Economics 101
Yesterday, in my economics class, this guy started arguing that people have an intrinsic need to want. That people are born wanting to do nothing more than consume. In this way, advertising and other influences from the media do nothing to make a person want something more. They just want it.
The professor started arguing with him, asking the student how long advertising has been around. Turns out that, in the course of all humanity, advertising has been around for a fraction of the time that people have walked the earth.
He then mentioned that the first people were hunter-gatherers that worked in a team to share everything that they could kill just to stay alive. They didn’t have possessions, they just had relationships and what they needed to survive. He explained that the communal living of early human tribes were the basis of what humans intrinsically need or want.
The whole time this is happening, I’m in the back of the room with my mouth agape. Normally I’m the person who argues with the student who says anything like this in class. Yeah, I’m that douchebag. But this guy, with a doctorate and a nice suit, just completely leveled this kid. At best, I would have kicked him in the shins and run away. At best. His was a completely rational argument based in reality and there was no way to rebut it.
It may not be economics, but I think I can learn a lot from this guy.
Let’s admit it.
Let’s face it, George W. Bush’s speechwriter was a monkey with a Speak ‘n’ Say. Please, can we as a nation admit that now?
As a college student, I wrote my senior thesis on the impact of television on the balance of power among the three branches of government. In the course of that study, I pointed out the growing importance of visual rhetoric and body language over logic and reason. There are countless examples of this, but perhaps, understandably, the first one that comes to mind is from the 2000 campaign, long before the Supreme Court decision and the hanging chads, when the controversy over my sighs in the first debate with George W. Bush created an impression on television that for many viewers outweighed whatever positive benefits I might have otherwise gained in the verbal combat of ideas and substance. A lot of good that senior thesis did me.
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Al Gore, The Assault on Reason
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You know, I feel like I’m debating a pyromaniac in a straw man factory.
I’m pretty sure Howard Dean was in on this.
I got into a Twitter argument with two people today. Well, technically I got into an argument with one person and a name-calling session with the other. It all started when I tweeted about Glenn Beck’s spelling mistake. My exact tweet was:
Me: I kind of hope there was some cameraman on Glenn Beck going, “no!! that’s not how you spell that!!”
Which, to normal people, isn’t a bad comment, just a playful joust. Well, the first argument came shortly after.
UserA: @KatieEber who cares if he can’t spell. Half of America can’t spell
The content was centered more around the politics of punditry and what people with the outreach that Beck has should and shouldn’t do on air.
Well, for some reason, that person felt the need to call for backup. I’m just overwhelming, I guess.
I got bombarded with questions from another user, mostly about health care reform. I think my favorite response to one of my tweets was:
UserB: @KatieEber Aha, so you’re a communist…I mean Democrat.
I proceeded to explain that yes, ideologically I am a liberal. However, I am not a Democrat. On my voter registration, it clearly says “Independent” under party affiliation. Apparently this was too much to understand. It got to the point where I needed to get to my Shakespeare and decided to dismiss the argument with something that would make me laugh and make this user extremely annoyed.
UserB: @KatieEber You seem to be forgetting who truly runs this country. Does this ring a bell? “WE THE PEOPLE”
Me: @UserB Oh, okay then.
Me: @UserB CONSTITUTION FIGHT!!!
Me: @UserB DON’T TREAD ON ME
Me: @UserB LIVE FREE OR DIE
Me: @UserB FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN YEARS AGO
This didn’t work, and I started to become suspicious that one of these users was actually just Howard Dean throwing a curveball at a supporter of Health Care Reform. When UserB started with the name-calling, I decided that it probably wasn’t Howard Dean, but I still had my suspicions. I was growing weary of the argument, so I decided to go directly to the source and plead with the person in charge of training these numbskulls.
Hey, @glennbeck! Call your watchdogs @UserA and @UserB off! They’re barking so loud I can’t get anything done!
