Patterico's Pontifications

4/2/2009

What E.J. Dionne could learn from Penn Jillette

Filed under: General — Karl @ 8:59 am



[Posted by Karl]

This morning, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne rolls out the newspeak for Pres. Obama:

The great mystery of the Obama administration’s economic agenda is whether its signature marriage of boldness and caution will prove to be a Goldilocks recipe that gets things just right, or a Rube Goldberg approach of unimaginable complexity and uncertain purpose.

***

Describing what Obama is up to leads quickly to sentences freighted with contradictions. He wants to regulate the market more tightly in order to save it. He thinks big government is required now if we are to return to a less-restricted economic system later. You might say that he is using collectivist means to capitalist ends.

Ah, yes.  Obama must destroy the capitalist village to save it.  This sort of claim also gets made for FDR, though Henry Morgenthau, FDR’s Treasury Secretary, recognized that an orgy of “stimulus” spending did not work, and the evidence that FDR’s policies prolonged the Great Depression continues to mount.

Compare Dionne’s column to yesterday’s CNN op-ed by comic-magician Penn Jillette, who asked whether Obama was metaphorically steering into a skid, or crashing the car:

Obama tells us that we can spend our way out of debt. He tells us that even though the government had control over the banks and did nothing to stop the bad that’s going on, if we give them more control over more other bank-like things, then they can make sure bad stuff doesn’t happen ever again. He says we can get out of all those big wars President Bush caused by sending more troops into Afghanistan. And I don’t know. I really don’t know.

I trusted my Dad that turning into a skid would work. I trusted my carny mentor, Doc Swan, that closing my mouth around a burning torch would put it out. They were right. Maybe the United States borrowing more money than I could imagine in a billion years with a billion computers and a billion monkeys typing on them, will get us out of financial trouble. I really don’t know. It’s certainly true that many counterintuitive things are true, and when you have the guts to do something counterintuitive that works, it’s really cool. It’s a superpower under our yellow sun.

But there are some things that are just intuitive. Did you know, that if you’re going 100 mph, directly at a very, very thick, reinforced concrete wall, and you speed up, so you’re accelerating right when you hit the wall that the accident you have is going to be much worse than if you’d jammed on the brakes as soon as you saw the wall at the end of the street? Did you know that? It’s exactly what everything you know and feel would tell you, and it’s exactly true. Most times when you’re driving, or playing with fire, or handling money, the thing that makes sense to you is also true.

I way hope we’re turning into a skid and not accelerating into a concrete wall.

What are the differences between Dionne and Jillette?  The first is that, as a comedian, Jillette knows he is engaging in gallows humor.  The second is that, as a magician, Jillette knows there really is no such thing as magic.  He knows that in reality, there are no wizards, only people who are good at distracting the audience from what they are really doing.  He knows that there is a sucker born every minute.  He knows that if you don’t know who the mark is, you are the mark.  If Dionne knew any of those things, he would be a better columnist.

–Karl

28 Responses to “What E.J. Dionne could learn from Penn Jillette”

  1. I’m going with the wall. Has a lot of history of being the winner in these games of chicken.

    allan (2fb38f)

  2. The other difference? The really big one? Jillette is pro-freedom.

    Dionne’s got Der Staat’s mailed fist so far up his rectum he can taste Rustoleum.

    Bilwick1 (798ac9)

  3. Bilwick1,
    Pungent, but truthful. Conventional Washington insider journalists like Dionne thrive on access, telling outsiders what to believe.

    Here’s a nice profile of Penn and Teller’s pro-freedom beliefs.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R., (36f69f)

  4. Wonder if they’ll ever feature this on their TV show, “Bullsh-t!”

    Dmac (49b16c)

  5. and yet, according to some, we’re not to question the messiah’s motives. just his freaking sanity, then?

    Born Free (6672c6)

  6. Penn will get peeved if you refer to him as a magician.

    He’s always been very forthright that he’s an illusionist.

    Like a politician, but more honest, and you actually know what you’re getting into with one of his shows.

    Uncle Pinky (834163)

  7. He wants to regulate the market more tightly in order to save it. He thinks big government is required now if we are to return to a less-restricted economic system later.

    SFAIK, people who argue for free markets do so because they believe free markets are better wealth creators, better at correcting or rooting out inefficiencies, better for society as a whole. But if big government and regulations work better than free markets, especially in times of crisis, then why only temporarily suspend the free market? Why would someone who didn’t blieve in free markets want to bring them back? Why not make the suspension permanent?

    Oh, wait…

    tim maguire (4a98f0)

  8. E.J. Dionne could learn something even more valuable from Teller–how to shut up.

    Official Internet Data Office (0b92b2)

  9. “Conventional Washington insider journalists like Dionne thrive on access, telling outsiders what to believe.”

    What they really thrive on is stupidity. They understand practically nothing about anything, so given that they have this fancy, high-paying job close to the levers of power, they assume that they must understand about as much as there is to be understood. After all, if anybody understood it better, wouldn’t it have been fixed by now? No, it must be just as the big-gov guys say: these problems are so deep, intricate, and intractable that only the anointed few have big enough brains to wrap around them. Of course, the guy in the street looks at and says, “Gee. I’m just a guy in the street. If these important, high-powered guys on t.v. are this confused by it all, it must be way beyond my capacity to understand…”

    The reality is far different. The problems we have, and the reasons for them, are relatively simple and straightforward. Give your average housewife the national economy, tell her its hers if she can get it straightened out, and we’ll be back on top of the world within a week. That’s because our problems don’t have much to do with complicated economic principles and mathematical formulas. They are caused entirely by governmental intrusion–by their regulating this and incentivizing that and tweaking this other thing over here and etc. etc. etc. Government, in every aspect of our lives, is the biggest enemy we face, along with its star-struck, mindless groupies like Dionne.

    danebramage (700c93)

  10. FDR and the Great Depression: the thing everyone now forgets is crucial to FDR’s effect on the economy at the time. Think of 30% unemployment in a time when few women were in the work force; plunging farm prices so low that farmers were burning crops and dumping milk onto the ground; dust bowl wiping out entire states; asset prices dropping to near zero etc. The people were literally afloat on a sea of depression. And then FDR appeared. Soothing, confident that things would get better, and assuring people through weekly radio “fire side chats” that he cared; that the government cared; that the entire government was focused on their future well being. He became everyone’s father, husband, and good friend. I once had a guy on a construction site tell me he felt worse when Roosevelt died then when his own father died. In other words FDR saved the country from communism or fascism, saved capitalism, and saved our democracy.

    Hitler rescued our economy.

    howard432 (3f8901)

  11. I suspect that Penn also knows that even if he thinks he knows who the mark is, he might also be a mark.

    htom (412a17)

  12. The other point is that Jillette is the better writer. He creates a simple metaphor that we can all relate to and uses it to make a point.

    Dionne’s writing is more pompous, but doesn’t make it’s point half as well.

    JayC (ea6c07)

  13. Karl —

    You’re forgetting to factor in E.J.’s ego. When he writes stuff like this to prop up Obama, he does it because he thinks the readers are the marks.

    John (692c5c)

  14. Dionne was influenced by ,studies of Roosevelt during the Great Depression,as a Lion or Fox ,in trying to save Capitalism.He read flattering prose on this premise and trotted out his article.

    mike191 (7634c3)

  15. De-regulate.
    Do not tax the wealthy.
    Let Wall Street have the freedom to create wealth.

    Rah-rah-rah.

    What did most of the folks in this teeny, tiny echo chamber become in certifiable fashion last November?

    L-O-S-E-R-S

    Keep takin’ yer potshots. Eventually you might feel better with a shot of pot. (Hey, there’s the opening for the Patterico goon squad in here to dismiss anything that doesn’t go with the comment section effluence, oops sorry, the flow.)

    Gotta love the Republican anti-budget that just got offered up and seeks to continue W. Bush economics another 50 years or so.
    Wish we could split up the country and let you guys continue your experiment amongst yourselves, though your economic ebola would end the effort pretty quickly, I expect. Only so many of you can make more than 250k per year (the financial lesserlings among you are programmed by Rush et al. to protect the higher-dollar-ups, busying themselves like so many worker bees), but, alas, you’re all subject to being saved by the reality based approach.

    LOSERS

    Larry Reilly (45e7a4)

  16. Mary comes around with its 2nd grade taunts. Did you hold up your fingers in the shape of an L when you did that, Mawy?

    Shakes head … keeps hoping for better, keeps getting this drivel.

    JD (21b45f)

  17. Very helpful: trolling on schedule!

    Eric Blair (fe461f)

  18. Larry, your rantings are getting more incoherent by the day. Especially since “Bush economics” was a Democratic code word for deficit and the Democrats are going to quadruple the deficit with a wave of their hands this week.

    Grow up and stop looking like a tool.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  19. I forgot to mention that Larry is obviously too clueless to realize that the “mark-to-market” FASB accounting rule reform that was just done at the urging of Obama administration treasury officials ( and which was heralded by the market positively ) is in fact …. wait for it … deregulation.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  20. Jillette knows he is engaging in gallows humor.

    Is he? I didn’t read it that way. Seems to me he’s saying that he really doesn’t know which way it’s going. Which is really the only sensible take on it, IMO.

    kenB (88b394)

  21. If the right are such “losers”, the leftist trolls should have nothing to fear. Yet they’re frantically trying to disrupt conservative blogs, a sign of great insecurity in their clay-footed Messiah.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R., (36f69f)

  22. It would be fun to find out what a real free market was like. Hasn’t been allowed to happen yet, certainly didn’t under Bush.

    Vivian Louise (c0f830)

  23. Hurrah freedom! I say let everyone do what they want – most will succumb to their lusts and wallow in debt, their own blubber and drugs. Those displined few should not be held-up to pay for the rest (but it may be inevitable – so hide your assets now)(and stock-pile ammunition).

    Californio (9b0d11)

  24. kenB,

    I think Penn doesn’t know which way it’s going, but that doesn’t stop it from being gallows humor, based on where we are today.

    Karl (3bf5f8)

  25. I like this Penn guy. Dionne, not so much.

    JD (b9ec92)

  26. OMG. LOSERS! BURN! ZING! Hahahahaha

    JD (b9ec92)

  27. What E.J. Dionne could learn from Penn Jillette?

    E.J. might learn that he is a whiny little bitch who is full of shit and not worth reading is what he might learn if he is willing to open his good eye.

    daleyrocks (5d22c0)

  28. I’m guessing that Larry likes the taste of Rustoleum, too.

    Bilwick1 (5bd096)


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