And this explains exactly what is wrong with our 'online expert' culture. The average person is no longer able to distinguish between bona fide expertise and the pseudo-status of online bigmouths whose absolute conviction in the correctness of their opinion and their right to blare it all over the Internet now replaces decades spent trying to thoroughly understand a subject so you can speak with authority. Now posters 'speak with authority' on myriads of topics without doing the hard work to really understand any of them. The rise of the online lay expert has real-life negative consequences in medicine, politics, science, etc. where any rube who has read a book and devised a personal theory can expound at length on dangers of vaccines, the coming socialist new order or any of a litany of semi-literate populist causes. This sort of 'clout' is not something to celebrate.
There is a classic line in the movie Monster House where the
exasperated babysitter confronts the odd behavior of her charges by saying
something like “I don’t know what you have, but I’m sure that it has initials
and there are pills for it.” I sympathize with her frustration. In our family, we have identified and
assigned initials to one such disorder; C.U.D or ‘Consequence Understanding
Disorder.’ Our observation has been that, while it strikes all races and both
genders, it is far more serious, long-lasting and difficult to treat in males.
In medical parlance this is known as a ‘gender bias.’ This is unfortunate
because, of course, gender usually lasts a lifetime. It is more and more clear
to me that, unfortunately, so does CUD.
All children have to suffer through the ‘learning by
experience’ misery that is part of the human condition. However, people with
CUD have the additional challenge of not actually internalizing these lessons,
finding themselves in a state of chronic surprise when things go--predictably
to the rest of us--horribly wrong. The
symptoms showed up early in my son. He had trouble grasping the notion that it
is not a good idea to walk one way while looking another. As a consequence, his unusually large head
was a phrenological paradise with lumps, bumps and bruises everywhere. Finally sick of hearing the walls in the
house shake due to another CUD collision (‘Oh geez, Rory’s walking again’) and
of being suspected of forehead abuse, we resorted to covering his head at all
times with a football helmet (seriously).
I admit I sometimes contributed to the problem, albeit
innocently, my own mild CUD apparently rearing its ugly head. I mean what could possibly go wrong with
giving a young boy with a limited grasp of consequences a chemistry set? On
white carpet? During the most boring
months of winter?
One incident led me to believe we were making some progress.
Rory, who was about 6 or 7 years old, became interested in a baby rattle
belonging to a visiting infant. The
rattle was attached to a suction cup and Rory was fascinated to discover that
with a little spit and some force, you could get that suction cup to stick to
just about anything. He stuck it to
walls, appliances, and furniture, noting the various stickiness factor of
each. Over the years, I had learned to
recognize the look on his face that meant we were in trouble. It was a “hmmm, I wonder what would happen
if…?” look and the blankness behind his eyes made it clear that he was in a
full CUD mode. As he sat next to the innocent infant and held the rattle aloft in
one hand, I saw that look in his eyes and thought was ‘oh no, he’s going to try
to stick it on the baby!’ I ran across the room just in time to hear a
resounding whap and see the rattle
bouncing noisily from his own forehead.
My relief that he had chosen to experiment on himself and not the baby
was short-lived, however, because he was in serious distress when he figured
out that, once removed, the rattle had left a large, red suction hickey on his
forehead. There was no disguising it
with a football helmet this time. He was forced to wear the evidence of his
severe CUD for all to see.
As difficult as that was for him (his classmates nicknamed
him “Bullseye,” a name that sticks--no pun intended--to this day) at least I
had hope that his distress would reinforce the consequences of that action and
break through the devastating barrier of CUD.
For a time, it seemed that that is exactly what happened. He suffered from other CUD-related injuries (who
could predict that doing pretend death rolls out of your friend’s slow moving
vehicle could result in someone getting hurt?), but I thought we had at least
crossed the ‘suction-related injuries’ hurdle. Which is why I was so surprised
when Rory, now 23 and a college student, came into my office area the other day
with a horrible rash on his face. Fearing he may have a serious illness, I
asked him about the multiple reddish-purple bruises covering his right cheek,
forehead and chin.
“Oh, are they still there?” he said.
I felt my heart sink. “Rory, are what still there?”
“Well, I was holding an empty pill bottle last night--you know, the ones that seem hard--and I noticed that if I squeezed it just right, I could get enough suction to make it stick to my hand.”
No, no, no! It couldn’t be. This was total relapse to age 7 CUD behavior. But I had to be brave for both of us, so I closed my eyes and asked what happened next.
“So, I thought I should see if I could get it to stick to my face,” Rory explained, as if this was perfectly rational.
“Rory,” I said, “I know you are aware of this at some level, but just as a reminder, you are 23 years old and just got an ‘A’ in astrophysics.” I felt it was important to establish his identity in case CUD-related denial had blinded him to basic behavioral standards for someone who is technically an adult. “Are you seriously telling me that it never occurred to you that you would end up with a face full of suction hickies?”
“I guess I just never really thought about it,” he said. And that is the real tragedy of CUD.
We will continue to work with Rory’s disorder until a cure can be found, but in the meantime, it is important to raise awareness of this little understood condition. After all, we are all subject to the consequences of untreated CUD. What else could explain the illogical decisions reached by policy makers, corporate titans and elected officials (who, it is worth noting, are overwhelming male and therefore subject to the more severe form of CUD). Unfortunately, CUD is usually a silent disorder--especially if you are fortunate enough to have handlers protecting you from the consequences of your ridiculous behavior. If suction hickies were a universal manifestation of CUD, we would no doubt be astounded at how serious this epidemic is among our ‘leaders.’ Just imagine…
I am bothered, but not surprised, that for the most part the MSM
seems to accept Palin’s dollar figure on the face of it. This is a
woman who has been caught lying time after time, but they still parrot
her ridiculous statements as if they came straight from the good Lord,
himself.
After her resignation, polls showed that 7 in 10 Republicans would vote for her in 2012! When you visit news site forums, these mindless Palin-drones take over the comments section defending their idiot savant with the same sort of gusto they normally reserve for celebrating beer and Cheetos night. This is scary stuff. I don’t think Palin is a “joke.” I think she is a self-deluded narcissist (did you catch the ‘narcissistic rage’ when Andrea Mitchell dared to suggest that she needed to clarify her stream of consciousness explanation for resigning?) who represents lemming-like leadership in our first big step over the cliff into idiocracy. She is the quintessential malign personality (wrapped in a cutesy candy coating) that rises to power despite clear warning signs of unfitness.
Given the crystal clear evidence that she is not suited for any job that requires rational thinking, what will it take to get through to the public? It’s easy to make fun of her, but I think the MSM is discounting the rabid Palin-drones who are just angry enough and stupid enough to see this farce of a politician as the only person who can finally address and fix their myriad Fox News-inspired perceived grievances. I’m not laughing. I’m scared.
Vitiligo (vit-a-lie-go), a condition affecting the melanin-related pigmentation of the skin, was cited as the reason for Michael Jackson's dramatic lightening over the decades. Skeptics naturally assumed he was getting his skin bleached and had only latched onto vitiligo as a convenient excuse for his choice to 'deny' his Black heritage. However, reports that have surfaced since his death indicate that his entire body was very, very white, which would be consistent with the form of vitiligo called NPV in which the pigment in the skin is universally affected. Most sufferers of vitiligo (it affects all races--it's just more obvious in darker skins) get patchy skin. There is plenty of photographic evidence that Michael Jackson did indeed have patchy vitiligo for years prior to possibly developing the more advanced form of the disease. Some examples are posted here. More information from a reliable source can be found here.
Jackson is also rumored to have suffered from lupus, an autoimmune disorder frequently linked with vitiligo, so it is certainly possible that the 'weird' changes in skin color could have been nothing more than a recognized medical disorder.
Cable news networks have been pretty relentless in their coverage of the Michael Jackson death story since it broke over week ago. Granted, it was a major story and had shock value as well as pop culture value. However, it was truly non-stop coverage and critics have lambasted the skewed priorities and lack of journalistic ethics displayed by this sort of 'over the top' reporting. I had to concede their point--until the Jackson story started to fade and the networks switched their focus to 'real' news. Here's a sampling:
Breaking News banner from CNN: Police in Houston are on a high-speed chase (and this is news, why? How is this different than any other day in Houston or any major city?)
ABC feature story: Megan Fox Puts Foot in Mouth, Again.
CBS and MSNBC both lead with news of Obama's trip to Russia, coupled with Debbie Rowe's decision not to attend the Jackson memorial.
All in all, I think I preferred the inane babbling about Jackson over the ridiculous efforts to operate like real news outlets.
Sarah Palin's resignation from the governship of Alaska midway through her term has tongues wagging about the real reasons behind it. Her rambling, contradictory and self-deluded 18 minute announcement did nothing to clarify the real reasons, but in it she clearly painted herself as a sainted victim of the MSM without acknowledging her own contribution to the adversarial relationship she created with them. It is worth noting that this is the same woman who told Hilary Clinton to 'stop whining' about unfair treatment in the media.
Palin's enduring popularity is a testament to the fact that we have not progressed much with women's rights. It is obscene that after decades of fighting for legitimacy, success as a woman still boils down to sex appeal. Palin's wink during the debates was an admission of defeat. She was broadcasting to the world that skill, intellect, gravitas and just plain hard work simply do not work for women, but sexual playfulness and willingness to brand yourself a MILF (now a GILF) sure do. Now she has provided fodder for critics who contend that mothers simply can't manage motherhood and responsible careers.
I agree with commentators who sincerely hope her resignation means Palin is going away. I don't want to see her continue in the limelight even for entertainment value, though I suspect she will. For professional women, Palin's behavior is just one more obstacle we have to overcome on the way to being treated as full and equal contributors to society.
UPDATE: This is the best explanation I've seen for her resignation so far:
"Perhaps she's simply chosen this precious time to prepare for her inevitable 2012 presidential run
by hunkering down and finally studying how to wink more effectively
(and not like an epileptic who was recently exposed to a strobe light)."
Warren Holstein at the Huffington Post
