I've served on juries about a half dozen times in my life, both state and Federal, criminal and civil, everything from mail fraud to murder, and when you're serving jury duty you're constantly told by the judge not to form an opinion about the case, and not to talk about the case with anyone, including your fellow jurors, until the case have been turned over to the jury for deliberation. Now, I understand why they say these things, but, in fact, the admonition not to form an opinion is ridiculous on the face of it -- we all constantly form opinions about what's going on around us, and we can hardly stop doing it and remain conscious, aware and functioning normally. It's the other warning that makes sense, not to talk about the case, because it's in discussion with others, or, in fact, the mere utterance of one's opinion, that the opinion becomes fixed and can no longer be as easily influenced by new information, like another witness or the opposition's presentation of their case.
So, what's most important, the way I see it, is not to avoid making judgments or having opinions, but to avoid having them get set by committing to them, even by the simple act of writing them down or saying them outloud. Keep those opininons to yourself, because it's easier for them to remain tentative and provisions, and be changed without losing face or feeling compelled to stick with what you've said.
This came to mind recently when I read the Washington Post's "13th Bienniel Crystal Ball Contest" predictions for the upcoming election. Eleven people heavily involved with politics, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and progressives, were asked for their predictions about the election, and those predicitions were published by the Post -- except that one prediction wasn't printed. Chris Matthews had a prediction, but his was marked "Ballot Sealed - Predictions won't be revealed until next week because Matthew is anchoring MSNBC's election night coverage."
This seems to me to be precisely backwards. Instead of keeping his opinions personal and to himself, and thereby preserving at least the possibility of anchoring the election returns in an unbiased way, Matthews commited himself to predicting what will happen but won't let anyone know what he said. So in watching Matthews' performance, one is hobbled in detecting possible bias on his part by not knowing what he said, merely that he said something. It would have been best if Matthews has not participated in the contest at all, but as long as he did, we should know what he's thinking so we can take those opinions into account when watching him.
In the 1975 film Three Days of the Condor, Robert Redford says of the spies and counter-spies he's dealing with "What is it with you people? You think that not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth." Matthews seems to harbor the same kind of confusion. Next time, he just shouldn't play, or, if his ego really requires that kind of stroking, he should let us know where he's coming from.
P.S. It's interesting to look at those WaPo Crystal Ball predictions to see which of the participants are clearly gaming the system (Mary Matalin, for instance, who predicted that the Democrats would pick up 14 seats, just shy of control of the House, or Democrat Paul Kir, who predicted a Dem pick-up of 48 seats) and which ones are seriously trying to predict what's going to happen. One nice thing about most of the websites I included in my Survey was that, whatever their personal politics, they made a concerted effort to be unbiased in their evaluations of races.
Update: The original title of this post was "Chris Matthews is an idiot," but I softened it because I didn't think the post supported that contention. Now that I've read this, I rather wish I hadn't changed it.
absolutist
aggresive
anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
blinkered
buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
clueless
compassionless
con artists
conniving
conscienceless
conspiratorial
corrupt
craven
criminal
crooked
culpable
damaging
dangerous
deadly
debased
deceitful
delusional
despotic
destructive
devious
disconnected
dishonorable
dishonest
disingenuous
disrespectful
dogmatic
doomed
fanatical
fantasists
felonious
hateful
heinous
hostile to science
hypocritical
ideologues
ignorant
immoral
incompetent
indifferent
inflexible
insensitive
insincere
irrational
isolated
kleptocratic
lacking in empathy
lacking in public spirit
liars
mendacious
misleading
mistrustful
non-rational
not candid
not "reality-based"
not trustworthy
oblivious
oligarchic
opportunistic
out of control
pernicious
perverse
philistine
plutocratic
prevaricating
propagandists
rapacious
relentless
reprehensible
rigid
scandalous
schemers
selfish
secretive
shameless
sleazy
tricky
unAmerican
uncaring
uncivil
uncompromising
unconstitutional
undemocratic
unethical
unpopular
unprincipled
unrealistic
unreliable
unrepresentative
unscientific
unscrupulous
unsympathetic
venal
vile
virtueless
warmongers
wicked
without integrity
wrong-headed
Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
recently seen
i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz
"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)
Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
guest-blogging
All the fine sites I've
guest-blogged for:
Be sure to visit them all!!
recent listening
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
Busby Berkeley
John Cage
"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.
Entertaining, interesting, intelligent, informed and informative comments will always be welcome, even when I disagree with them.
I am the sole judge of which of these qualities pertains.
E-mail
All e-mail received is subject to being published on unfutz without identifying names or addresses.
Corrections
I correct typos and other simple errors of grammar, syntax, style and presentation in my posts after the fact without necessarily posting notification of the change.
Substantive textual changes, especially reversals or major corrections, will be noted in an "Update" or a footnote.
Also, illustrations may be added to entries after their initial publication.
the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.
If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.
(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)
Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.
