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People, Personas, and Politics 7 – Decency’s Vacay Scott Douglas Jacobsen & Rick Rosner March 26, 2017 [Beginning of recorded material] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So perhaps one of the funny things that turns sad is the slow, whimpering death of decency in American political culture. Rick Rosner: Well, I mean, yea, because it means we’re losing—decency is among the American values. Humane behaviour to each other and the world is an American value. That we stand up for what is right. We defend the downtrodden. And part of the death of decency—not the death, the temporary absence of decency is the ‘F- You!’ to the downtrodden. SDJ: Such as the Meals on Wheels. RR: And to kids with the Head Start program and sesame Street and public television, and the National Arts Foundation or the National Endowment for the Arts. If you’re looking for grant to put metal shapes in a park, these are programs that have been squeezed down already to tiny, tiny fractions of a percent of the federal budget. We’re talking .002% of the federal budget. That they’re squeezed to nothing so the Republicans can make a political point. A dumb counterproductive one too. SDJ: So I see two trends—well, I see a lot of trends. I see one partial analysis with the reduction in decency, where it takes a vacay. Another one is increase in militaristic culture – it’s on overtime, which implies a reduction in civil culture. RR: There’s another sad making thing. It seems that people who aren’t dumb are bummed out by dumb people being in power. I had or was—I had a tweet go super viral a few days ago. SDJ: Yes. RR: After 24,000 tweets, I finally had one hit, which is awesome. SDJ: [Laughing] RR: In day one, I got a lot of positive messages. It was an anti-Trump tweet. I got a lot of positive support. Day two, the pro-Trump people found out about it, but I got a lot of dissing messages. SDJ: [Laughing] RR: But dumb ones. But it was disheartening because a lot of the positive ones were pretty clever. Obviously from people who weren’t mentally handicapped, but a lot of the pro-Trump ones were just from dumb people. SDJ: [Laughing] RR: It was attempts at jokes that were terrible or senseless. SDJ: [Laughing] RR: Like in my tweet, I mentioned that Angela Merkel had a PhD in quantum chemistry. Then some Trump person tweets back to me, ‘Even Snoop Dogg would get a PhD in quantum chemistry because everyone gets a trophy now.’ SDJ: [Laughing] RR: Which is such a non—which is such a terrible attempt at a joke [Laughing]. The idea is that under Liberalism everyone gets a trophy. So to use a quantum chemistry PhD to make a point - I looked it up, 120 PhDs are given every year in physical chemistry in the US, which is 1 PhD in that subject for every 2.75 million Americans. So no, not everybody gets a PhD in quantum chemistry. So no! SDJ: [Laughing] RR: You picked a terrible subject! [Laughing] I had one say, “You make no since.” I know that’s probably a combination of a guy whose vision is not so good, and who’s relying on autocorrect. Day one was people agreeing with me. Day two was dumb people disagreeing with me. Not that I’m the king of things to agree or disagree with, but the pro-Trump tweets obviously came from way dumber people. Along with those came the pornbots. SDJ: [Laughing] RR: Who took a couple three days to find out about the tweet. SDJ: [Laughing] RR: Then I got tweets from them saying, “Come push your penis into me. Click here!” SDJ: [Laughing] RR: It is depressing that there are so many, proudly dumb, belligerently dumb people, and we have a belligerently dumb president who is empowered by tens of millions of belligerently dumb Americans. Just statistically, you know they’re out there because half of all Americans are dumber than average, and half of those people are dumber than the average dumber than average American. SDJ: [Laughing] RR: And that’s 80 million people, but they’ve been so empowered. And means they’ve never been so encouraged to think that they’re okay and they’re right. It’s come up again and again throughout the whole election and post, which is the Dunning-Kruger Effect. If you want to have a dumb person in a movie and not a villain, and want them to be charming, you give them some insight into themselves so they know they’re not the smartest person in the world and that way they have some natural wisdom. They’re like magic dumb people in the way Forrest Gump has some, if not deep insights then, some humanity to Forrest Gump. Even though, he is someone who is borderline retarded. He’s a sweet caring guy. A good husband, a good father; he’s a magical dumb person. Dunning-Kruger Effect says that’s not the way dumb people are. Dumb people often lack insight into their dumbness, and they think they’re super awesome and are too dumb to realize that they’re dumb. So we’ve got a president elected by the Dunning-Kruger effect, which has been amplified by a media that caters to dumb, angry lunatics. So yea, it is another source of sadness there. That seems like an intractable problem. That may continue to affect politics for many, many election cycles. [End of recorded material] Authors[1] Rick Rosner American Television Writer [email protected] Rick Rosner Scott Douglas Jacobsen Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing [email protected] In-Sight Publishing Endnotes [1] Four format points for the session article:
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AuthorAccording to semi-reputable sources, Rick Rosner has the world’s second-highest IQ. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writer’s Guild Award and Emmy nominations, and was named 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Registry. He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmy Awards, The Grammy Awards, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He has also worked as a stripper, a bouncer, a roller-skating waiter, and a nude model. In a TV commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the World’s Smartest Man.He was also named Best Bouncer in the Denver Area by Westwood Magazine. He spent the disco era as an undercover high school student. 25 years as a bar bouncer, American fake ID-catcher, 25+ years as a stripper, and nude art model, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. He lost on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire over a bad question, and lost the lawsuit. He spent 35+ years on a modified version of Big Bang Theory. Now, he mostly sits around tweeting in a towel. He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife and daughter. You can send an email or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn. ArchivesCategories |