The Kevin McCarthy Speaker of the House mess

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The Kevin McCarthy Speaker of the House mess
 
There are a lot of speculations about why Kevin McCarthy stepped aside, but this is a political blip that will not be worth remembering in a few months.
 
The real reason I opened this thread is to look at Rachel Maddow's storytelling talent. If you watch the video below, you get an understanding of the big picture of this affair you simply don't get anywhere else.
 
I aspire to do this and do it this well when I grow up. Not just about politics, though. About big ideas.
 
Note: I disagree with most every political position Maddow holds, but that lady knows how to tell a story. Those interested in spreading ideas and politics would do well to study what she is doing and how she is doing it.
 

 
Roger Ailes once said she was one of the best current news anchors on TV. I am almost sure he was talking about her storytelling ability (and seriousness in sourcing). It sure as hell wasn't her politics.
 

 
(Believe me, this post comes from a place in my soul that refuses to spin reality into something it is not. However, the fact is it hurts me to praise Rachel Maddow. It hurts like hell. )

 

Incidentally, here is another link to the video in case the YouTube embed gets canceled.

 

Michael

[George H. Smith]

I don't care for Maddow's style nearly as much as you do. For one thing I find her singsong speaking voice very annoying. When she hits the upper register it seems like I am listening to nails on a blackboard. For another thing, she often dons a phony smile, as if she is competing in a beauty pageant. Very odd for a left-feminist.

Ghs

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

George,

Actually I'm not too keen on Maddow's style. It's her underlying storytelling I like. In the video above, she started with the Cantor backstory tinged with a bit of mystery. As she went along she delved into what each character or group desired, what the normal expectations were, the dangers, the stakes, the conflicts, etc., then she highlighted the surprising outcomes and tried to make sense of what they meant. That's what I meant by storytelling.

As to her style, I agree with you. Especially the phony smile. I mind less the singsong delivery (although I still mind it), but that might be because of my upbringing where I sometimes had to listen to southern revival preachers. Maddow also has a constant habit of repeating most observations two or three times. You can do that with a couple of points or so for a story and it enhances emphasis. When you do it as much as she does, it gets tiresome real fast.

Apropos, southern revival preachers also repeat things excessively, but they generally repeat benefits and punishments and emotional phrases, not the events and descriptions like Maddow does. (As a great example, see the movie, The Apostle, where Robert Duvall is perfection incarnate as this kind of preacher. Incidentally, this singsong delivery induces a trance and is a tool of mind control.)

I caught Maddow today on a follow-up to the story above where she was even more gleeful than before about the chaos in the Republican party. I couldn't bear to watch it for long. Rather than storytelling, she merely had a list-template* running and was doing pure style. Without a strong storyline, I agree that Maddow is like listening to an ostrich sing opera without any comedy to it.

I switched channels during this one, then after about five minutes, switched back to see how the story might have developed. It was in the same place, so I switched channels again. I did this back and forth for a full half-hour and her non-story stayed in gloat mode and mannerisms--a full half hour of prime-time. (After all, what are the Republicans going to do now?... gloat gloat gloat... Nobody knows what they are doing... gloat gloat gloat... The Democrats are ready to take back the Senate... gloat gloat gloat... and so on...)

So I should qualify my gush. Maddow is only good when she's flogging a well-developed story. Without the story, she's merely flogging the viewer.

* A list template as I use it here is a number of items that are briefly discussed one after the other--as opposed to a story, which has an overall arc of set-up, disruption, conflict with rising stakes, and outcome. In her latest afternoon broadcast, Maddow was going through the list of things that she wanted to crow about in no particular order. No drama, just snark.

Michael

[anthony]

If I may say, Maddow displays a characteristic of the Left with her suspect notion of causality (the booing of a speech...had to lead to this present circumstance). Her delivery is certainly ~insistent~ which I've become used to from female pundits, particularly.

She's borrowed some of Jon Stewart's funny antics I notice, like the pretence of scratching out lines with her pen. I hardly know the difference any more, between entertainment and political commentary.

[Selene]

Political commentary = entertainment = "news"...

Just to nit-pic her pronunciation, does she say at about 10:39, "...off the whales...?"

I give you a lot of credit that you even have the patience to watch CNN.

A...

[moralist]

Sorry Michael... I could only stand watching that wretched creature for about a minute. It's a good reminder why our TV isn't hasn't been connected to a network for 15 years and never will... and why we only use it to watch Netflix DVD's.

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

Couldn't stand the tone of her voice. Never saw or heard of her before. I also cannot name one of the big three broadcast news anchors. Not so big now. I can't tell you my Direct TV channel numbers for MSNBC, FOX or CNN.

It doesn't really matter, for the mainstream media still infects journalism generally with liberal, fascist, progressives of the left telling hoi polloi they're objective. These folks are the rulers of America. They are only in danger of being displaced by conservatives most of whom are either war mongers or problematic at best.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The problem is Rachel Maddow has a large influential audience who does resonate with her manner of talking.

If one is ever to reach that audience, just saying she sucks won't get there.

Maddow is doing something right to reach that many people and articulate what their world view.

That is what I propose to analyze. And that means I have to leave my biases on the table outside the door when I come in to look. Later I will go out of the room and pick my biases back up. But I can't tell myself there is nothing worth seeing at the same time I am trying to study it. And I cannot look at what is unfolding before my eyes and pretend Maddow's resonance with so many people is an accident. So I have to study it according to the good, the bad and the ugly.

(Well... that last part, the ugly, is easy.

But I'm not talking about physical appearance...

Gotcha!!! )

For one, I intend to reach those folks some day. With a paradigm-busting message, too.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Caring about her audience is a trap. They want her so they watch her. If not her someone similar. Good luck with better stuff. It's the last thing they want.

--Brant

[moralist]

Michael writes:

The problem is Rachel Maddow has a large influential audience who does resonate with her manner of talking.

...and they are creating their government in their own image. It's their own self inflicted problem which has nothing to do with me or my life. I say let them choke on it when what they made when it gets rammed down their gullets.

Government is self inflicted.

"The sheep know the voice of the shepherd." Like all truths, this one cuts both ways

For one, I intend to reach those folks some day. With a paradigm-busting message, too.

While I can respect your efforts... the truth is that no one changes their paradigm. Once they have chosen it, they take it and all of its consequences to their grave with them.

Only the objective reality of a catastrophe possesses the power to change a paradigm.

Greg

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

... the truth is that no one changes their paradigm. Once they have chosen it, they take it and all of its consequences to their grave with them.

Greg,

Then you do not believe in the effectiveness of the parables of Jesus.

See this book: The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus by John Dominic Crossan.

According to Crossan's analysis, there are three kinds of parable:

1. The riddle or allegory parable.

2. The example parable.

3. The challenge parable.

This last is the paradigm-shifter. The story is familiar to listeners, but includes something really off-key. Thus it causes strong disagreements and discussions and gets people to question their previous paradigms. The purpose is not to teach a moral lesson so much as to get the listener's mind open so he or she can think through moral ideas (presumably more rationally, including, in the case of Jesus, a new form of the kingdom of God).

I didn't start reading this book for religious reasons, pro or con. I truly wanted to understand what parables are and why they have endured. I am so glad I am reading it, though (I'm about two-thirds the way through).

Different parts of Ayn Rand's fiction are forms of parable. For example, from Atlas Shrugged:

The activities of Ragnar Danneskjöld in Atlas Shrugged are a form of riddle or allegory parable. He represents justice and each of his acts can be pegged to an allegorical message, almost on a one-to-one correspondence (i.e., a riddle).

There are too many examples of people acting in a manner that illustrates the effects of a moral principle to mention, but here is one example. The use of Robert Stadler's science work to create a weapon of mass destruction is a parable showing that if you serve people who rule by force (especially with productive inventions), they will eventually use your work for destruction. His actions (and those of his masters) illustrate a moral causal principle.

The Randian challenge parables are the people on the train who died going into the tunnel and being assigned their share of the blame, or Dagny shooting the guard in cold blood.

When good guys do bad according to a paradigm, or bad guys do good (the two most common kinds of dissonance), and the rest of the tale follows a standard paradigm the audience is comfortable with, this causes cognitive dissonance and people start questioning, each in his or her own manner. Passions start running high in the discussions. Out of this chaos eventually comes a new paradigm.

When you (Greg) tell victims they get what they deserve, you are using their story as a form of challenge parable. (Probably without using this terminology, thus without realizing it, but still, that's the way I see it working so far.)

Note, not everyone who blames victims are doing this. They normally blame victims to reinforce their own biases and frames of reference (paradigms). You seem to do it to challenge others to think. However, I only see this some of the time. At other times, I see you merely scratching an itch to pretend you are superior to others. But some of the time I see a true interest in reaching people and getting them to think. I resonate with that goodness.

The more I ponder this, the more I see challenge parables in Ayn Rand's fiction. Call it interactive storytelling with post-hypnotic suggestions.

Or the cause of fault-lines in the dams of paradigms...

Michael

[moralist]

Michael writes:

Then you do not believe in the effectiveness of the parables of Jesus.

The ONLY effectiveness a parable has is when the objective reality of personal life experience confirms it to be true...

...even when Jesus tells them.

The secular left is dismantling America...

...and the only reason they can, is because there are more of them than there are Americans. They will have their way until it all caves in on them as they deserve. It will not cave in on the Americans because they live by different values.

Greg

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The ONLY effectiveness a parable has is when the objective reality of personal life experience confirms it to be true...

...even when Jesus tells them.

Greg,

I humbly suggest that time travel does not exist.

Just because something organic is true today, that does not mean it does not change with growth and/or decay. So decreeing a static future for living beings as a fact is actually an opinion. There is no way to travel to the future, observe it, then travel back to now to confirm it.

Humans have free will. And that's the monkey-wrench fixed mindset people keep stubbing their toes on.

I also humbly suggest you study metaphor a bit, that is if you find it useful. If not, your lack of understanding about parable will persist, but that's OK. Not all are called on to understand parables.

Even Jesus said that ("He who has ears to hear, let him hear")...

MIchael

[Selene]

Maddow is doing something right to reach that many people and articulate what their world view.

That is what I propose to analyze. And that means I have to leave my biases on the table outside the door when I come in to look. Later I will go out of the room and pick my biases back up. But I can't tell myself there is nothing worth seeing at the same time I am trying to study it. And I cannot look at what is unfolding before my eyes and pretend Maddow's resonance with so many people is an accident. So I have to study it according to the good, the bad and the ugly.

Michael

Precisely the role of a critic, or, a debate judge.

This was a serious part of my graduate education. The role of the critic, critical reasoning and the "narrator."

I never realized how great the studying of Rhetoric was, since it applies to all of the "platforms" of human communications, I have found it useful everywhere I have walked.

You are so on the right track.

A...

[moralist]

Michael writes:

Just because something organic is true today, that does not mean it does not change with growth and/or decay.

We each see this from different vantage points.

In my view, truth is always true...

...it's us who grow or decay in subjective relation to it's objective reality.

Someone can tell you a parable...

...but until the objective reality of the consequences of your own actions confirm it to be true in your own life experience, you can only believe it to be true.

And as oft declared by Objectivists, faith is irrational illogical superstitious nonsense.

[moralist]

Michael writes:

I also humbly suggest you study metaphor a bit, that is if you find it useful. If not, your lack of understanding about parable will persist, but that's OK. Not all are called on to understand parables.

The parables I do understand are by virtue of my own life experience. That is the only thing with the power to manifest them. Until then they are unrealized intellectual virtualities.

Even Jesus said that ("He who has ears to hear, let him hear")...

Jesus actually said that a few times. Here's one of those times in context:

Then the disciples came to Him and asked, Why do You speak to the crowds in parables?

Jesus replied to them, To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted.

For whoever has spiritual wisdom because he is receptive to Gods word, to him more will be given, and he will be richly and abundantly supplied; but whoever does not have spiritual wisdom because he has devalued Gods word, even what he has will be taken away from him.

This is the reason I speak to the crowds in parables: because while having the power of seeing they do not see, and while having the power of hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand and grasp spiritual things. In them the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says,

You will hear and keep on hearing, but never understand;

And you will look and keep on looking, but never comprehend;

For this nations heart has grown hard,

And with their ears they hardly hear,

And they have tightly closed their eyes,

Otherwise they would see with their eyes,

And hear with their ears,

And understand with their heart, and turn to Me

And I would heal them spiritually.

So you see, the purpose of Jesus speaking in parables was not for those who didn't understand them, but were only for those who did understand them.

Parables are for your protection.

"Do not give that which is holy to dogs,

and do not throw your pearls before pigs,

for they will trample them under their feet,

and turn and tear you to pieces."

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

So you see, the purpose of Jesus speaking in parables was not for those who didn't understand them, but were only for those who did understand them.

Greg,

So you see them as a kind of secret handshake or badge of some sort to those who belong to a clique? A form of Christian pig-latin as it were?

I agree that part of the function of using parables to Jesus was to confound oppressors, but my view is bit broader than merely a secret code and more involved with human nature.

Also, Crossan goes pretty deeply into how Jews of that time would have heard the parables. Their ears would have heard the stories a lot differently than we now hear them. For instance, with the Good Samaritan, he did an analysis according to the three types of parable:

1. Riddle and allegory. St. Augustine really ramped up on this one. The traveler who got beat up was equivalent to Adam. Jerusalem (from where he came) was the Garden of Eden. His travel represented Adam's expulsion. The thieves who robbed and beat him were Satan and his minions. The priest and the Levite who passed him by were like the entrenched priesthood and ministry of the Old Testament. The Samaritan was equivalent to Jesus. The binding of the wounds was forgiveness for sin. Even the inn-keeper was the Apostle Paul. And on and on. Every little detail had an allegorical equivalence.

2. Example. The story shows how to do good. If you see someone in trouble, be like the good Samaritan and help out. Don't be like the dorks who passed the traveler by. Love thy enemy as thyself. And so on.

3. Challenge. Nowadays, it's hard to imagine in what esteem the priests (not Christian, obviously, but still called priests) were held back then. Ditto for the old-school Jewish clergy (Levites). To ancient Jews, they were examples to be followed. Obeyed. Trusted. Learned from. Total good guys. The standard-bearers of the truth according to God. And a Samaritan was scum. Totally hated and feared. Dangerous enemy.

Telling the parable today would be like saying the Pope and the Dalai Lama passed the beaten up traveler by and a terrorist from ISIS helped him out. This causes major cognitive dissonance.

So how come the good guys act like bastards and the real nasty bad guy acts good?

Even if we accept your idea that a parable is nothing more than a secret code for insiders, that particular paradigm-shifting challenge would be part of that code. That is, for those who could hear it.

Michael

[moralist]

Michael writes:

So you see them as a kind of secret handshake or badge of some sort to those who belong to a clique? A form of Christian pig-latin as it were?

Oh, not at all, Michael!

Parables are not exclusionary. It's totally up to each individual to freely choose for themselves whether or not they will exclude themselves by how they live. Whoever craps on moral law by living in opposition to it has freely made their own choice to exclude themselves.

It's completely self inflicted.

Greg