Are Bimbos Our Teachers Now?
Bimbo talk show hosts are notorious for sloppy reasoning. Well, actually not. It would be more correct to say bimbo talk show hosts should be notorious for sloppy reasoning, but many people still swear by them -- swear by them when they are not actually parroting them.
The question I've been wondering about recently is whether, or to what extent, bimbo talk show hosts might set the pace for what people believe is good reasoning in this confused world? That's to say, I've become suspicious that, for a very large number of people, the bimbo talk show host is their primary teacher when it comes to how to reason.
Years ago, when I was attending a school with 14,000 students, I took a series of courses in logic. The classes never had more than 30 or 40 students in them. I don't know if that's typical, but it seems to me that a few dozen students willing to study logic out of a school of 14,000 might indicate that most people learn how to reason from some source other than courses in logic.
Perhaps many people these days learn how to reason from bimbo talk show hosts.
What do you think?
Stumble It!
2 comments:
I'm not sure exactly how you're defining "bimbo talk shows"....
But if The View is an example, I'm in full agreement with you.
My wife pointed this show out to me on Monday, knowing how it would affect me. I felt like I'd been bound and gagged and dropped into a commercial turkey farm, where the gobbling and pecking and shitting was absolutely overwhelming.
Why, or why, is this kind of television programming so popular?
I'm sure this book is out of print by now, but in 1995 there was a book by Ray Perkins, Jr. (published by Open Court Publishing) titled "Logic and Mr. Limbaugh". This book used exerpts from Rush's two books (hopefully not "first two books"; if he's written any others I'd rather not know) to point out fallicies in logical thinking. The first two chapters provide a basic introduction in logic.
We could probably use a few more such books today since there are so many more "bimbo talk show hosts", and, as you say, so much less logical thinking.
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