Lost In Place

Fig.1 Dreaming of his own planet (nothing against chimps; I respect simians!) Image courtesy of Mytwords

We have duly noted here, repeatedly, how much NPR is relying on its in-house mutation, Planet Money/Monkey/Moneygrub/Monkeygrub, WHATEVER. With its' lousy - but whimsical! - mascot: a Mr Magoo astronut suit, all topsy-turvy, so that you have to rotate your head to see who's inside, and it is...... one-buck George Washington!!! Ha ha!

Here's the point though. As a self-appointed Style But No-Substance cub reporter making a pest of himself, scratching around this blog, I have to tell you that Adumb Davidson's fatal flaw as a money guru can actually be distilled down to one very telling characteristic.

(Yes, he was on Mourning Ed with Renaay Mundane, explaining some more about how Narcissistic Capitalism - my term, not his - works.)

And what is that telling characteristic? (If we were tweeting, I could ask for a multiple choice quiz...)

On with it!

It's that little quasi-laugh - almost a suppressed snicker - or a titter - or a scoff-laugh, that Adumb strategically applies to various words and phrases that immediately and permanently makes him invalid as any sort of source for information. He is, of course, a veiled apologist for raw, untreated capitalism, no matter what he says or implies, but that's not my point.

To dissect on a nano level, this little Davidsonian laugh or smirk indicates that he, the wise one on all things, considers himself above and beyond the stupidity of things lower than himself, so he betrays this attitude by these little mirth punctuations, just to remind you that he is just so cool and hip. beyond that it gets harder to explain.

You can tell he actually succeeds in stopping short of outright guffaws when talking about things that he particularly considers stupid or absurd, so listeners might actually characterize him as a clever but well-mannered gentleman who knows how to reign himself in.

Bottom line though is that, giggles or not, Davidson is difficult to listen to, difficult to absorb, digest, eliminate. The verbiage is delivered by bulk mail, supposedly ingenious, but not worth the VU readings its carried on.

See what you think when you listen to him. One of my favorite bits of observant wisdom is from Wally Shawn, and I paraphrase him: these people, these media people (and Neocons, essentially), they CHUCKLE as they're talking about death (or in this case, money).

I interpret such chuckling as indicating a superior-minded detachment, a smug knowledge of profiting from the game. But you know, Davidson is actually quite a tinkertoy player in such a league, as compared to the Richard Perles of the world.

OK, I plainly don't like this Adam Davidson person. neither do many of us, for varying reasons. At least Glenn Beck is a certified loony and Jim Cramer is an obvious fake and Lou Dobbs is plainly an abomination. But Davidson & Co. smirk their way through a Cheneyan dark side, relishing their self-delusions that are facilitated by public broadcasting, laughing all the way to the bank.

I, uh, don't like that sort of thing at all.