Gregory McNamee's lecture Wednesday, November 18 was described as entertaining on the posters. That was a good idea because, in smaller script he was also described as a contributing editor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. However boring that sounds to college kids he managed to fill the entire Pima Community College West Campus Santa Rita student lounge to capacity. Hats off to profs for all that extra credit.
Lame Truthiness
McNamee began by illustrating a series of lame half-truths and flat out lies that were accepted as truth.The most interesting for me was the story about the creator of Raggedy Ann- Johnny Bruell a fierce advocate against vaccination. Bruell's daughter Marcela originally recovered from an early type of swine flu and later died after given a vaccination in a weakened condition.
Bruell used Raggedy Ann and Andy as powerful tools for the anti-vaccination movement, typically the characters were running in fear from "the people with the needles". McNamee then began dispelling his favorite popular anecdotes of misinformation, first declaring that there is not a shred of evidence that vaccinations cause autism. He said that people were willing to disregard facts because things make them uncomfortable.
There is no actual occurance that protestors of the Vietnam War ever spat on returning veterans. A large rumor has recently circulated that the pay differential of CEOs to their company's average worker pay is 400 times. The differential is actually 337 times and as recently as 1980 the pay differential was only 40 times the average worker's pay rate.
McNamee also cited other examples of popular misnomers like avian flu coming from Asia, which side actually started the Civil War, the brontosaurus dinosaur lived in arid desert locations not swamps, Einstein not flunking out of classes. It became clear to me that these were most frustrating only to someone who edits an encyclopedia.
The Point
To be blunt those examples and many more were a long and winding road to McNamee's chief complaint: Wikipedia is more popular than an encyclopedia whose accuracy is always correct. Wikipedia's 70 percent accuracy rate further incensed a man who edits encyclopedias and is angry that the public spreads gossip and most of it is bad. OMG.
McNamee was most irritated that we live in a time when expert opinion is mistrusted. "You'd be angered at how little people know about this world." He said that we all have to consult with experts: structural engineers, neurosurgeons and Indian chiefs. For instance one wouldn't want brain surgery performed by a doctor whose success rate or knowledge is only 70 percent right?
McNamee suggested to stay away from Wikipedia, interrogate sources of information read or heard. He seemed specifically to address journalism students when he said to gather information the old fashioned way from books in libraries. "Facts are stupid things. What makes them smarter or stupider is how they are used."
I think this lecture was a dumbed down version of what he really felt and was frustrated by the spread of bad information to wit: "When crowds have the chance to be wrong they usually are wrong." Perhaps since I just watched "Religioulous" by Bill Maher I felt a salty, scathing book about that topic should be written to send the literary world a-twitter. But I supposed McNamee didn't want to reveal possibly controversial and outright condescending opinions and beliefs he could verify with some well-chosen facts.
However since he had said, "You have to be unafraid to offend people if you're going to talk about facts" early in the lecture, maybe this lecture was all the ammunition he had. I enjoyed the lecture and was glad I spent an hour of my time there. I think he is just going to be that guy, the guy that gets offended by misinformation. Not a rocker, shocker, or anything profound or dramatic. I'm glad he's out there holding people accountable, holding b.s. to proper scrutiny and keeping the colors bright in this weird rainbow of life.
Gregory McNamee is available for lectures and can also check out his photography at: http://www.gregorymcnamee.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment