It would be interesting if someone did an experiment of how the average viewers perceive P&T – do they think they are making valid points and factual statements or that they are just full of, well, you know what.

Personally I am hoping that some of the fuel cell technologies being developed will see a commercial breakthrough sometime soon.

Isn’t that what GM said about their program when they started putting their electric cars in landfills in the late 1990′s? I cannot trust anything a carmaker says about being “green” anymore since I saw the covert report on GM’s treatment of electric car disposal in the 90′s.

Given Toyota have entered wave after wave of recalls, I don’t see how they’ll sustain a proper, expensive recycling program. I just don’t buy it – yet.

Also, as for P&T BS, I took in what I felt was the only real intentional message in the episode: Hybrid cars drag around two drivetrains. It’s inefficient and overly complex. It’s an already defunct system. Time for electric cars and a transparent, goverment monitored recycling program.

I remember seeing the gun control episode a couple of years back. And indeed, it was very much built around the same concept as virtually every other Bullshit episode I have seen.

As for the whole gun control issue itself, I’m just glad to live in a country where I don’t have to bother with that particular debate

Basically it was the moment where you had a guy say that he didn’t think women would want to have their equality depend on owning a gun.

Penn went off about how the guy was a smug asshole and how its easy to say if you’re not a woman – but hang on one minute here.

Penn, by doing this, essentially made the assumption that women want to live in a society where not being armed equals a big old “rape me” sign stapled to your back. Penn, in actual fact, is the smug asshole in that exchange.

Oh, and I happen to live in SA where there are plenty of guns around. Doesn’t seem to have stopped rape happening out here.

Then you have the whole admiring tone with a woman who has five guns dispersed around her property “just in case”.

Because you know, wig shops are such infamous targets for bald criminals. Lex Luthor must be shaking in his boots.

And note I am not saying guns lead to violence or any of that. The stats are mixed enough for me to think there isn’t a correlation one way or another.

And screw it the basic closing argument, “The right to bear arms is to give us the ability to overthrow the government if we have to.”

Yeah, nice masturbatory fantasy in a country where the government has a fair grasp of the communications networks you would use to organise, has satellites that can track you wherever, and spends more on its military than just about any other country in the world.

And lets not forget the nukes, jets, tanks and other military hardware that is financially out of reach for just about any would-be-revolutionary.

Suuure that gun of yours can take down the government Penn.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/interviews/rapaille.html

I don’t know if just jealous of successful people but I find him repulsive. I feel like he is dressing up in intellectual clothing what natural salesmen have intuited since forever.

Its kind of you say I expressed myself clearly, I personally feel I have a predilection for gas baggery.

I agree that this is what manipulators of all sorts often try to use to their advantage. Because an audience that you already “have in your pocket” doesn’t really need to be persuaded in the first place. We listen to (and buy from) those we like, it’s that simple.

This was what I was (somewhat ambiguously) hinting at with my anecdote about my friend calling a particular tv-channel “man tv”, and that many viewers probably somewhat admire Mr. Jilette for his bluntness.

But you expressed the point much more clearly.

I once saw an entertaining TV show on branding and marketing one segment of which featured a marketing/philosopher who was selling “The Code” which was basically supposed to be the language, (not limited to verbal,) of current human desire which could be exploited to sell stuff. This was a serious business with representatives from household corporate names in anxious attendance of its unveiling. He was credited with marketing of the Hummer by its appeal to the reptilian brain.

What I find so depressing about the interchange you had with plotr is how there is no communication taking place. I think that maybe human culture has two poles, maybe they are masculine and feminine but they are not strictly sex linked. On the one hand you have the need to dominate and on the other you have the need to collaborate, hierarchy vs consensus. I feel like we live in a world with two kinds of people that you could describe negatively as those who are afraid of being dominated, that see society as a zero sum game in status, and those who are so afraid that if everyone doesn’t agree or feel good that they are evil.

The “debate” on environmentalism seems to often break right along this fault. Notice how Plotr calls you a “little environmentalist” and says condescendingly how you “had your feelings hurt”. I would say this is very much the argumentative style of adolescent males. (The bullying banter used to try to sort out who has dominance.) On the other hand environmentalisms abuse by green washing and green guilt marketing exploits the weakness of a more feminine personality in the same way that fashion preys upon adolescent girls fears of ugliness and social criticism of anything but passivity.

It seems to me that we live in a masculine world. (Which would you rather be; a bitch or a prick? P & T have always been aggressive and confrontational I believe. It seems natural that they would be libertarians as I would argue that individualism is a masculine value.

I just realized I have gone on way to long, sorry. Anyway have a good day.

It is a while since I wrote this post, and in retrospect I think I (perhaps inspired by the show in question) used unnecessarily strong language in some of the segments. I do not habitually label people things like “ignorant assholes”, but on the Bullshit show they do. Tongue in cheek perhaps, but nevertheless.

That said, I think Piotr mostly makes baseless and stereotypical assumptions about me as a person based on this one post.

I stand by my main points that a lot of the things that I have seen on this show is merely a certain spin on the topics in question, and that they are rather good at making their target audience believe in what they are saying.

As Piotr points out it is certainly not the only program to do so, as virtually all media people always presents their stuff from a certain angle.

That was never disputed in my original post. However, having a story angle is not automatically synonymous with making “a spin” on the truth. Good journalists usually fulfill the criteria of objectivity.