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It was purely coincidental. I got an e-mail as I was surfing through cable coverage of the California wildfires and caught ... Fox News ... asking the rhetorical and self-serving question: Might "terrorism" be behind the multiple infernos?
They had no evidence of course. No more reason to shout "terrorism!?" than I do for that flat tire I had the other morning. But when you're in the fear business like Fox News is, when promoting fear is a fundamental factor of your business plan, you never want to miss a chance to goose your coverage just a wee bit, on the off chance that tinder dry conditions, 70 mph winds and the presence of 19 million people living in a desert environment -- i.e. "reality" -- isn't scary enough.
Keith Olbermann took his shot at Fox News' cynicism here.
Anyway, as I'm watching this I get an e-mail from the publicist for WNYC's "Radio Lab Live!" promoting tomorrow's show sat the Fitzgerald in St. Paul, titled, "Decoding the 'War of the Worlds'." Prior to reading the attached copy all I knew was that NPR science correspondent Robert Krulwich, who I always enjoy, was going to be doing something with the classic Orson Welles' Mercury Theater Martian invasion broadcast that spooked a chunk of the population back in 1938.
As I read through the copy I came across this line, "[Producer Jad] Abumrad and Krulwich will hear from eyewitnesses, scientists, and master storytellers to investigate the nature of belief and skepticism, uncovering the neurological differences between those who believed and those who did not."
Bingo. If you're in the business of following the media, you're also in the business of trying to understand why X% of the population appears to have such stunted abilities for critical thinking and why they are so damned susceptible to fakery and bullshit.
I arranged an interview with producer Abumrad and caught him just before his lunch was about to arrive Thursday afternoon.
He said that that "neurological" separation business was what intrigued him most about this particular episode. (Abumrad and Krulwich began by producing five "Radio Lab" episodes a year, now distributed through 170 public radio affiliates, but "we're now ramping up to do ten.")
Abumrad said a Princeton scientist, ("War of the Worlds" was set in New Jersey), did a survey immediately after the hysteria died down, looking to see what characteristics defined those who believed and those who properly sorted through the available clues and accepted it as fiction. The survey asked questions testing respondents' levels of insecurity, phobias, their church-going tendencies and levels of personal confidence.
What the scientist did and didn't find out is part of Krulwich and Abumrad's production, so I won't ruin anyone's enjoyment. (Tickets are still available. 8 p.m. Saturday. Only $15. mpr.org/events.)
I had never heard that re-stagings of Welles' broadcast -- years later -- had inspired similar hysteria. Abumrad says a 1949 Spanish language re-staging - in Ecuador -- ended with 15 people dead. (Most after a mob, angry at being duped by the hoax, attacked and torched a radio station.)
"There are so many factors to examine in why some people accept or default to what is called 'magical thinking'," said Abumrad. "There was an interesting study out of Israel which looked at the effect the stress of the Scud missile attacks during the first Gulf War had on some people. Frankly, after you look at these studies the question you start asking yourself is, 'Why didn't everyone believe?'"
The only semi-concrete percentage of the morbidly credulous, as I like to think of them, is the Princeton study's estimate that 12 million people heard the Welles' broadcast live and somewhere around a million "ran out of town screaming", as Abumrad puts it, with a little comic hyperbole. That's not great science, but a little over 8% is roughly the combined audience share for cable news these days.
I didn't push Abumrad on my Fox News obsession, but he freely offered that TV news in general operates on a fear format to hold and build audiences, and a shrewd impresario like Orson Welles, (already writing the script for "Citizen Kane"), certainly understood that "fear works".
Abumrad and Krulwich's "Radio Lab" 90-minute show will take audiences through the psychology, historical context and showmanship of the Welles broadcast. There will be a Q & A. And a podcast will be up, "in December or January".
In another related bit of coincidence, the news this morning includes this sadly surprise-free survey of Americans' belief in haunted houses, ghosts and assorted bogeymen. (Note that more liberals than conservatives claim to have seen a ghost. Maybe the Ghost of Critical Thinking.)
Well, I have this fear we're going to start a war with Iran. Am I nuts?
LAMBERT: How's that old line about paranoia go?
Thank you for the heads up! I had no idea they were going to be here, but the Radio Lab podcasts are some of the best radio I've ever heard.
My informed sources say an illegal from Guatemala is in custody for potential arson charges in the CA wildfires.
Of course, the liberal media will have apoplexy trying to squelch that should it be true.....
LAMBERT: YOUR sources will soon have him wearing a "Hillary in '08" pin and an Osama bin Laden t-shirt.
That dovetails somewhat with this 2006 episode of Radio Lab on the language of music. One segment focuses on an audience rioting at the 1913 debut of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." The theory is that people were stirred up when their brains had to handle something disturbingly unexpected and unknown. The veneer of rational, orderly day-to-day society is so paper-thin sometimes.
Substitute "global warming" for "terrorism" and "CNN" for "Fox" and the first sentence of the second paragraph doesn't need to change.
LAMBERT: Yeah, all that research and science and testing and numbers stuff is so boring and silly.
What IF these fires were the work of illegal immigrants?
Huh?
What then, Mr. Liberal?
LAMBERT: The point is I'd kind of like to wait and clear up that pesky "if"
business. Meanwhile your folks seem to prefer shooting first and aiming later.
What IF they were the work of some redneck asshole who threw a lighted cigarette from his SUV with the Bush-Cheney bumper sticker on the back?
Huh?
What then, Mr. Bertram?
You're not real, are you? Tell me you were joking.
LAMBERT: Oh, he's real ... all too real.
So you just happened to trip into Fox News and happen to have a handy link for wing nut Olbermann?
Try these actual quotes on for size:
Barbara Boxer D-California: "... "down 50 percent in terms of our National Guard equipment, because they're all in Iraq" (going on to suggest that the fires were not being fought at well as possible
Harry Reid D-Nevada: "As you know, one reason that we have the fires burning in Southern California is global warming"
Christopher Dodd D-Connecticut: ""In a Dodd administration, never again will our houses be on fire because our troops are taking fire in Iraq..."
Now, I know it is a shock to all those idiots who live in the hills in California where a fire burned much of the SAME AREA just four years ago, but they are a little bit overbuilt in California. Plus, they have fires every bleeping fall.
There wasn't a shortage of resources, think of the boundary waters burning 600 square miles, it takes time to battle something that large.
That doesn't let the Republicans off the hook. Hanity and others jumped on the partisan wagon complaining about the Dems being partisan.
We are learning that some of the fires were arson. Wonder who Boxer is going to blame for that?
It's the stupidity, stupid.
"... we'll return with further updates from Mr. Lambert as events warrant. Until then, we return you to the top of the World Trade Center in downtown St. Paul ,Minnesota and the sounds of Harry Reid and his Fiddle While San Diego Burns Orchestra."
Dave, Bertram. Jr, and fellow knee-jerk right-wingers: The CA fires are not IGNITED by global climate change. The source of ignition is well beside the point. The concerning phenomena iare, first, the EXTREME dryness of the fuel due to, what? Come on, take a guess...And, second, the extremity of the Santa Anna winds is the other exacerbating climatic factor. Try to keep up. It's that the severity of the fires is increasing, not the very fact of them. How does this elude you?
I attended the Radio Lab taping on Saturday (which was fantastic).
The scary part to me was that the episode in Ecuador was so bad because folks in the newspaper were complicit in the deception by posting fake news bits a couple days before.
One of those neurological differences Jad Abumrad mentioned is religiousness. So, your ability to suspend disbelief and craft a story that meets your needs (my interpretation).
We like to think that we're more discriminating in this day and age, but the hoaxes will get more elaborate as our ability to debunk them does. There will always be someone who will fall for it.
LAMBERT: I had tickets for Mickey Hart's Global Drum Project at Orchestra Hall Saturday night, (terrific), so I'll be waiting for the pod-cast. But considering how little we understand about brain function, there is something in here that would seem to hold the possiblity of getting a better grip on outbursts of mass psychosis somewhere in the future. BTW: It's a running joke with our book club, but I still recommend Julian Jaynes, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bi-Cameral Mind". It sounds impenetrable. But it is a fascinating theory, based on the idea that the amalgamating of the two sides of the brain is a very much a recent evolutionary leap and an on-going process.
Oh boy, now you did it...first global warming and now "evolutionary leap." Look out...
LAMBERT: I know. But hey, how about those Vikings? Are they dull or what?
We are fear-based critters to our very core. Hence the success of the neo-cons. Check out this earlier Radio Lab on sleep, and how sleep is largely influenced by fear of being eaten. Next time you can't sleep your first night in a hotel room, know that it's because you're scared, even if you don't think you are: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/05/25
LAMBERT: That show is good stuff. Clear Channel does something like it, don't they? What? They don't?
In 1948, American Forces Radio in Tokyo broadcast something similar to War of the Worlds. In this case, it was "live" coverage of an attack on Tokyo by a giant sea monster. (Godzilla's predecessor!) The article of the event I read in the NY Times the day after spoke of some amount of hysteria occurring.
On a more personal level, I was the station manager of a college radio station in Vermont when one of the announcers, leading up to April Fools' Day, began promoting an outdoor Grateful Dead concert in a nearby field. He had the foresight to post signs along the way saying there was no concert; that the Grateful Dead were NOT performing April 1st. However, enough people showed up and complained that I to do a CYA letter for the public file.
We are a gullible lot. My theory is that, for the most part, lacking evidence that will smack one upside the head, people will believe what they want to believe. Witness the number of people who still believe we 1) found WMD in Iraq in the months after the invasion, and 2) that Iraq was directly involved with 9/11.
LAMBERT: And that you can get 40,000 miles out of a set of tires.
Okay, wise guy, if you actually knew anything about RadioLab you'd know that it is so good for its assiduous effort NOT to be anything like NPR. And it certainly would NEVER come out of MPR, unless it were devoted to personal finance. Its exceptional quality proves the rule, NPR and MPR are both resting on their laurels, hence their dropping numbers. Anyway, I know you've got numbes to crunch (yawn).
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