Then we'll have to really land on the Moon. Invent NASA and tell them to get off their fannies!

[vovat]

So, two more episodes of Bullshit! last night. Unfortunately, I didn't think these were anywhere near as good as the last two. The first one was on conspiracy theories, focusing on September 11, the Moon landing, and John F. Kennedy's assassination. The latter two segments were pretty good, but the first segment...well, not so much. To focus on the positive first, the Moon landing part did a good job of debunking the conspiracy theorists who think it was staged. I really haven't looked into the Kennedy assassination all that much, but I think they explained pretty well how the lone gunman theory doesn't have as many problems as some people suggest. I also thought it was a nice touch to mention Watergate as something that COULDN'T be covered up, making it less likely that other conspiracies could be. (The timing for when we watched this episode was interesting, considering that Deep Throat has apparently revealed his true identity as of yesterday. I'm sure that won't stop conspiracy theorists from speculating, though. Felt is obviously covering for somebody else!) Both bethje and I had considerable problems with the 9/11 part. They presented and argued against some of the wackier, more insensitive conspiracy theories (the planes were fake, the passengers are still alive today, explosives inside the towers, etc.), pretty much ignoring some of the more plausible objections to the government's official explanation. For the other side, they featured a fireman who had been at Ground Zero. Now, this guy would certainly be able to say that the whole thing actually happened, that people really did die, and that the thing about explosives in the towers wasn't true. But there was sort of an assumption that, if the nutty theories didn't hold up, then the government's explanation was definitely 100% right. It seemed to try to hard to play to people's emotions, with a "How DARE these people question this? It was a horrible tragedy!" vibe to the whole thing. Now, saying that people didn't actually die in the planes IS insensitive, but to dismiss by implication the idea that the government knew ANYTHING about the possibility of the attacks beforehand strikes me as too much of an "If it's not this, it MUST be this" kind of thing. I guess they sort of did that in the other two segments as well, but it was a little more reasonable there, especially with the Moon one. I mean, that was arguing a statement of fact. Either we went to the Moon, or we didn't. The Kennedy one is a little more complicated, but there wasn't as much "Anyone who questions the official explanation is an asshole!" about that. The 9/11 part also used the "never forget" slogan, and a mention of the United States as "the greatest country in the world," the latter of which rubbed me the wrong way. Patriotism is one thing, and nationalism quite another. There's enough of the latter around without having to throw it into Showtime programs featuring skeptical Libertarian magicians. The whole thing came off as surprisingly pro-government, considering the attitude they've had in earlier episodes. I kind of think they should have gone with something else for the third conspiracy. It's difficult to take out the emotional content when discussing 9/11, and Penn and Teller didn't even try.

The second episode, about life coaching, was less objectionable, but really didn't say much. I'd never heard of life coaching before, but apparently it's when you pay somebody to help you through tough situations in your life. Penn and Teller's conclusion was basically that these people are out to make a buck, and that they really don't do much of anything that you couldn't do on your own, or with help from friends and family. Big surprise there, huh? Most of the episode was devoted to pointing out the nonsensical stuff that some of these so-called coaches say, which was mildly funny, but provided too much emphasis on the "Hey, look at these stupid people saying stupid things!" aspect of the show. Usually, when they cover something that most of the audience is going to agree is bullshit beforehand, they go into a little more detail, providing historical background and such. Here, there was really no information given beyond the painfully obvious. Did they do this episode just to fill out the season, or what?

Finally, on an unrelated note, I've heard about the French voting against the European Union Constitution, but no real indication as to why. I guess you can never really know when a secret ballot is involved, but about all I've heard is that people don't like how the EU is being run by elites. While I think the EU is a good idea, it's possible the constitution has some problems. I don't really know much about the whole thing, and I was wondering if anyone else did.

Comments

[revme.livejournal.com]

Yeah -- the Conspiracies one did sort of gloss over the 9/11 one. Maybe it's too soon to really look at that one critically without just going "YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE!" It also seemed that a lot of the 9/11 kooks were of the sort going for the more daft theories anyway; there's a handful of theories I've seen, that while still obviously bullshit, were at least slightly harder to disprove than "It had to have been explosives because stuff was flying out of the buildings! It was almost like some huge, flammable object ran into the towers at high speed, to get all that stuff to fly out from the buidling!".

The moon one was pretty good, especially because those folks baffle me. And, uh, _why_ would a prop director label stuff anyway? I mean, uh, you wouldn't want to do that for a filmed production (especially a live one, which the moon must have been because you'd think they'd "catch" those "errors" like the flag, or the C rock....) because you don't necessarily know what the actors will do -- they might ad lib. You don't want to have to toast a perfectly good take because an actor picks up a lamp, showing off the big "PROP LAMP! MADE FOR A MOVIE!! THIS ISN'T REAL!!!" on the bottom...

And the Kennedy one was pretty good, especially talking about the "Magic Bullet" thing. And, I knew about the melon+tape experiment before -- think P&T have done it before, even -- but any time you get to see a melon blow up is good by me.

I hadn't really heard of life coaching before by the name, but I'd heard of the stuff -- like Cuddle Parties and whatnot. But yeah -- it did seem a little fillery, but I think too, there wasn't a whole lot to say -- but it really should have been a 1/2 of an episode, like they do sometimes. (As for Cuddle Parties, I dunno -- I can see a sense for them, but charging 30 bucks/700-to-be-a-facillitator is pretty stupid; they seem much more like a Good Idea That Doesn't Actually Need Much Facillitating. Basically, as far as I can tell, you basically'd just need someone there to make sure no one's fucking, and there you go. I don't think you'd need much more than that. Seems pretty much a no-brainer to me. I could see a entry fee to cover the space-rental, but I couldn't see that being 30 bucks. _Maybe_ 10, like, 15 max. But yeah. Idea-wise, it's not too awful; but the "whoo, we are helping you with your LIFE!!" is stupid... people just need contact, and sometimes it's difficult for folks to get, so just cut the bullshit and provide a safe place for that sort of thing.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

You're probably right about it being too soon for the 9/11 segment. I kind of wonder why they even went with that one, what with so many other conspiracy theories out there to debunk.

With the prop thing, I couldn't help thinking of an obvious play on words for the C rock.

I agree that the life coaching thing might have worked better as a half-episode. Maybe the rest of it could have been devoted to other useless sorts of therapy, although they've already covered some of them. It's true that there probably wasn't that much else they could say about it, but then, I would never have thought they could have filled up an entire thirty minutes talking about circumcision, either.

[revme.livejournal.com]

The circumcision one was pretty good, though, I thought. And, I dunno, I thought that they filled the episode pretty well, but there are a lot of sides to that one. I was surprised to find out that the "grow-your-foreskin-back!" people _weren't_ bullshit. That was surprising, because I'd heard of them before.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I wasn't saying that I thought the circumcision one dragged or anything, just that it's something I wouldn't expect to be able to fill an entire episode. As it turned out, it actually did pretty well.