Common Nonsense

A few months ago I heard a great podcast interview with Alexander Zaitchik about his new book, Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance. The interview was very eye opening and inspired me to read the book.
I’ve always felt that Glenn Beck was just a failed shock jock who couldn’t keep up with the likes of Howard Stern. So he switched to am radio and started using the same shock jock strategies and even some of the same skits to shock am listeners.
Zaitchik successfully illustrates that Beck is a brilliant marketer. He is always looking at how he can spin anything to promote himself. As a FM DJ he called and taunted the wife of a competing station on the air because she had recently had a miscarriage. When other people are genuinely distraught about a national tragedy, Beck is trying to figure out how he can make the event improve his brand. And for those of you who would like to claim that this was the “old Glenn” before he found Jesus and converted to Mormonism, I have seen no change at all in his strategies since. He switched sides on the Teri Schiavo case after he realized that siding with Michael Schiavo would be a death nail for his new am gig. He vilified liberals for opposing Bush’s polices “..while we have troops in harm’s way” yet didn’t think twice to compare Obama to Stalin and Satan while pretty much all of those troops are still “in harm’s way”.
I’ve always felt that’s Beck’s tears were just a tool to manipulate. Sure they may have been genuine at first, but they have grown to be a great marking strategy. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that his emotional outbursts started shortly after he converted to Mormonism. Anybody who has attended an LDS, first Sunday service will recognize the pattern. You go up and stand before everybody and the firmness with which you believe something replaces logic, facts and evidence. Tears are just the ace in the hole. There can be no further argument on that issue once somebody has cried. I am sure that most of what happens on Sunday is genuine. With Beck I’m not so sure. Zaitchik interview several of Beck’s co-workers who detail examples of him getting all choked up before a commercial break then ordering a pizza on the phone and then turning the tears back on when he’s back on air. I’m just not buying it.
Another little strategy of Beck’s that he has commandeered from the LDS is church is his persecution complex. If people picket him or criticize it only can mean one thing. He is doing the right thing. Beck capitalizes on protests and disagreement and he has no desire for them to go away. His books are literally covered with quotes from those who oppose him. He eats it up.
His claim that his 8-28 rally was just “coincidentally” scheduled for the anniversary of Dr. Kings speech is very hollow. In my mind there are two options: 1. He didn’t know it was the same date. In which case he’s a moron and should have known. Or option 2. He knew full well and was planning on capitalizing on the controversy. Considering his history of doing things that upset his opposition and using their protests as free advertising I have to accept the later. As a shock jock he worked up PETA supporters into a lather and then relished the free publicity they gave him.
The really disgustng part of Beck’s rally and his whole “reclaim the civil rights” rhetoric is that it’s just patently false. Had he been a contemporary of King's he’d have been standing right beside his John Birch Society role models W. Cleon Skousen and Ezra Taft Benson condemning King as a communist.
In the book Zaitchik was referring to a couple Cleon Skousen books and he called them, “…elaborately imagined, feverishly argued, and poorly researched.” I think the same could also be said for everything I’ve hear come out of Glenn Beck’s mouth. I think Beck is counting on the ignorance of his audience. He expects them to just connect the dots the same what his conspiracy theory mind connects them on that chalkboard without any further research.

Argument From Final Consequences

Today's logic fallacy comes to us courtesy of Rush Limbaugh. The Argument From Final Consequences is when someone attempt to prove that whoever benefited from something must have caused it. Not long after the terrorists attacks of 9-11-2001 several conspiracy theorists noticed that many of the civilian contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan were going to Haliburton. Dick Cheney had financial interest in this company. Therefore, without any other evidence the conspiracy theorists concluded that Dick Cheney caused the attacks on the World Trade Center. It's ridiculous.
Now sure it may look suspicious if a man dies a few days after his wife takes out a larger life insurance policy. And that is definitely a red flag that should be investigated. But the timing of the benefit alone is not enough to prove anything.
Well today Rush Limbaugh is claiming that extremist environmentalists blew up the BP drilling rig in order to affect the upcoming vote on energy policy. Sure the timing is suspicious and if there is any evidence supporting it it should be seriously looked into. But the timing alone is not proof.
The logic is fallacious when it's left wing conspiracy theorists attacking Cheney. It's just as fallacious when it's Limbaugh attacking environmentalists.

Where Men Win Glory

My Review of Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer

(Warning: There are a few spoilers)

First of all, I must confess that the only reason I chose to read this book was because I love Jon Krakauer’s work. As I pointed out last week I think he is an excellent investigative reporter. Even when the events he’s reporting on are partially concealed by the Alaskan back-country, the deadly slopes of the highest mountain in the world, secretive polygamist societies or in this case by the chaos and fog of war. I had made up my mind about Pat Tillman and was not really interested in devoting my reading time to this poster-boy of the war effort in Iraq. It was only my history with Krakauer’s work that made me reconsider my prejudices. And my preconceptions about Tillman couldn’t have been more wrong.
Since I don’t understand football I didn’t have any clue who Pat Tillman was before the Bush administration chose to make him the poster boy for the war effort when he turned his back on a $3,000,000 contract to join the Rangers and do his part to help out in the war in Afghanistan. I don’t think that football players are a special class of people so I saw his sacrifice as just the same as any other person who chose to put their life in danger to protect my rights. And I got a particular bee in my bonnet after his death when the right wing media tried to spin his death as meaning more than any other soldier’s death. Tillman put himself in harm’s way to protect my liberties. He literally gave his all. Yet so did thousands of other soldiers. Their future earning potential is irrelevant. They gave their lives for this country.
So I had pigeon-holed Pat Tillman, without any research on my part, as a mindless jock who just jumped behind the war effort because he’d heard Toby Keith’s song and wanted to go act it out. Indeed that is the way much of the talk show noise spun his enlistment. If you still believe this distortion of who Pat really was you will be very disappointed when you read the book.
Pat was probably one of the more literate people to ever wear an NFL jersey. When the other players on his team were buying the fanciest cars they could and just partying, Pat was being teased about driving his used Volvo to practice and spending most of his spare time completing his Master’s degree. Pat was a voracious reader. Among his favorite authors was Emerson, Thoreau, Homer and Noam Chomsky. The title of the book is a quote from the Odyssey, which Tillman particularly like and had a copy of it with him in Afghanistan.
Pat kept meticulous journals. Much of the book is quotes taken straight from these journals. At a couple points Krakauer used phrases that I thought were unnecessarily partisan. I thought that he was just putting his own opinions into the book which wouldn’t have been appropriate for an investigative report like this. Then I stepped back and realized that these weren’t Krakauer’s opinions, they were Tillman’s taken straight from his journals. With my preconception of Pat I just hadn’t expected him to make statements like, “the neo-conservative brain-trust in The White House” and “that cowboy at the helm”. Those were some of the nicer things that Pat said about his Commander-in-Chief. You see Pat really didn’t fit the mold. He didn’t think we had any business in Iraq at all. He and his brother, Kevin, had enlisted to assist in the war in Afghanistan. They were both very vocal and upset and felt tricked into fighting in a war they didn’t agree with.
Krakauer departed strictly from Tillman’s story for a little bit to give a history of U. S. friendly fire accidents. Although the press didn’t dwell on it too much the first confirmed deaths of the Iraq war were friendly-fire accidents. This short history of accidental fratricide in the military was necessary to show the predisposition of the military to covering up the facts. In a friendly fire death the investigative agency is the military itself. There is no other agency involved like there is with other accidents. In a plane crash the airline doesn’t investigate themselves. That task falls to the NTSB in order to avoid a conflict of interest. So with the military there is a serious conflict of interest and tendency to push the blame as far down the chain of command as possible. This section seemed hauntingly familiar and I kept thinking about Zimbardo’s work on situational evil.
The descriptions of war in this book are quite graphic and not for the squeamish. The day I finished the book I was so emotionally jarred by it that when I came home and saw my son taking joy in a war video game I just couldn’t stay quiet. He deserved to be criticized for his behavior, but I was definitely responding more to my feeling about this book than I was to his behavior.
“When the military is confronted with the fratricidal carnage that predictably results, denial and dissembling are its time honored responses of first resort.”
After Tillman’s death the extent to which the military and the government took to spin and cover up the specifics was particularly unnerving. The members of Pat’s unit were sworn to secrecy about the incident even from Pat’s brother, Kevin who was in the same unit. The doctor who performed Pat’s autopsy was denied the details of his death and ultimately refused to sign the official report because his investigation had been so hindered that he knew his autopsy was incomplete. Pat’s brain was never actually recovered. Pat’s uniform, body armor and personal effects were removed and burned in open defiance of military protocol. Along with the uniform was a notebook that Pat had been keeping his journal on while they were deployed. Of the two letters written for Pat’s posthumous Silver Star one was edited so much in the final edition that the author didn’t even recognize it and the other was unsigned and the alleged author did not remember even writing it.
I’m glad I read this book. It put a face on the men and women who are dying in our country's wars. I’m glad I got to know Tillman better. I still think it’s a shame that there isn’t a similar book written about every single soldier killed in action. The Bush administration unashamedly tried to spin Tillman’s story into a ideal of post 9-11 patriotism. Instead Tillman’s story became a story of unnecessary sacrifice, inept leadership and cover-up. But Pat’s legacy is stronger than that. Thanks his mother, brother, wife and this book Pat still refuses to be reduced to a stereotype and lives on in the lives of those he inspired.

Miller gets it Right Again.

Once again Non-Sequitor hits the nail right on the head.

Using your Brain

The hardest part about not really identifying with any major political party is that I actually have to use my brain. I’m not complaining. You see unlike many people I enjoy that. If I didn’t it would be much easier to just sit back and wait to see what my party leaders have to say about an issue. By party leaders I don’t just the official leaders. As we’ve seen far too much of lately the real party leaders are sometimes clueless celebrities and talk show hosts.
I’ve always been kind of a Supreme Court groupie and I’ve made it no secret that I was looking forward to President Obama getting the chance to make a Supreme Court appointment. For decades I’ve felt that the high court was drifting too far to the right and too frequently siding against personal liberties. In particular I’ve been rather disturbed at the extreme dilution of our fourth amendment rights by the likes of Scalia and those who seem to echo however he votes.
So yesterday I was eager to get to work to researching Obama’s choice. Since I had only heard of her once or twice before, my opinion about Sotomayor was pretty much a clean slate for me. For the record I still haven’t decided how I feel about her. I’m still doing my research. But rest assured that when I do form an opinion about her it will not be based on her gender, her race, her height, religion, or whether she eats grits or cream of wheat. It will be based entirely on whether or not she shares my opinions on what a Supreme Court Justice is supposed to do.
What is really frustrating is the water cooler conversations, that were conspicuously silent about this subject yesterday, today are all about how she is a racist. When I inquired why they felt that way all lead me to one single comment that she had made. After very little research at all I found that this is the same quote that all the conservative talking heads have picked up on and are taking out of context to make their point. She may very well be a racist, but this quote taken out of context doesn’t prove it anymore than a similar quote from Justice Thomas taken out of context makes him a racist.
I just find it very sad that so many people are so willing to surrender their thought processes over to a perceived authority. Many of our founders did not like the idea of political parties at all. Perhaps this is exactly why. Personally, I think that the current system in the United States is unnecessarily polarizing and discourages people from thinking for themselves.

The Cure for Autism

Halleluiah!! The cure for Autism is here! Apparently all we need to do is yell at them more and tell them to stop acting like an “idiot”, a “moron” and a “putz”. At least that's the instructions being handed out by talk show host Michael Savage.
As if I needed another reason to continue my boycott of talk radio…