The View

[chuck]

It's clips like this that scare me a little. Well, to be honest, the View in general is just plain scary.

But it's the blind devotion to the bullshit - and the irrelevancy of the concerns on display - in this case Elisabeth Hassleback's POV (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/07/the-view-gets-uglier-barb_n_132587.html) - that I think are at the core of why this election is so important.

People like her just give me the shits - because they appear to be relatively intelligent - and can obviously read - but apparently have no capacity to discern or discriminate - or even to consider not just opposing points of view, but their own thinking about an issue. They parrot the line - never questioning.

I'm really surprised Whoopi just didn't get up and clothesline her.

Because it is bullshit - and McCain-Palin are milking it right to the end. I get afraid that the 50% that voted for Bush in 04 - will just roll with it again and the US will get what they deserve. Again.

I think some of our politicians and our public in NZ are much the same - our election is on November 8th. And the opposition party is lots of soundbite and fluff eg. "Life means Life" - but vapid and pathetic when it comes to actual policy.

Unfortunately they're likely to get in - not because they offer anything more than the government - but because the good old Kiwi way is to give everyone a go - and this Labour government has been in power for 8 years, so let's give the other fellows a go.

Ugh - sometimes humans are so stupid.

[Deckard]

They parrot the line - never questioning.
With public figures, there's always the problem of how passionately they've previously stood up and defended a certain point of view, and how embarrassing it would be for them to admit that they were wrong. In that respect, there's an investment in never questioning.

I should say, from clips I've seen recently, The View seems (incredibly) rather more sophisticated than the UK's version - Loose Women or whatever it's called, in which a bunch of women sit around talking slebs and cellulite.

Well, so my female friends tell me, anyway. ;)

but because the good old Kiwi way is to give everyone a go - and this Labour government has been in power for 8 years, so let's give the other fellows a go.
That version of democracy sounds very familar.

Ugh - sometimes humans are so stupid.
There's a whole lot of stupid out there, and it sits there stewing because of the view that equates intellectualism as elitism and therefore a bad thing - something that itself is probably borne out of an inferiority complex, but is nurtured by the vacuous give-em-what-they-want culture, and an inadequate press (and in the case of channels like Fox, both of those things at the same time). This comment piece (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/07/sarahpalin.uselections2008) made a pertinent point, I thought: "American democracy [though I maintain it's not just American democracy] is flawed, because a fake sense of intimacy with a presidential candidate has come to count more than credentials and arguments." ([The] point is not about the US. It is about educational systems that leave people clueless about the world, and hence do not provide them with criteria better than gut-level sympathy to choose their political leaders.)

Most of the comments below that piece seem to miss the point, but one comment that I agree with - I want my leader to be better than us, I want him or her to be elitist, to be more intellectual. Far rather that than just "someone with whom I could share a beer".

Always comes back to the same thing though, and it's precisely what you wrote in that other thread: the importance of educating. Of course there will be resistance, like trying to get a Muslim to switch to Catholicism, or a religious person to atheism, or a Chelsea supporter to Man U - but slowly, the more information spreads (and we could get into Dawkins' meme theory here) the higher the bar is raised.

[IsiliRunite]

Does anyone remember the moment in The Birdcage where Gene Hackman's character is watching a pundit show?

The view reminds me of that show.