world, destroying the parasites among us and establishing the kingdom of righteousness on earth. Until that time our war against evil is perpetual and is our destiny and our responsibility. We cannot relent and we cannot compromise but must stand firm in our might and our principles, among which are our faith not only in spiritual matters but in governmental and economic matters as well.

“I don’t know a lot about the big dealings going on with money. I just know that we have a right to prosperity because it is our due as a loyal, hard working and law-abiding people. Besides, this country should be built on trade, on people buying things from each other and making the nation strong and prosperous. The most worthy are the most successful, and I aim to be one of those people some day, so it doesn’t hurt if I buy myself and my family a few things now and then. We deserve a piece of the good life this country has to offer and if I have to borrow a few dollars I know that I can trust those who lend money to me to handle all of the details. I pay my bills and I know that providence will provide if I live a good life.

“If we choose people in authority who support our beliefs and values then it will benefit us all and makes all of us prosperous. Those are well off buy the things that the rest of us provide and eventually we all benefit. Without them, we wouldn’t have jobs or the other good things in life. Therefore, we should praise their success and do what we can to contribute to it. Prosperity flows from our way of life to everyone’s benefit and must not be hindered. The only people who really suffer are the leaches who don’t want to take personal responsibility.

“In the same sense our environment is given to us to use as we wish to establish our dominion over it and to mine its riches as the reward for our virtue and our obedience. Creation is abundant and we cannot begin to take away from what has been provided for us. But, if the unrighteous and unbelievers possess lands and resources that are valuable to us then it is our duty to use them for our own purposes, for the sake of our government, our economy and our faith.”

You can feel the fear and resentment of the Carp worldview user throughout this description, and it is the American Carp worldview user’s fear and resentment that the American Shark worldview users are so skillfully manipulating—again!—in the 2008 American Presidential election.

What’s the antidote for those who seek a saner, more factually based, more humane and more hopeful, more competent and most complex America?

The political strategists on both sides of the great voter divide have it right. The battle is one of the diehard Carp and Shark worldview users versus all the rest. Can enough votes from gradually awakening Carp users and disaffected and concerned Shark users be combined with the First Dolphin, Prime Dolphin and Deep See-Change Dolphin worldview users' votes to win the day on November 5 in the quest for control of the American Electoral College?

This time around, our prognosticative skills are no better than anyone else’s. Our prediction is either Obama or McCain by a hair. It makes for fascinating political theater. If only the outcome were not so important, for America and the remainder of the world.

Posted by Dudley on September 06, 2008