It’s a Big Club… and You ain’t in it

 

 

 

It is a bizarro world of politics in this country.  Tariffs are being imposed and relaxed.  The federal workforce is being ‘right sized.’  Funding to colleges and universities is being slashed.  There is talk about suspending habeas corpus for non-citizens and eliminating birthright citizenship.  A big tax cut which includes no longer taxing tips or Social Security is bouncing around Congress.  A foreign government wants to gift the US and President a palace in the sky to serve as Air Force One. 

The Republicans are forging ahead somewhere in between having a plan (did someone say Project 2025) and the ever-changing unpredictable whims of the President.  Central Casting has given the Democrats the role of ‘deer in the headlights’ and they may well get an Oscar for the clueless best supporting actors mired in a leadership vacuum.  They sure are embracing this role with gusto. 

I am trying to decide if I am dumbfounded or not.  It varies from day to day.  Today, I am not.  Today, I am feeling like my prediction during the Great Recession has come true.  That prediction is that we would emerge from the Great Recession a different nation.  We would be more like a European nation with its glory years behind them… and it wouldn’t be one of the better run countries.  This is exactly what it feels like to me.

There is another thing.  The country seems manipulated by forces, on our way to being run by oligarchs… if it already isn’t.  It reminds me of a George Carlin bit that resonated with me the first time I heard it and every time since.  “It’s a BIG CLUB…AND YOU AIN’T IN IT!

This comes from a 2006 monologue called ‘Dumb Americans.’  He talks about the dumbing down of the population, the rise and current dominance of consumerism, the sorry state of our education system, and that our country is being run by that club that we are not part of.  Ever since Carlin’s comedy turned to politics and the state of our society, he resonated with me and many others.

The big open question here is this?  Is Carlin right?   Is there a big club running things?

I know one thing for sure, if there is a big club running things, I am certainly not in it. 

Oh sure, many card-carrying liberals attempt to smother me with guilt laden ideology that I a beneficiary of the white privilege club and part of the institutional racism big club.  The other end of the political spectrum will use similar tactics to belittle me as they push their agenda of making America a place where… well… where we are now.

Carlin certainly had a gift to make people think.  But truly, he was a comedian, an entertainer, and this was how he made a living.  This was his shtick much as it was for Will Rogers and, arguably, Mark Twain.  Neither of these fellows used their celebrity to cross-over to becoming politicians.  They just liked to observe, point out dichotomies with humor, make us all think, shake our heads, and buy tickets to their shows.  It was their jobs, their professions.

I do think there is a big club that runs things.  $5.5 billion was spent on the presidential election.  That is a lot of money spent to create on ads and polarizing, confirmation bias, social and news media.  Getting elected and pushing agendas not necessarily based on truth, justice, and what we once claimed was the American way.

 

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Transcript of the full monologue:  https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/comedy/george-carlin-dumb-americans-transcript/ 

 

Part of the monologue

 

 

 

 

Enya and Applebees

 

I am an associate professor in a school of business.  My primary areas operations management by title.  This includes supply chain management, forecasting, purchasing, warehousing, transportation, inventory and production management, quality management, metrics, project management.  I am nowhere near being an ‘expert’ in all of these areas, but I do have some experience in most of them and expertise in specific applications. 

When it comes to marketing and advertising?  I am only allowed to teach one class:  Marketing Channels and Supply Chain which was given to me because of the emphasis on Supply Chain and Channels.  Beyond that, I am in over my skis as they say.

But this doesn’t stop me from contemplating idea and notions about marketing and advertising and then expressing my contemplations in this blog.  This long prelude is simply to state this this is exactly what I am about to do in this post.

The other day while watching TV, I saw a commercial that really caught my attention… which is the primary intent of advertising as far as I know.  It was for the Applebee’s, a casual dining restaurant chain serving up American fare.  The reason it caught my attention was the music chosen for the commercial.  It was “Only Time” by the Irish singer and composer, Enya.

This song was from her 2000 album, A Day Without Rain.  The album was ethereal, Celtic, new age, with what me might even hope or project Druid music to sound like.  The album was soothing and calming.  It was meditative and, perhaps even, transformative.

Enya was already famous a dozen years before I heard this album in the early 2000s as I really have not followed popular music since 1976.  Since then, a few performers have gotten my attention.  Enya was one of them. 

How did this happern?  I was in Uruguay of all places.  My friend and colleague, Alberto Deambrosi, picked me up to go to the Colgate offices and warehouse.  He had this album on, and I asked him about it. He said he listened to it every day on the way to work.  He said it as the perfect album to clear and calm his mind on the way to work.  Also, after work, it helped him detox from the stress of the day.

When my return home, I bought the album, and it quickly became a favorite.  It really was soothing and calming.  It nurtured introspection.  It was also perfect background music for working.

Upon hearing the “Only Time” cut from that album used that Applebee’s commercial, my first thoughts were how and why did this come to be?  It seemed so incongruous to use this music to pitch anything including Applebee’s “2 for $25 featuring new sizzlin’ skillets.”

The man and woman in the commercial are in new age awe with sizzling steak dishes float by them.  I found it eerily awkward but also mesmerizing.  The windblown hair of the actors and their blissful gaze at the dishes floating by them was quite effective with Enya’s sound track.  It did what it was supposed to do.  It got my attention and had me thinking about going to Applebee’s using a song from an album that was once my favorite.

Growing up, I never paid attention to the music or jingles of television commercials.  Sure, there were some catchy tunes but most of the once popular music used was from my parents’ generation.  It didn’t fully get it until I heard the first pop song that was a favorite of mine used in a commercial that I understand that the ad was targeting me and using the power of nostalgia to sell whatever it was they were selling.  I felt a bit offended, a bit used, and, perhaps for the first time, as a young adult, that innocent days of childhood were well behind me.

Music is also a business.  Artists and promoters make a living from the creation, recording, and performing of the music.  If more money can be made from allowing a special piece to used in a television commercial twenty years later, who am I to be a wee bit offended by it?

Have I gone to Applebee’s?

Not yet.  The closest one is 25 miles away.

But, really, truly, who can say where the road goes and the day flows…

 

 

 

Who can say where the road goes

Where the day flows, only time

And who can say if your love grows

As your heart chose, only time

 

Who can say why your heart sighs

As your love flies, only time

And who can say why your heart cries

When your love lies, only time

 

Who can say when the roads meet

That love might be in your heart

And who can say when the day sleeps

If the night keeps all your heart

Night keeps all your heart

HHS

In my last post, I wrote about the US being governed by executive order and the rapid pace of downsizing the US Government.  Per Statista, 2.93 people are civilian employees of the federal government.  Does this make the Federal Government the largest employer in the Country?  It certainly does.

Consider the Department of Health and Human Service (HHS) example that is in the news today.  The estimate of those being fired is about 62,000.  OK, I will admit my naivete and freely admit that this number is staggering to me.  If you had asked me how many employees the Department of Health and Human Services had, I wouldn’t have guessed anywhere near 60,000.  I would have guessed 10-15,000.

Bear in mind, this number of 62,000 is just the number being fired at this one department, HHS.  This number of 62,000 is about the one-quarter of the staff at HHS.  This means HHS employs around 248,000 people nearly a quarter of a million people.  Wow.   I clearly have no idea the breadth of HHS’s work.

The Department of Education on the other hand only has 4,133 employees.  I would have guessed 1-2,000.  The plan is to reduce the workforce there by 50%.

Is the Federal Government bloated?  Are there too many people on the payroll?  Are the various departments and agencies involved in programs and activities that are not essential and should probably be cut or reduced in scope?  I am guessing the answer is probably yes to each of these questions.  I believe the private sector, the corporate world, has many more workforce reductions as they must answer to investors.  The economy expands and corporations hire workers.  They grow their staffs.  When the economy wanes or contracts, they reduce or right size the workforce to remain profitable or to minimize their losses.  I do not recall the Federal Government ever being subject to such a cycle.  Sure, the revenue from taxes expands or contracts with employment rates.  I also suspect some programs are sunset due to their work being done or no longer needed, but other agencies and departments are created to help govern emerging areas of importance.

Joe average citizen, with yours truly as a prime example, is oblivious to this government bloat.  When I ask friends and colleagues to guess the size of HHS, everyone underestimated the size by a factor of ten. 

I am against the ‘Chainsaw Al’ approach to staff reduction.  It works, eventually, but it is so disruptive and so 1990s.  It could, in this case, be a tactic to drive a bit of fear of losing their jobs to the employees that remain which may be a new feeling for federal employees.  I would have rather evaluated each of the programs or initiative by an evaluation process that rates the value of the program/department to the population and thus decide which programs to keep untouched, keep with smaller budgets, and which to eliminate altogether.  For those departments to be reduced or eliminated a plan should be developed on how to achieve the reductions to minimize the impact to stakeholders, suppliers, grant recipients, and citizens outside of HHS.

The DOGE way is certainly quicker if it doesn’t matter what level of disruption and chaos is left in the wake.

A Matter of Perspective

 

It is a time of change in this country.  It is having an impact on the world and our relationship with countries that have been long term allies and friends.  The policy pendulum is swinging to the right as executive orders are plastering the walls of the White House faster than Dolores Umbridge did during her time as headmaster at Hogwarts.

Government departments and cabinets are being revamped as if Albert “Chainsaw Al” Dunlop was at the helm.  The numbers, at least to me, of those let go are staggering.  The Federal Government was much larger than I thought.

With the threat of being choked off from Federal funds, colleges and universities are dropping Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs at a rate faster than higher education generally moves.  Tightening purse strings can be a great motivator to move quickly and tow a new line.  The corporate sector folded even quicker, almost as if they needed less incentives, maybe just a green light, to do so.

I could comment about how people identify sexually, the Department of Education, deportations of aliens, the arrest of student activists at Columbia and Tufts, and more.  Those will have to be addressed in future posts.

It is dizzying to me. 

There are times when I believe the USA is in uncharted waters.  But there have been good and bad in every decade of my life and well before that.  The pendulum has swung from right to left with one side feeling triumphant and the other deeply concerned about the future of the republic. Does this go around feel different?  Is it the McCarthy Era.  The domestic turbulence was most disconcerting.  The oil crisis and the Iran hostages dominated the 70s and so on. There was a farm crisis and recession in the 80s.  The 90s brought unbridled corporate malfeasance culminating the demise of Enron at the turn of the century.   The 2000s brought us 9-11, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Great Recession, COVID, and the changes we are currently experiencing. 

Over the years, my commitment to weigh issues and the interactions with each other has led me to have a more fiscally conservative perspective while leaning more left on social issues.  I am by no means near the extreme right or left on either of these but closer to the center on both.  I find myself in a minority position here. 

In December of 2018, I wrote a post, Sydney Harris (1917-1986), about the great syndicated columnist of the Chicago Sun Times.  I read him regularly in the Detroit Free Press.  My favorite column of his was “Why there is Danger in Extremism” which I included in the 2018 post.  It really resonated with me.  Basically, when confronted with extremism on one pole, Harris naturally drifted toward the other pole.  I can relate to that.  Did I believe DEI, Critical Race Theory, and the Woke movement was to extreme for me when it seemed to be the Federal tenor in the Biden and Obama years?  Yes I did.  But I didn’t rant against them because they were rooted realities that needed to be addressed.  I did not speak out much for fear of being attacked for being what… a white supremacist.  As the pendulum just accelerated by me to the right, I still don’t want to protest too loudly against the current extreme for fear of being labelled a radical liberal.  My views haven’t changed.  The only thing that has changed is the policy of the Federal Government. 

Tell me I cannot have a gun, and I will want one even more.  Tell me I have to carry gun and I’ll want to put a daisy on the barrel of yours.  Tell me I have to be woke, and I will say “bullshit.”  Tell me I cannot be woke, and I will respond exactly the same.

Do I know what is going to happen in the next four years?  No.

Am I concerned?  Definitely.  Mostly, as I have written, I am concerned about the extreme policy changes we have had every four years since 2016 and we are in the midst of huge one right now.

A Good Stretch of the Legs

 

I have written and posted in this blog seven times this year:  five posts in January and two in February.  My last post was February 13^th and was about what snow days have become in this age of Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

At the start of March, my desire was to write and post ten to twenty posts.  It was totally doable and a reasonable goal.  Now in the last two lamb days of March, I am posting my first bloggy bit.

Is it something substantial?

No.

It is simply a stream of thought (not even close a stream of consciousness).  This is akin to a marathon runner taking a light jog after taking six weeks off from running.  This is simply a light workout, a good stretch of the legs so to speak.

Why did this writing drought occur in February and March?

It is hard to say.  Really?  Hard to say?  It is my low productivity, and I am not sure?  Well, that sounds silly.  It sounds a little preposterous to me as I type these words.  How can I not be sure?  It is comical.  A case could even be made for a first sign of senility in a fellow of my age.

So… what do I have to say for myself?

I am certain that there are ebbs and flow in my productivity over the years.  In the flow periods, I get a lot done.  In the valley of the ebbs, it takes all the energy and drive I can muster to get the very minimal done.  By minimal, I mean those tasks with absolute, must get it done, deadlines looming.  It is these ebbs and flows that had me intrigued with the short-lived fad biorhythms fad from the 1970s.  The problem with biorhythms is that are predictably periodic and, as far as I can recall, tied to the phases of the moon.  My ebbs and flow have variable durations.  They can be as low as a few days and as long as three or four moon cycles.

I am envious, at times, of those dynamos I see that are always on the go.  They run full blast through their workday knocking off items off their to-do lists.  I am only like that in flow periods.  I wonder if those dynamos I admire struggle with ebbs and flows.  Maybe they have them and power through them.  Maybe the amplitudes of the ebbs are just lesser than mine.  Maybe their struggles are the same as mine, but those folks are better at masking them but forging and maintaining an image of dynamism.  I definitely know people that are gifted at projecting the aura of dynamism versus their actually productivity.

In my case, another factor for my writing drought might be related to my knee replacement.  My right knee was replaced on January 8.  I had an excellent surgeon.  My recovery has progressed well and on the faster side.  I have embraced the physical therapy.  What might all this have to do with writing productivity.  Before the surgery, I did most of my writing in the evening.  In January, while at home recovering and then teaching online, I wrote those blog posts in the morning.  In February, I returned to my normal schedule but when it came time to write in the evenings, I was simply too weary to do so.  I am writing this little piece at 9 am in the morning.

I enjoyed this stretch of my writing legs which was more important than the actual topic.

Well, it is a blog about nothing.

A New Age Snow Day

 

Yesterday, Wednesday, February 12, was a snow day. 

The weather forecast called for 3 to 6 inches of snow which was to begin at 9 am and end at 3 am.  In this era around these parts where snow rarely measures up to the forecasts, this one was spot on.  In fact, the snow started at 7 am.  I was in bed well before it ceased.  It was a beautiful snow.  All told, we had about 4-5 inches of snow.

Tuesday, the night before, I was weighing whether I should move my Wednesday morning classes online.  Still recovering from a January 8 knee replacement, it seemed silly to be walking around on snow covered walkways, risk slipping, maybe falling, and incurring a setback in my recovery that is going so well.  But I was tentative to pull the trigger.  I was feeling a bit wimpy.  As I would be home by 11:15 at the latest, I was very likely I would be home safe and sound before the storm really got going.

Reason finally prevailed and I sent announcement to both classes that I was moving our classes online.  Ten minutes later, at 9:26 pm, the university sent out an email saying, “Due to the forecasted winter storm and potentially dangerous driving conditions, North Park will conduct remote operations on Wednesday, February 12.”  If I had only argued with myself a bit longer, I would have avoided that wimpy feeling.  Ah, the idiosyncrasies of male logic.

I was up early on Wednesday, brewed some coffee, ate a muffin, prepared for class online and opened up my first class at around 7:45 on MS Teams.  I taught that 8 am Operations Management class and then my Principles of Microeconomics class and was done at 10:20. That part of my brain that was fixated on “snow day” was ready to kick back, as childlike guy over 70 recovering from a knee replacement might do, and enjoy the snow day.  The possibilities included watching TV, reading the paper, perhaps blogging, reading a novel, and, most likely, napping. 

But… I had a few other things, work tasks to complete, before I could veg out and relax.  So, I wrote out the to-do list and got to it, checking them off one by one.  I broke for lunch but still was not done and continued on.  Soon, it was dinner time, and I still wasn’t done with the to-do list.  After dinner, I went back to work and finally finished up at around 9 pm.  I truly, and most frustratingly, experienced The Planning Fallacy.

Well, I finally retired to my ‘easy chair’ and proceeded to enjoy and hour of what was left of the snow day.  I only did two of the things on the aforementioned list of snow day activities:  I watched TV and napped.  Sadly, it was mostly napping.  I woke up and went to bed.  As I drifted off to sleep, again, I felt like I was robbed of an entire snow day.

Indeed, I was.

I wrote about the demise of the snow day back in February 2018.  That was pre-COVID and I had noted, “In recent years, with laptops, wifi, and cell phones, snow days became work at home days but they were welcome nonetheless.”  Since then post-COVID, it has gotten even worse with virtual meeting apps like MS Teams and Zoom.  Now, classes and meetings can proceed as normal albeit online instead of face-to-face.  This is bad news if vegging out is one’s priority on a snow day.   If productivity is paramount, well, the best part about a snow day is that you doing lose any time commuting and can actually get more done.

I did get more done but I am not really a fan of these new age snow days.

Starting Volume XXII

 

This thing, this bloggy thing, began as a monthly e-letter back in February 2004.  This project began 21 years ago and with this post, I am beginning Volume 22. 

From 2004-2008, I sent a monthly letter via email.  All sixty of those were the first thing I posted when I moved everything to this blog.  In 2009, I posted 12 more, still treating it as a monthly, letter.  September of 2009 was the first time I wrote and posted more than one post in a month.  Thereafter, I drifted from one longish monthly letter to shorter and more frequent blog posts.  This post will be my 887^th. 

887 posts.  I am amazed and proud of the way I have stuck to this project.  I am usually not that good at long term projects of this nature.  In that first letter, I even noted, “let’s see if I can do this more than one month in a row!”  I did have my doubts then.

I used to handwrite everything before putting finger to keyboard.  Nowadays, I create an MS Word file, TSoF 20XX for This Side of Fifty and the year and basically do all my blog and article writing in that file.  I average 20-30,000 words a year. 

The past two years, I have tried to write more for The Armenian Weekly.  Their policy is they will only publish articles that haven’t been posted in other media first.  So, the articles I write for that paper are published there first and then in my blog.  I was already in the habit of writing such bloggy bits on Armenian issues but only for my blog, the only change was first offering the better ones to The Weekly first.

The ongoing, lingering, question is what to do with all of this writing.  The interest in answering that question spikes up more when I write these anniversary blogs.  Do I try to monetize it? i.e. Do I make an effort to widen the audience becoming a columnist for some newspaper or magazine?  I mean, I have always like the New Yorker and the Atlantic.  But dang, if that doesn’t just sound like looking for a job?  I suppose I am just too far ‘this side of fifty’ to get excited about doing all the detailed work.  I suppose, I am just waiting around to be discovered.  I could self-publish a “Best of” collection that I could give to family and friends.  This seems more my speed.  Any of these ideas are good, but sadly, my preferred way of accomplishing any of them is to [1] win a substantial lottery jackpot and [2] hiring others to do all of the detailed business kind of work.  Besides an agent and publicist, I would hire a world class proofreader as well.  I guess I am saying that enjoy writing but not the business of writing.

Usually in these anniversary posts, I extoll the non-monetary benefits of this 21-year-old project.  First and foremost, I write much better and faster than I did before this project started.  Is it really good writing?  World class?  I don’t know.  I doubt it.  It is not for me to judge.  And… it really doesn’t matter.  When you are doing something you like, you do it because you like it and are committed to it.  I guess that is where I am at and that ain’t half bad.

A Great Detroit Lions Season

 

I am watching the Detroit Lions playoff game against the Washington Commanders.  There is about 6 minutes left in the game and… it will take a miraculous finish for the Lions to win.  The Commanders are leading 44-28.  As the camera pans fans in the stands at Ford Field, the Lions fans have the look all fans have when things look hopeless in a game they were expecting to win.  

The problem with championship playoffs is that every team but one loses their last game of the season.  The Lions are about to lose theirs.

Growing up in Detroit.  I was excited about all the home teams.  I loved the Tigers, Red Wings, and Lions.  Every year, at the beginning of any of their seasons, I had great expectations for these teams as any kid does.  During my formative years and continuing until 2022, the Lions were at best unimpressive and for the great majority of the time they were simply awful.  Year after year of consistent disappoint turn my youthful passion and exuberance for the home team into ambivalence. 

When I moved to Connecticut in 1990 and the New York Giants won the Super Bowl that year, it was pretty easy for me to become a Giants fan.  When Tom Brady led the Patriots to a Super Bowl win in 2002, I became a Patriots fan.  Now that I live in Chicago, I follow the Bears.

I always kept an eye on the Lions, however.  Detroit roots run deep.  Sometimes I would feel a twinge of that youthful passion and exuberance for the Lions when it looked like they might finally be turning the corner.  But, the Lions, as I was prone to say, “never disappointed” in that they were consistently bad.

The TV just showed the banner of the last NFL Championship.  It was in 1957, ten years before the Super Bowl era.  In 1957, I was only 4 years old. 

I remember at the start of this season, there was a lot of buzz and predictions from the pundits that Lions would be in the Super Bowl this year.  I was excited too, because the previous year the Lions were 12-5 and were really looking good.  I knew they would be as good or better than last year.  I was hoping this year would be the year they got to and won the Super Bowl but, I wasn’t predicting or counting on that happening, however. 

Sadly, their season ended tonight.  The Commanders won 45-31.

The Lions are a good football team.  They had an amazing season amassing a 15-2 regular season record, winning the NFC North Division, and earning a #1 seed in the playoffs.  Dan Campbell is an inspiring and driven coach that molded this team into a tough, gritty, and hard driving team.  In the end, it was clear that having 18 players on the injured reserve, mostly on defense, finally caught up with them.

I am disappointed with the loss.  I am disappointed for the city and the fans that showed so much passion and exuberance for the Lions.  But it nothing like the chronic disappointment I wrote of above.  They had a great season, and I sure hope they have turned the corner and continue to excel.

Welcome, Lilly Torosyan

Originally published in the Armenian Weekly

In the same week that the Armenian Weekly published my piece thanking editor emeritus Pauline Getzoyan for her five years of stewardship of the Weekly, I read the first piece by our new editor Lilly Torosyan.

My first thought was one simple word: “Wow.” Lilly can write. Lilly weaved a beautiful piece, threading many familial and national themes into a poetic tapestry, to mark her taking the helm of this venerable paper. We gained insight into her family, rooted to the recent history of our nation, in the eyes of her grandfather. We learned of Lenin’s despicable response to Shaumian and Andranik’s request for weapons. She invoked Raphael Patkanian, James Baldwin, Zahrad, Siamanto and Tigran Hamasyan. While Lilly’s tapestry is beautifully crafted, it is also bluntly serious, as is the last century and half of our history.

My second thought was, “Oh boy, not only will I have to sharpen my pen, but I will have to sharpen my wit, expand my vocabulary and seriously mine for deeper metaphors to keep up with our new editor.” I don’t think this was her intent. I believe she was just writing in her natural and gifted voice. But in doing so, there was a tug on, a tightening of, the creative tension that anyone who contributes to the Weekly probably felt. It was an invitation to step it up, to take things to a new level. This is the kind of thing any organization, including a weekly newspaper, needs in order to refine the organizational ethos and nurture continuous improvement.

The Weekly has a long and proud history. The editors, their staff and contributors have defined the quality of the paper and forged this proud history. The editor is the leader, of course, in this regard. We face existential concerns, rooted in Nakhichevan, Karabakh, Zangezur and whatever the unholy alliance Turkey and Azerbaijan are planning as their next step. The role of the Weekly is to buoy our part of the diaspora in these rough seas as we contribute however we can to ameliorating our national plight. We, the larger Weekly community, also need to support our local communities and organizations, especially those of our youth, like the AYF and HMEM, to keep our community viable, vibrant and cohesive.

Pauline Getzoyan felt all of this intensely in her tenure as editor. Lilly Torosyan feels it with the same passion. Pauline inspired and encouraged folks like me to want to contribute more to the Weekly. Lilly has certainly picked up where Pauline left off and has taken a very good first step in charting her own course. 

Welcome, Lilly, and best wishes for a long and successful term as editor.

Who Said What?

 

I watched a movie, The Big Short (2015), which presented the Hollywood version of the subprime meltdown in 2007 that arguably triggered The Great Recession.   It was a very well-done and engaging film with a star-studded cast that included:  Steve Carell (Mark Baum), Christian Bale (Michael Burry), Ryan Gosling (Jared Vennett), and Brad Pitt (Ben Rickert).  All the characters portrayed by these stars were based on real people but only Christian Bale’s character, Michael Burry, used the character’s real name.  The movie is fast paced, gripping and each of these actors does a great job. 

There was a Mark Twain quote at the beginning of the movie: “It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”  It resonated with me, as quotes are prone to do.  I reversed the video, hit stop and took a photo of it.  It was a very cool quote. 

I did an internet search to find a graphic for the inevitable bloggy bit I was going to write about this.  There were graphics of the quote but there were articles, as well, that state that Mark Twain never said this.  This is the problems with quotes found on the internet… anything found on the internet.  How can we be sure the luminary said what the beautiful graphics on quotation websites attribute them as saying?  In my case, I simply trust the websites which is a bit risky.  Case in point, in my New Year's Day 2025 post, I wanted to include a quote attributed to Albert Einstein: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  It is beautiful and direct.  The problem is that it has never been verified he ever wrote or said this.  But dang if Albert Einstein doesn’t give the good quote more gravity and force then say Rita Mae Brown who actually first uttered the phrase.  Rita Mae who?  Get the idea?  Rita Mae Brown is a civil rights, feminist, and LGBT activist and writer.  She has a reputation but nowhere near that of Einstein’s.

The New Republic addressed the same issue in a December 29, 2015 article by Alex Shephard, “’It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble,’ which must be why The Big Short opens with a fake Mark Twain quote.”  The article claims that the closest that Mark Twain ever came to this was, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”  It also attributes a different version of the quote to one Josh Billings (1818-1885), a humorist and lecturer.  The New Republic article noted that the quote used by Michael Lewis in his book, on which the movie is based, is from Leo Tolstoy in a 1897 essay, “The Kingdom of God is Within You.” 

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him.

The New Republic article states that the Tolstoy quote is good but cumbersome to the one falsely attributed to Mark Twain. 

So why the fake quote?  Movies need something move things along and quotes need to be  pithy.  The Tolstoy quote has 55 words, the questionable Twain quote has 21.  Who’s going to read the longer more complex quote that takes longer to read and digest than the shorter folksier easier to digest fake Twain quote.  A post on reddit noted, “This is done to show that people will make things up and you will believe them. Just as the big banks and ratings agencies did before the Financial Crisis of 2008.”  This sounds like as good a theory as any. 

Of course there is my favorite quote of all time…