Posted on 09/21/2016 7:42:05 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
Ken Burns still can't get over his obsession over Donald Trump. Last June, in his Stanford commencement speech, the documentary filmmaker with the outdated Beatle haircut went all drama queen over the candidacy of Donald Trump. Well, he still can't get Trump out of his mind even if he is unable to speak his name.
In an interview with Carl Quintanilla, host of CNBC's BINGE, Burns takes us on a troubled trip deep into the heart of liberal darkness. His obsession is mostly amusing but he still continues to pretend that he is "nonpartisan" which is an easily disprovable lie. The interview begins with the clip of Burns' Stanford campaign speech thinly disguised as a commencement address:
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
A league of their own, Ken Burns and George Will.
Too bad, his Civil War series was excellent, I thought...
When Trump is elected then just leave for good Kenny. I hear France is nice in the fall.
All his major works stink.
Boring, and absolutely riddled with PC. Disgusting Ameriphobia.
See 2008, Kenny boy.
PBS had another documentary of his this week that sounded interesting. It was about a family that helped Jews escape the Nazis. I passed on it because Burns is full of excrement and because he probably managed to link the Nazis to Trump.
BURNS: Never in the history of the republic, for 216 years of real contested elections...that never have we had somebody so manifestly unqualified to do the job.
See 2008, Kenny boy.
I seem to remember a peanut farmer...
He'll probably have magical negroes be the heroes, just like in all his films.
Stanford is producing a lot of elite snobs like this The Intellectual Yet Idiot, aka IYI.
The Intellectual Yet Idiot medium.com ^ | 9/16/2016 | Nassim Nicholas Taleb Posted on
9/19/2016, 12:45:55 PM by Darnright
What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking clerks and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us
1) what to do,
2) what to eat,
3) how to speak,
4) how to think and
5) who to vote for.
But the problem is the one-eyed following the blind: these self-described members of the intelligenzia cant find a coconut in Coconut Island, meaning they arent intelligent enough to define intelligence hence fall into circularities but their main skill is capacity to pass exams written by people like them.
With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30 years of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating at best only 1/3 of the time.
People are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers (or Montaigne and such filtered classical knowledge) with a better track record than these policymaking goons. Indeed one can see that these academico-bureaucrats who feel entitled to run our lives arent even rigorous, whether in medical statistics or policymaking.
They cant tell science from scientism in fact in their eyes scientism looks more scientific than real science. (For instance it is trivial to show the following: much of what the Cass-Sunstein-Richard Thaler types those who want to nudge us into some behavior much of what they would classify as rational or irrational (or some such categories indicating deviation from a desired or prescribed protocol) comes from their misunderstanding of probability theory and cosmetic use of first-order models.) They are also prone to mistake the ensemble for the linear aggregation of its components as we saw in the chapter extending the minority rule.
The Intellectual Yet Idiot is a production of modernity hence has been accelerating since the mid twentieth century, to reach its local supremum today, along with the broad category of people without skin-in-the-game who have been invading many walks of life. Why? Simply, in most countries, the governments role is between five and ten times what it was a century ago (expressed in percentage of GDP).
The IYI seems ubiquitous in our lives but is still a small minority and is rarely seen outside specialized outlets, think tanks, the media, and universities most people have proper jobs and there are not many openings for the IYI. Beware the semi-erudite who thinks he is an erudite. He fails to naturally detect sophistry. The IYI pathologizes others for doing things he doesnt understand without ever realizing it is his understanding that may be limited. He thinks people should act according to their best interests and he knows their interests, particularly if they are red necks or English non-crisp-vowel class who voted for Brexit. When plebeians do something that makes sense to them, but not to him, the IYI uses the term uneducated.
What we generally call participation in the political process, he calls by two distinct designations: democracy when it fits the IYI, and populism when the plebeians dare voting in a way that contradicts his preferences.
While rich people believe in one tax dollar one vote, more humanistic ones in one man one vote, Monsanto in one lobbyist one vote, the IYI believes in one Ivy League degree one-vote, with some equivalence for foreign elite schools and PhDs as these are needed in the club. More socially, the IYI subscribes to The New Yorker. He never curses on twitter. He speaks of equality of races and economic equality but never went out drinking with a minority cab driver (again, no real skin in the game as the concept is foreign to the IYI).
Those in the U.K. have been taken for a ride by Tony Blair. The modern IYI has attended more than one TEDx talks in person or watched more than two TED talks on Youtube. Not only will he vote for Hillary Monsanto-Malmaison because she seems electable and some such circular reasoning, but holds that anyone who doesnt do so is mentally ill.
The IYI has a copy of the first hardback edition of The Black Swan on his shelves, but mistakes absence of evidence for evidence of absence. He believes that GMOs are science, that the technology is not different from conventional breeding as a result of his readiness to confuse science with scientism. Typically, the IYI get the first order logic right, but not second-order (or higher) effects making him totally incompetent in complex domains.
In the comfort of his suburban home with 2-car garage, he advocated the removal of Gadhafi because he was a dictator, not realizing that removals have consequences (recall that he has no skin in the game and doesnt pay for results).
The IYI has been wrong, historically, on Stalinism, Maoism, GMOs, Iraq, Libya, Syria, lobotomies, urban planning, low carbohydrate diets, gym machines, behaviorism, transfats, freudianism, portfolio theory, linear regression, Gaussianism, Salafism, dynamic stochastic equilibrium modeling, housing projects, selfish gene, Bernie Madoff (pre-blowup) and p-values. But he is convinced that his current position is right.
The IYI is member of a club to get traveling privileges; if social scientist he uses statistics without knowing how they are derived (like Steven Pinker and psycholophasters in general); when in the UK, he goes to literary festivals; he drinks red wine with steak (never white); he used to believe that fat was harmful and has now completely reversed; he takes statins because his doctor told him to do so; he fails to understand ergodicity and when explained to him, he forgets about it soon later; he doesnt use Yiddish words even when talking business; he studies grammar before speaking a language; he has a cousin who worked with someone who knows the Queen; he has never read Frederic Dard, Libanius Antiochus, Michael Oakeshot, John Gray, Amianus Marcellinus, Ibn Battuta, Saadiah Gaon, or Joseph De Maistre; he has never gotten drunk with Russians; he never drank to the point when one starts breaking glasses (or, preferably, chairs); he doesnt know the difference between Hecate and Hecuba; he doesnt know that there is no difference between pseudointellectual and intellectual in the absence of skin in the game; has mentioned quantum mechanics at least twice in the past five years in conversations that had nothing to do with physics.
He knows at any point in time what his words or actions are doing to his reputation. But a much easier marker: he doesnt deadlift. Postscript From the reactions to this piece, I discovered that the IYI has difficulty, when reading, in differentiating between the satirical and the literal. PostPostscript The IYI thinks this criticism of IYIs means everybody is an idiot, not realizing that their group represents, as we said, a tiny minority but they dont like their sense of entitlement to be challenged and although they treat the rest of humans as inferiors, they dont like it when the waterhose is turned to the opposite direction (what the French call arroseur arrosé).
(For instance, Richard Thaler, partner of the dangerous GMO advocate Übernudger Cass Sunstein, interpreted this piece as saying that there are not many non-idiots not called Taleb, not realizing that people like him are < 1% or even .1% of the population.)
Yeah, but Jimmah was at least a governor who served a full term. And an Annapolis grad. Much more qualified than community organizer Hussein.
Ken Burns wears Pajama Boy jammies
Beatle haircut? I think when he goes to the barber he demands “cut it like Moe’s”.
BURNS: “Never in the history of the republic, for 216 years of real contested elections...that never have we had somebody so manifestly unqualified to do the job.”
How about LBJ, Carter, Bubba Clinton, and Obama for unqualified disasters to America. You can add Bushco 1 and 2 to the incompetent/dangerous presidents.
Such daddy-issue males——so emasculated by our culture (on purpose) They drank a lot of Fluoride in the water growing up and ate a lot of soy products with all the phytoestrogens (or drank our water without filters which is saturated with birth control runoff LOL
They are unable to understand Reality——Men so feminized, they actually believe in this little utopian Marxist meme, which the Progressives put out 24-7 to promote the total destruction of Western Civilization (Christianity) for the hellhole of Marx, where men and women are interchangeable, girls are boys are girls, Vice is Virtue..........so irrational and total erasing of all identity and individuality and all history and Traditions (dehumanization).
They probably call Jenner a “she” and love it when mutilated, drugged males go into their granddaughter’s locker rooms and they reveal their penis (after all males and females have to be interchangeable in their irrational hellhole and little girls have to be exposed to male genitals so they will have all their innocence and mystery and modesty destroyed-—and complete privacy erased-—(get used to the Big Brother spying EVERYWHERE, even on the toilet).
Wake up, little Kenny and Georgie. You guys were useless dupes and only made millions because the Shadow Government you helped hide and excuse, OWNS YOU.
I wish Kens Burns would just shut his mouth and stick to making amazing history documentaries. I loved The War, Prohibition and The Civil War.
He is amazing until he opens his fat mouth, then I really wish I could slap him into next week.
Big-time sports has long been a vehicle for political correctness, but it’s gotten so bad that viewers can’t take it any more.
I know I can’t!
The "Establishment" want him gone, no matter what. It's a restricted club.
So don't tell 'em you're Jewish, okay Wang? All right.
"Momma, it has been a while since I have been able to take ink to paper and write to you but I think about you all the time.
This election is hell. I wonder if you are being subjected to the daily mental insanity of Trump derangement syndrome. I hope not, or at least not as much was we have to endure
Every day is an onslaught. People I used to hold in decent opinion are now strangers to me--The Bush family, Ted Cruz, and even the film maker Ken Burns.
It's like they have all lost their minds to an alien space virus. I fear for their children.
I am told this election is coming to an end soon. I would like to believe that but for the time being I must endure and do my duty to hold on and vote for Trump. I trust you will be able to do the same. It is for the country, we must survive. "
/Civil War Documentary Narrator voice (with violin music)
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