Four-and-a-half lessons about Free Speech and the Internet

Whenever I put one of these cartoon blog posts together, I have to decide which cartoon I want at the top and the order in which the subsequent cartoons follow and then construct some kind of narrative that ties them all together.

Originally, CNN anchor Don Lemon putting his foot in his mouth (more on that shortly) was the top cartoon, right up until cartoonist Scott Adams – creator of the comic strip Dilbert – destroyed his career with a few choice quotes about Black people.

Just in case you don’t know; besides a comic strip Adams also has a YouTube show called Real Coffee with Scott Adams and on that show Adams commented on a Rasmussen Reports survey that said 53% of Black Americans agreed with the statement:

“It’s OK to be White.”

According to the survey, 26% of Black respondents disagreed and some weren’t sure.

Apparently, that’s what set Adams off and according to the Associated Press, Adams described people who are Black as members of a “hate group” and said he would no longer “help Black Americans” and “the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people.”

(When I read that last quote I thought in the very near future getting away from Black people wasn’t going to be much of a problem for Dilbert and I put that thought in cartoon form.)

In response to Adams’ opinions, hundreds of newspapers dropped Dilbert and Adams’ syndicate – the people who distribute his cartoons to newspapers – Andrews McMeel Universal announced they would no longer be working with Adams.

Lesson #1:

You can exercise your right to Free Speech, but then others can exercise their right not to listen or provide a platform for your opinions. I’ve had fellow cartoonists complain about their newspapers censoring them, but the First Amendment says Congress will make no law “abridging the freedom of speech” it doesn’t say newspapers have to print whatever crazy shit you feel like saying.

Lesson #2:

You shouldn’t get too worked up over polls (they’re often wrong) and just because a poll says 26% of Black Americans think something, doesn’t make it so.

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce website, (which quoted U.S. Census Bureau statistics) in 2020 there were 46.9 million Black Americans. Now ask yourself how many of them were included in that survey.

One percent would 469,000 people and one percent of that one percent would be 4,690 people and you know they didn’t talk to that many people either, so they interviewed a teeny-tiny fraction of one percent and then announced here’s what Black Americans think.   

Google “how many people get interviewed in a typical poll” and you might be led to a CNN article that says it varies, but a Gallup poll might question 600 to 1,000 people.

The article appears to have been written in 1997 so maybe standards have changed (and considering the trend pretty much everything else in journalism has taken, it means things have gotten much worse) and most of the article is CNN explaining why their polls are actually accurate and should be taken seriously and here it is:

https://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/gen/indepth/polls/faq.html

Now here’s another CNN article published a couple weeks before the 2016 election that said Hillary Clinton had a 12-point lead over Donald Trump and they had surveyed 874 likely voters and the margin of error was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, but the poll said only 38% of voters were going to vote for Trump and in reality it was 45.9% so it turns out the margin of error was quite a bit more than they thought:

https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/23/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-presidential-polls/index.html

If you read the first article, which I wouldn’t recommend unless you need a good laugh, CNN argues that polls are pretty much always right and if they said Hillary was going to beat Donald they were right the day the poll was taken, but something changed so it’s kinda the voters’ fault for being wishy-washy and changing their minds or not showing up to vote which sounds like a bullshit excuse for being wrong and as soon as I find the time and energy to ask three of my friends if they agree, I’ll publish a poll on that.

Lesson #3:

Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t mean it’s true and according to the Associated Press, Rasmussen Reports is a: “conservative polling firm that has used its Twitter account to endorse false and misleading claims about COVID-19 vaccines, elections and the Jan. 6., 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.”

Rasmussen Reports has also been accused of slanting their poll questions to get the results they want, but I read that on the internet so maybe it’s not true either, but it sounds true which gets us to:

Lesson #3b:

Beware of conformation bias.

Wait a minute, that’s supposed to confirmation bias, although trying to fit in by conforming isn’t all that great either because that’s how you wind up joining the Army, getting married or even worse, attending a Taylor Swift concert.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to accept any evidence that confirms what you already believe and reject anything that contradicts your beliefs and I just finished a novel with a bunch of that Annoying Zen Buddhist Crap that turns out to be true way more often than I find comfortable and the book advised avoiding surrounding yourself with “like-minded people” because they’ll just tell you you’re right and you’ll all get radicalized.

My 97-year-old mom will often say, “Everybody thinks so” and I’ll say, “At this point in your life, you know maybe three people who are still technically alive and you all go to the same church, so you really don’t know everybody or what they think.”

(I must have some inner Zen Buddhist Guiding Light because I’ve managed to surround myself with people who seem to feel it’s their full-time job to tell me just how often I’ve fucked up.)

Lesson #4:

You don’t have to share each and every thought that passes through your mind, especially when those thoughts are really stupid.

In my experience when someone starts a sentence with: “This is going to sound racist (or sexist or snobby)” about 99.6 percent of the time that’s because it is racist (or sexist or snobby) and maybe when we have one of those less-than-noble thoughts we should exercise our Constitutional Right to Shut the Fuck Up.

And if you’re thinking, “But, Lee, you share your thoughts all the time” rest assured I think a lot of stupid stuff that I don’t share and considering the stupid thoughts I do share, you know those unspoken thoughts are really moronic, which brings us to a guy who didn’t shut up when he had the chance.

OK, I’ve written way too much about Dilbert and polls and the internet so these next items will be a bit shorter because while I advised others to Shut the Fuck Up I couldn’t manage it myself.

Anyway…

Presidential candidate Nikki Haley tried to make some news – and succeeded – by saying there should be a competency test for political office holders over 75 years of age (a shot at Donald Trump and Joe Biden) and CNN host Don Lemon responded by saying Nikki Haley herself was no longer in her “prime.”

The women who watched Lemon put his foot in his mouth up to the kneecap, asked him prime for what?

Child bearing?

Swimsuit competitions?

Competing in the 2024 Olympics’ Uneven Parallel Bars event? 

And Don decided the hole he was in wasn’t quite deep enough so he kept digging and told his female questioners to Google it, although if you Google “when is a woman in her prime” now, all you get are a bunch of articles about Don Lemon being a moron.

Meanwhile…Joe Biden had his annual physical and/or autopsy and said he felt “healthy and energized.”

Which made me wonder if the Democratic National Committee felt the same way considering they have a candidate who will be approximately 124-years-old at the end of a second term which is probably an “ageist” comment, but I feel like I’ve lived long enough and earned the right to make them.

On a regular basis I forget the location of my garage door opener, so you probably wouldn’t want to give me the codes to start a nuclear war because I’d write them down so I wouldn’t forget them and then forget where I put the list.

To prove just how healthy and energized he is, Biden went to Ukraine and told them we “had their backs” although having their backs has yet to include the F-16 fighter jets they asked for.

About which I have mixed feelings.

The question here is just how nuts is Vladimir Putin and he appears to be BFFs with Steven Seagal which is not a sign of mental health and you don’t want to get in a test of wills with someone crazier than you, because they’ll keep going way past the point you’re ready to give up and cut your losses.

It’s easy to say we’re with Ukraine all the way, but recent history indicates that we’re not adverse to declaring victory and going home and leaving our former allies behind to deal with the shit we helped start.

And speaking of crazy…our weather is all over the place and they recently had a blizzard warning for the mountains near Los Angeles and were also worried that thunderstorms over the ocean could lead to waterspouts which might come ashore as small tornadoes in Santa Barbara County and up is down and black is white and cats might possibly marry dogs and the only people who could possibly save us would be the Ghostbusters.

BTW: I once walked by a friend’s office in Kauffman Stadium and saw Bill Murray sitting on his couch and in possibly the coolest move of my life, decided not to barge in and say, “Hey! Remember when you we’re in Caddyshack?” and now, in possibly the least-coolest move of my life, I want credit for not bothering Bill Murray.

Anyway…

The weird weather made me think weather forecasting must be difficult right now and a while back we had a snow storm in KC which wasn’t predicted and one of the weather people got on TV and apologized for missing it, but added that it was a really unusual weather event…which if you think about it – and I have – is actually the only time we really need weather forecasts.

If it’s going to be cold on Christmas and hot on the Fourth of July I don’t need any warnings. I only need a weather forecast when something unusual is going to happen and if something unusual stumps the meteorologists, what good are they and you could say the same about pollsters and I think I already said that.

A train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio and spilled some chemicals and politicians started blaming each other for not showing up to survey the damage or wearing the wrong shoes when they did show up (I did not make that up, although I wish I did) and if you Google “did Trump” make trains less safe” you’ll be directed to articles that say that’s a false claim and articles that imply that it’s true, so we’re right back where we started:

You can’t trust something just because it’s on the internet (and that might include me) so think before you react to something like a poll that may or may not be accurate and if you don’t believe me, just ask President Hillary Clinton.

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/