Thursday, July 12, 2012

380 On the Subject of Misinformation



I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July Holiday! We in this house did!

But now, continuing my thinking on stress and public demand for knowledge ability, The variant answers from people on the street to late-night talk show host Jay Leno’s probing questions (such as, in what year did Columbus sail the ocean blue, or who was the first president of the United States, or where is the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge located, etc.) display to me the most baffling array of misinformation, or poor recall, or whatever what one wants to call it, that I have ever heard. And, yes, the misguided responses are hysterically funny to both me and his other fans.

But these brave public responders on the street are awfully good sports to allow us to poke fun at them as if we were never so ridiculous ourselves; and when they articulate their errant answers with such sublime innocence and nonchalance, we are certainly cynical indeed to sneer at their ineptitude. I mean, after all, sneering at others’ slip-ups is rude to say the least, if one is truthful with oneself. Have we not already decided that?

And even though the remedy for such predicament is knowing one’s subject to a surfeit, as I declared in my last blog, how many, let me ask you, how many of us do that?

To be continued . . .



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