As an aside,
I just love when these reporters/consultants/experts do their teevee interviews with bookcases full of books and tchotchkes behind them as though by observing those objects, it gives the interviewee credence “because Lookit all those books (s)he read!”
I actually have, for a non-literary occupation individual a gigantic library because I have the entire collection of six individuals who were addicted to academic-quality books (in other words, no Jackie Collins-type novels - or very few, I’ll confess) in addition to my own library. I was a “voracious” reader as a youth and an English major (as one of my three college majors).
That being said, I would never purport to be as learned as those who study subjects in immense detail and would thus be considered an expert by academic standards. I am an intellectual jack of all trades and a master of one, as I believe Ben Franklin wrote. These folks go on tv, pretend to be able to analyze events and then prognosticate based upon the past. I would love to see a show wherein predictions are aired and the predictor is forced to sit through an explication of what then happened with the academic rationale for why the “expert" was totally mistaken.
You’ll never see it after the NFL games and you sure as heck won’t see it politically. It would however be interesting to say the least to create an index of reliability: the prognosticator’s percentage of correctness, adjusted for minor unforeseen discrepancies. Each rating would be on the chyron underneath to allow the viewer to judge the reliability.
Well I think it’s a good idea….anyone who thinks that he or she can accurately predict the sequelae of the Iranian invasion is kidding the public and themselves. The Butterfly Effect is in force here.
P.S.: for many with an education, it may best be described as “a load of books on the back of an ass”. I forget who wrote that originally. Genius.
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