Nothing has done more damage to Millennials and Get Zers than ‘The Self-Esteem Movement:’ the insane belief that you praise someone first and do the work second. It has created two generations of young Americans who, in the main, are utterly convinced that they are amazing at everything. You can’t hope to get any better at something if you are taught from birth that you began at the top, and so Simon Cowell is not simply the mean guy on the talent-show panel: he is an avatar for a quaint but fading concept called THE TRUTH.
Listen here on Soundcloud:
I was possibly lucky that my brother and I had completely different personalities and skill sets so we didn’t fight over things or have to compete against each other. Our mother is a perfectionist though, so there was no slacking. The first of the Shanarra books by Terry Brooks featured a sword. It had a magical power I don’t remember exactly that dealt with truth. The evil at the end of the story was some magician of a sort who was dead but persisting as a ghost of some kind. The hero had to confront the evil with the sword… Read more »
Bill comments near the end that we need a Simon Cowell on every corner. I kind oof disagree. We need him on every college campus! There is a rather successful YT channel where an interviewer goes to college campuses and asks basic questions about geography, mathematics and history to current students. The answers are generally funny, totally ignorant or non-sequiturs. They are almost never accurate. Now, this being the point of the videos, I guess that there is a certain amount of video “on the cutting room floor”. But there is enough footage of idiocy to make me wary of… Read more »
Now, this being the point of the videos, I guess that there is a certain amount of video “on the cutting room floor”. I stopped subscribing to Mark Dice a while back for quite a few reasons but one of them was his “Man on the Street” interviews. He goes to Santa Monica or one of the other big recreational piers, on a weekday afternoon when responsible productive people are at work. When those piers are almost solely populated with Kalifornia slimebags, sloths and slugs. Then he only shows the very most outrageous responses to his questions. Which means that… Read more »
Guys, if you have never seen the documentary “Still Bill,” which follows retired singer Bill Withers around for a few days, then you simply must do so. Among other great moments, he had to tell his daughter that the music she was making wasn’t good enough; which brought his eventual approval of her work so much more meaningful. A paraphrase of something he said: When you’re on th path to Great, you will pass through Pretty Good. Take a look around, because Pretty Good might turn out to be as fa you make it. Everything else about that documentary is… Read more »
Greetings from the world of a Pretty Good artist, musician, and athlete. My hero growing up was my uncle. He was brought up by a widowed when he was 3 mother. was chosen for West Point, and was a captain of the chess and wrestling teams while there. Whenever he tried a new thing that interested him, he became talented at it beyond compare. He made the most beautiful stained-glass art you can imagine when he was older. I gave a part of his eulogy. It made me recognize that he may have been my hero, but I didn’t take… Read more »
Another good example of one who tells the uncomfortable truth is Gordon Ramsey. Now when he does the shows with kids, he is much nicer than with the adults. But he still tells them that wasn’t up to our expectations and you are done with the show. People need to hear that sometimes.
When my boys were young my oldest son had a fascination for machines. He loved to tear them apart to see how they worked. His grandmother, my mother-in-law whom I loved dearly while she was still with us, encouraged him by praising his aptitude as a “natural mechanic”. He was great at disassembling machines, he was terrible at putting them back together again and never, ever actually repaired a thing. After having several lawn mowers and other machines destroyed by my oldest son I came to the realization that I had to do something about this. I spoke to my… Read more »
At the beginning of the episode, I’m sure when Bill said “you idiots,” he meant that in the most respectful way possible.