July 13, 2010
Much of the media when talking about a reporters questions to an interviewee are heavily focused on whether the Questions were ‘Tough’ or ‘Easy’ questions. Who cares? This, to me, reflects their overwhelming underlying concern with the Gotcha Question! If you can get an interviewee to say something they didn’t want to say – you’ve achieved some kind of feeble power victory. Although both men & women reporters use this vocabulary, it seems to me overly heavy on testosterone.
I’d like to propose, just for the refreshing variety of it, an ‘Intelligent Question’. One which might elicit an answer we never anticipated. Instead of asking for a repeat of their standard stump speech, something unexpected…
Examples:
Intelligent Questions:
What is your strategic goal here?
What would you like to have happen here?
Have these proposed solutions ever worked in the past?
What, if anything, is different about today’s circumstances?
How could we move beyond these differences?
Stupid questions:
Of course, there will always be the really, really, really Stupid questions like: “What magazines do you read”?
What are your favorite Intelligent Questions?
Bob
P.S. This concern has, to my mind, neutralized talk show hosts like Chris Wallace. Early on I really enjoyed him. But now I totally avoid him, as he turns almost every question into a Gotcha question, designed to enhance his popularity, but totally ignore the audience’s desire for new knowledge. He compounds it with his ‘lightening rounds’, a format he created to make sure a respondents response can only be trivial…
July 4, 2010
In most conversations, we are usually fairly alert. When we hear something that doesn’t make sense to us, we challenge it: “Is this true?”, “Could it even possibly be true?” Now verbal manipulators, whose goal is not to inform you but to persuade you, don’t want you questioning their statements. They want you to swallow them hook, line, & sinker. One technique they use is what I’ll call ‘Lull’ words. These are designed to lull us into a partial sleep, where we simply accept rather than challenge what we hear. Hypnotists call it a state of high suggestibility.
To defend against these Lull words, we can create new personal meanings for them, namely Warning Flags! Then they will work in our favor. Every time we hear the lull word our warning flag goes up and so instead of being highly suggestible, we become highly critical. Now, the more the verbal bully uses the word, and they will use it over & over, their influence over us gets smaller & smaller.
Example #1:
In my last blog entry Solid floor boards… I mentioned the Lull word ‘Clear’. Normally when we hear the word ‘Clear’ we expect something will be – Clear, so our guard goes down, and we become more suggestible. Then the following confusing statement or outright lie goes, unchallenged, right into our subconscious.
But with a little practice, when we hear ‘Clear’ or any of it’s variants like ‘very clear’ or ‘fully & completely clear’ our critical faculties are sharpened, and the verbal bully is defeated by his own techniques!
Example #2:
Obviously…
My favorite user/abuser of this word is Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. He uses it in virtually every White House briefing session. Initially, my brain reacted Oh, what’s coming is obvious, so I can relax, let down my critical guard, and maybe even take a brief nap. Then as I noticed how frequently he uses it, often a clue, I decided to look into the matter more thoroughly. He uses it almost always as the start of a reply to a question from a member of the White House Press Corps. At the level of information, there’s almost never any information, just a complete dodge of the question. At a more emotional level, he seems to be saying something like: ‘Since the answer to your question is obvious to everyone in the world but you, you must be really stupid to ask such a foolish question’. A total bully put-down. Fortunately, I don’t work there, or I might come back with “NO, it’s NOT obvious; if it were, I wouldn’t have asked the question!”
To better understand these subtle verbal attacks & develop defenses against them, transcripts are most helpful. You can read the actual words without the undertones, overtones, and subtle emphasis of live speech. You can even count how often a particular word is used, where it’s used, etc. Fortunately for you, Press Briefings by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs are available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings. More & more of today’s online media provide transcripts of speeches, interviews, debates etc. so you can get lots of practice.
Are you aware of other Lull words?
Bob
God gave us grapes;
Entrepreneurs gave us wine.
July 2, 2010
In 1991 I was stopping for a traffic light. When I took my foot off the brake petal to rest it on the floor – it went thru, right down to the pavement! At this point, the car was 27 years old, and I had pushed it beyond all reasonable limits. So, I finally agreed to sell it to my local service station, who handled used cars as a side business. I sold it, figuring it would be scrapped for parts, and I moved on to a newer car.
About a month later, while driving home past a small used car lot, I noticed that my old car was there on the lot right up front. Surprised but always curious, I stopped and went up to the dealer. I told him I was looking for a reliable used car. As we walked out to the lot, I expressed an interest in the grey Volvo in the front line (formally mine). He immediately announced that it has a solid floor plate! Now why of the hundreds of features he might have mentioned, did he mention the strength of the floor board? He knew it had a hole in the floor plate.
Enter Psychology 101.
I would later learn over the years that this was not unique, but a frequent expression of guilt when lying. When people know that what they are about to say is false, they often, subconsciously, telegraph to us that they are about to lie. I say subconsciously because if they realized they were doing it they would stop immediately.
Let’s look at some more recent examples:
Let me make it clear…
. followed by an attempt to confuse.
Let me make it very clear…
. . followed by an attempt to confuse, and a blatant lie.
Let me make it fully & completely clear…
. . . followed by a HUGE lie.
Have you ever seen or heard this?
Bob
May 31, 2010
When I was growing up, yes we had running water & electricity, there was about an hour worth of news (that is things that were actually new) each day. It aired around dinner time 5-6 pm. Then came the capability of cable where they could broadcast 24 hours a day. There was still only 1 hour of news a day, so they had to make up, that’s right make up, 23 hours of junk news, ‘filler’ to be overly kind. Let’s look at some of those ‘fillers’ or junk news types…
Type #1 – Interviews:
Now, instead of reporting what actually happened, they conjecture what may happen sometime in the future. Discussion shows have several people, say A, B, & C.
A says “This is what’s going to happen”. Of course A has NO idea what will happen. Quite often it’s simply projection – This is what I, “A” wishes would happen.
Then B in a slightly louder voice says “No, This is what’s going to happen”. Of course B also has NO idea what will happen, but projects what “B” wishes would happen.
Then C in an even louder voice proclaims “No, This is what’s going to happen”. Of course C also has NO idea what will happen, but projects what “C” wishes would happen.
But all 3 will claim: This is what the American people want… See my blog entry
American Person
This can easily fill a 30 or even 60 minute slot – minus commercials, which is what it’s all about. No actual news is required.
Type #2 – Car chases:
I live in New Hampshire. Why should I care about the police in California chasing someone? I shouldn’t care & I don’t. But the media, to fill the 23 junk hours would like me to get excited, and waste my emotions, which should be directed towards my family, and my time, which is all I have left as a senior, to watch some insane car chase. Duh!
Type #3 – Polls
If you want to make up a news story, a popular method is to run a survey. You can call on one of the professional pollsters like “Rasmussen” or “Zogby”, or you can run your own little ‘informal’ poll, and when only 25 people call in, excuse it as ‘informal’ but then go on to discuss it in great length as if Zogby or “Rasmussen” had run it. And of course we have, what I consider the single greatest beneficiary of the 2008 election cycle, Frank Luntz.
Type #4 – “I’m up against a hard break…”.
This is one of the most over-controlling tricks, and virtually guarantees that no news of any significance will ever slip in.
It’s completely arbitrary from 2 dimensions:
A. As an overall contract with the station.
Imus ran his show for many years ignoring this rule. If a guest ran on a bit, or even a lot, Imus would then run a whole bunch of ads back to back to make up for it. Big deal – great for hearing what guest had to say.
I believe this is a primary pull of C-Span. The hosts, or even call-in folk ask the guest a question and then allow them as much time as necessary to answer it. How utterly refreshing!
B. As a local decision – and this the host CAN control.
Let’s say you have a half an hour or 30 minute segment. Subtracting out commercials, the whole reason for this junk news segment in the first place, you have maybe 24 minutes left to interview guests.
So you could have:
2 guests at 12 min. each; like C-Span might do it; or
4 guests at 6 min. each; enough to hear what they have to say; or
6 guests at 4 min. each; getting just the gist of their thoughts; or
12 guests at 2 min. each; where you can get absolutely nothing but meaningless sound bites. Each lead in will be something like: We only have 12 seconds left; but what is your view of western civilization’s history? Duh!
Lightening rounds are a subset of this. The general rules is that the Host asks rapid questions and the guest must answer in teeny, tiny little sound bites. I absolutely loved it when Chris Wallace, Fox News Sunday’s host explained those rules to, I believe it was General Petraeus, and his response was: Those are your rules not mine! Bravo for him!
Type #5 – Speculate, Speculate, Speculate…
This a subtype of Types #1 – Interviews: & Type #3 – Polls
You can configure it in many different ways, even call it “breaking news” but every word is a speculation about what MAY happen. No facts, NO news.
As human beings we have the God given right NOT to be treated as idiots.
What do you think?
Bob
–
“The difference between fiction and reality?
Fiction has to make sense.”
– Tom Clancy
We hear a lot about wealth re-distribution, but exactly what is it, and how does it work? These are some of the details I’ve been able to gather so far…
Wealth re-distribution, previously called stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, requires 3 not 2, groups of people to make it work. This is rarely talked or written about, and this is by design.
The First group is the wealth creators: the inventors, the entrepreneurs, the marketers, etc. If no wealth is created, nothing can be stolen & re-distributed.
Second is the ‘needy’ group, historically the ‘poor’. If there are no poor there is no justification for stealing from the rich.
Third is the re-distributors themselves. Some one individual, or small group, has to manage the actual process of stealing from some and giving to others, or. . . keeping the wealth themselves. This group prefers to work in secret, and if possible, prevent people from even knowing that they exist.
How, in detail, does this re-distribution process work?
To steal from the wealthy (Code name: Rich), re-distributors first need to seize all defensive weapons from the wealth producers so they can no longer defend themselves. This is typically done using political power, and passing laws. Then the re-distributors can steal to their hearts content.
The re-distributors, and this is rarely mentioned, having stolen the wealth from the wealth producers, can either give it to others, the so-called needy, or simply keep it for themselves.
To avoid people seeing that this is what they are doing, some PR (Public Relations) is necessary. So for every say $100 they steal; they, with great show & fan fare, give $2-$5 to their favorite ‘needy’ group. In addition to the PR effect, this also keeps the needy group in their ‘needy’ state. The so-called poor will remain poor. The re-distributors need to maintain & nourish these needy groups, as they are the sole justification for stealing from the wealth creators, and then keeping that wealth for themselves.
But sometimes events outside of the re-distributors control can occur. During the 20th century (1900-1999) the ‘poor’ of the United States of America experienced constantly increasing standards of comfort & living. This posed a significant threat to the re-distributors.
So, the re-distributors greatly encouraged a new fashion – Rights!
Rights became the cultural in-thing, like mini-skirts. Rights were subtle, and often so compelling. Today, anyone can stand up and shout, they rarely whisper, “I have a ‘Right’ to whatever they want, and no one is giving me my newly created ‘right’”. They then demand: Would someone, Please, go out and steal from the wealth producers and give my new right to me for ‘free’.”
As a commission for doing this robbery for me, the re-distributors can keep anywhere from 1% to 99% of the take.
Historical Background:
If you, as an Individual, wanted to have something you could not afford, say a big screen TV, you could have become a criminal and go out and steal it yourself. You could either steal the TV, or the money to buy the TV.
But a criminal career has it’s drawbacks. The hours are poor. Sometimes you have to work (steal) in the evening or nighttime, when others are going to restaurants & shows. You also have to buy guns, ammunition, holsters, etc. and devote some non-productive hours to target shooting, learning how to clean-up a crime scene (getting increasingly high tech), drive get-away cars safely, etc. There’s also the risk of being shot by a homeowner, or police officer. This risk can be minimized by restricting your activities to states or cities where homeowners have already had their self-defense weapons confiscated.
What do you think?
Do you know some re-distributors?
January 3, 2010
One of the phrases I’m coming to really hate is:
The American people, want blah, blah, blah,…
I am an American person, and no one has ever asked me, what I think, yet they continually speak for me, how dare they…
I watch debates on C-Span and elsewhere.
Both sides say, make that shout, the American people, want blah, blah, blah,…
Sometimes they modify it slightly:
The American people, REALLY want blah, blah, blah,…
or
The Bottom Line is: The American people, want blah, blah, blah,…
To justify in their own minds, their claim to talk for the American people, they often quote surveys or polls, yet they can never produce the ‘poll’ that their fantasies are based on. If they had the slightest shred of integrity, which they don’t, they would say: “I want blah, blah, blah,…”
One of the greatest offenders is Robert Gibbs, the White House Press Secretary.
He starts almost every 2nd sentence with: The American people, want blah, blah, blah,… He justifies everything the president does or doesn’t do as being for the American people! We are not fooled!
His intervening sentences start with: Obviously……..
A condescending remark to whoever asked the question, which means: It’s obvious to me; so if you differ in your opinion, you must be a complete and total idiot.
To be fair, he’s only doing his job, his totally condescending attitude towards almost everyone, accurately reflects his boss, our 1/2 black president Barach Obama.
I am an American person, and no one has ever asked me, what I think,
yet they continually speak for me, how dare they…
Have they asked you?
Have you given them permission to speak for you?
Is it this or is it that?
That seems to be the way decisions are portrayed by the media, politicians, and most academics. Whether to fund a new program, or start a new war, all the pundits make the decision appear simple: Is it this is it or that?
But for those of us in the real world, it’s almost never that simple.
Let’s say you want to buy a car. We have lots of preferences: Initial price; payment plans; better gas mileage; maintenance records; and the intangibles: Is it cool?, Is it easy to park? Is it comfortable?; both to drive and to get in and out of?
So after hours, or days, or weeks, we’ve narrowed it down to 3 cars: A, or B, or C! What we decide is what I call a package decision. Neither package A, nor package B, nor package C are perfect. Each has some things we like and some things we don’t like. But eventually we make a decision – a package decision!
#2: Let’s say we’re looking for a mate.
There are lots of candidates. Some obviously NO! Many so-so. And a few final contenders. We really like Alice or Sally; or John or Frank; none of them are perfect, they all have flaws, some fairly serious, but eventually, unless we wish to remain single forever, we make a decision, a package decision. Package A is better than package B.
Academics can’t seem to understand this.
Let’s look at a 3rd example. Voting for a political candidate.
If you vote a party ticket, this is not for you. You won’t enjoy it.
I’ve never belonged to a political party. The idea of some group, somewhere far away, deciding who I will vote for is totally repugnant to me. Over the years, I’m 68 now, I’ve seen lots of Individuals make & break dozens of promises. Some had to change when confronted with the reality of governing, some never intended to live up to their promises in the first place. But to me, when all is said & done I vote for an Individual – a package decision. He, or soon she, will make their own personal decisions. I’ll agree with some, and disagree with others, that’s life.
But this principle applies to much smaller decisions as well. Let’s say you want to buy a birthday cake. Chocolate or vanilla; rich cream or substitute; plain or inscribed; how big? Again, your final decision is a package decision.
How many ‘package decisions’ have you made in your life?
January 2, 2010
I remember thinking about this years ago. My thoughts try to explain ‘work’ in a non-judgmental way, reducing the so-called moral arguments to a minimum. As I see it there are 2 ways to contribute and get paid for work: By the hour, or by the piece.
The hourly people consider ‘hours worked’ as their contribution, so the notion of leaving early is wrong in their minds. Also, there is no need to define ‘success’ because success to them is putting in your time, regardless of what you
accomplish. Thank God for them, they are why we can count on a bank or grocery store being open when we expect it to be, or a plane, or a train, being on-time.
The piece work people contribute by achieving some predefined goal. If it takes 1 hour fine, but if it takes 20 hours, so be it. Without a defined goal, they would have no way of knowing when to go home.
Instead of liberal & conservative; democrat or republican; terms which tend to get everybody’s emotions all stirred up – Hourly workers and Piece-work workers can talk more rationally. To me it’s like the MBTI types*, no one is any ‘better’ than any other one. But for each Individual, whether by DNA or experiences, one definitely ‘fits’ better. Perhaps Mother Teresa said it best:
No matter who says what, you should accept it with a smile
and do your own work.
– Mother Teresa (1910-1997) Albanian Missionary
* Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
We are so used to everything being dramatic, even ordinary things made to appear more dramatic than they are. And we are exhausted. Enough already. These things are mostly beyond our reach. So-called reality shows are anything but real.
I think we are all ready for a rest. A year of ordinary everyday things. Things each and everyone of us can do. Bake an apple pie. It is said that when the student is ready the teacher will appear. I believe that teacher is Sully Sullenberger. His success was not a hurricane or volcano, or blowing up a building, but 40 years of doing each day his own private best, something within the reach of all of us. All of those thousands of ordinary days built a single day of phenomenal results, good results, not bad ones. Again, this is something within the reach of all of us.
I believe that is also the root of the popularity, and polarity, of Sarah Palin. She has succeeded by doing ordinary things consistently well. She knows how to be happy every single day. She considers it a good day when she gets up, has breakfast with her family, goes out & tries not to fall on the ice, go snow-machining, or hunting, and come home to dinner with more family. She knows how to be happy Now, and I think that irritated so many. Many who ‘will be’ happy when they get the next raise, the next promotion, the next election… But they are miserable today.
This years Rose Parade, on new years day, had a similar theme – A Cut Above the Rest. No Arnold Swartzenager, Terminator type success, just being a slight cut above the rest, a goal within everyone’s reach.
Years ago, I read many books by the motivational writer Og Mandino. Many had the word ‘Secret’ in their titles. Many of the messages boiled down to being ‘a small but measurable bit better than others’. Again, a goal within everyone’s reach. So I’m going to pursue that goal of 51%, a slight bit better, rather than the perfectionist goals of 99% or 100%. It will create a lot less stress for me and maybe, just maybe, I’ll wind up doing something worthwhile this year.
October 14, 2009
There are an assortment of contexts where this conflict between Individual’s judgments and blanket rules raises its ugly head.
Term Limits:
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
IF we vote a ‘bad’ person into office, i.e. he/she becomes ‘bad’ after election, we want a way to kick em out. Term Limits provides an easy answer: After 2 terms, you’re out! This requires NO action, or discrimination on our part!
BUT
What happens when we get a really, really great person into that office?
We’d like them to stay there forever…
So we have a ‘rule’ which ignores individuals; great or terrible, vs we must deal fully with an Individuals performance, i.e. vote them out of office.
Tenure:
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In academia, we have a notion called ‘tenure’. It means that if you’ve been ‘good’ for a while, you can stay around forever. This is sometimes a beneficial option, since the person, who may be controversial, and true leaders are often controversial, no longer has to fight daily petty battles. But some ‘tenured’ individuals, over time, become less ‘good’ in our eyes, or more often in the eyes of their opponents. So, again, how do we kick them out? or should we?
Judges & Minimum sentences:
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One area where we mostly expect an Individual, a judge, to decide matters is in our legal system. If there was a rule, a prescribed sentence, for every crime, we would not need judges at all. But we, for the most part, allow individual judges to exercise discretion, and decide in an individual situation what is the best way to administer justice. But when we, or certain powerful groups, do not like the way judges decide, we force ‘Minimum sentences’ on certain crimes, overriding the individual judges decisions.
So….
Today, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009, there is a prominent story where a 6-Year-Old Scout was suspended for bringing Knife-Fork-Spoon Utensil to School. The rule won and the individual lost. NO discretion.
Aircraft safety:
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
We witnessed Captain “Sully” Sullenberger as an Individual, do what no set of rules in the world could have done – save ALL of his passengers & crew in virtually impossible circumstances…
There have been many, many such instances…
So how do we solve this dilemma?
I do not have answers, but I want you, each of you to ponder, to think about this issue. Here are some provocations for your thinking…
Government:
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Our founders saw public service as a temporary assignment. You might be a jeweler, or a banker, or a farmer, or a restaurant owner, or … Then you go serve a term or two, no more, as a senator, or governor, or Secretary of … or whatever. Then you return to your previous occupation. The notion of a ‘professional’ politician, serving for decades, was anathema to their thinking. I, personally, agree with them.
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