Shakespeare’s King Lear gives a good (accurate and artistic) accounting of what happens when a powerful leader descends into madness. Lear is impressed by the flattery he receives from two of his daughters, and leaves his kingdom to them, ignoring the third daughter, who is more circumspect and honest in what she says. The play is a tragedy because it does not end well for any of the main characters. Although the play is “fiction” in that Lear was not a “real” king, the characters are based on common historical events. History shows how common it has been for those . . . → Read More: King Lear in Charge
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 Comments are closed  Blog  Agincourt, battle, Battle of Hastings, civil wars, commoners, corporations, crew, Earl Landgrebe, ethnicity, golden parachute, gossip, history, King Lear, living in interesting times, madness, Magna Carta, media, news, newspapers, Nixon, Paul Simon, race, radio, reporting, royalty, self-interest, Shakespeare, Slip Slidin' Away, town crier, troops, Trump, TV, Watergate, we the people What would people do without clichés? One of the current favorites is, “at the end of the day,” which seems to be a replacement for “When all is said and done” or the more academic, “In the final analysis….” Most people speak—and think—in clichés most of the time. That has two advantages: it’s easier to spout a cliché than to find a new way of expressing the idea, and everyone knows what it means. Your friends will forgive you for using clichés and probably won’t even know that you are using them. Clichés, however, at best indicate lazy thinking and . . . → Read More: At The End of the Day Comments are closed Blog Abraham Lincoln, all is said and done, B.F. Skinner, behavioral psychology, Catholics, cliché, end of the day, evidence-based, flat earth, FOX News, George Washington, JFK, John F. Kennedy, media, missions to the moon, music, news, perspective, politics, propaganda, Protestants, Ronald Reagan, science, Trump, Trump Derangement Syndrome, TV, TV shows, weapon of war, Welfare Queen, Zero Defects I have borrowed the title of this blog from Shakespeare’s play, Richard III. Richard III was not a nice man, although the real Richard was probably not as evil as Shakespeare and others have made him out to be. He was the last king of England to actually lead his troops into battle and died in the Battle of Bosworth Field. Shakespeare portrays him as evil, and he may well have been. Medieval kings had a tendency to be corrupt and cruel, and someone I have quoted before, Lord Acton, famously said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts . . . → Read More: Winter of Our Discontent Comments are closed Blog Abraham Lincoln, Boston Tea Party, Chinese Revolution, democracy, economic influence, England, evil, fake news, fool all the people, Founding Fathers, French revolution, George Santayana, health care, health insurance, history, human spirit, infrastructure, King, media, met the enemy, national debt, news media, Paul Simon, plutocracy, Pogo, political influence, Republicans, resisting evil, revolution, Richard III, Russian revolution, Shakespeare, Simon and Garfunkel, Slip Slidin' Away, Social Security, tax cut, tax cuts, the man behind the curtain, the States, U.S. election, wealthy, Winston Churchill, Wizard of Oz Given the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election, everyone needs read Neil Postman’s 1982 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Reading it won’t change the outcome of the election, of course, but it will provide understanding for how and why it happened the way it did. Postman’s main point is that print encourages logic and reflection. Visual media, and television in particular, encourage the feelings of the moment. To be taken seriously and believed, written documents need to be logical and coherent. To be successful, visual media need to influence feelings. We . . . → Read More: A Media Star Is Born Comments are closed Blog Abraham Lincoln, against the wind, Aldous Huxley, Amusing Ourselves to Death, basket of deplorables, Brave New World, camera blocking, communication technologies, computers, Donald Trump, dystopian, Eighteenth century, Elvis, emotions, English literature, Europe, familiarity, feelings, George Orwell, Hillary Clinton, Lincoln, logic, media, media mogul, NCIS, Neil Postman, Nineteenth century, North America, novels, Pony Express, print, Republican Party, rock star, Ronald Reagan, soma, steel wheels, telegraph, thought, times of stress, travel, True Detective, TV, typewriters, Virginia Satir, Washington With apologies to the Beatles and “A Day in the Life”: One of my daily habits is reading through the major online news sources to get a sense of what is happening here in the U.S. and in the world. I often find it fascinating to see what subjects are drawing the most media attention—and the kind of attention they are attracting. Here’s a brief round-up of recent “stuff”: Placebos are in the news (again): One of the things I find most interesting about placebos is that articles about them written by medical doctors studiously avoid the word . . . → Read More: I Read the News Today (Oh, Boy) Comments are closed Blog A Day in the Life, advertising, Beatles, belief, Chicago, corrupts, debt, deficit, Detroit, economy, evidence, experience, fiscal, history, hotel maid, hypnosis, IMF, Internet, John Edwards, Korzybski, lamestream, leaders, Lord Acton, map, media, men, metamodel, news, NLP, placebos, platitudes, political, politicians, politics, power, primaries, pundits, question, reality, Republican, Sarah Palin, scandal, Schwartzeneger, talking points, tax rates, taxation, taxes, territory, TV, Twitter, U.S., unemployment, Weiner |
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