This is really stupid, but imagine if there’s a watch on it! Useful AND stupid at the same time! What a concept!
Billionaire Mark Cuban is an entrepreneur, investor, and owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, but in one of his more trivial enterprises (sometimes it appears that he is aspiring to be the next Donald Trump—now why would anyone do that?), he serves as a “shark” investor on the ABC TV reality show “Shark Tank.” There investors and nascent entrepreneurs compete to justify their brilliant new ideas to investors, and there Cuban recently distinguished himself as well as served as a much-needed cultural role model by calling out a fraudulent product while attempting to educate a stubbornly ignorant public.
One contestant, Ryan Naylor, hoped to succeed with what he called “a fashion accessory with health benefits.” Esso Watches, he said, restore the body’s “energy field” and improve sense of balance. You’ve seen the bracelets and necklaces that athletes wear and that work on the same theory, the theory being magic, or, if you will “negative ion technology.” When Naylor handed out samples of his product to the judges, Cuban refused to even take one, saying, “No, I’m allergic to scams. Seriously, this is not new. It’s been disproven. What you saw is the placebo effect. There’s athletes that wear it. It’s a joke. It’s a scam. It’s not real. I’m out. Okay. Thank you.” Then, having been emboldened, the rest of the judges piled on: there was blood in the water, and you know how sharks are.
In one of the filmed asides to the camera, a discouraged and bitter Naylor blamed his failure on Cuban, who, he suggested, was so emphatic about the fact that his watch’s health claims were nonsense that nobody would challenge him.
Good.
The trend in the media and in life is the opposite of Cuban’s instinct, which was to call out crap for what it is. As I have written here, alleged journalists and TV personalities all too frequently indulge and feed public misinformation. The Today show has been a particularly egregious culprit, interviewing “psychics” as if they were genuine, for example. Elsewhere, we see Jenny McCarthy and other anti-vaccination hysterics treated with respect, when their claims are both thoroughly debunked, and potentially deadly. ABC is a prime offender too: read this recent jaw dropping exchange on “The View,” for example:
NICOLLE WALLACE [Talking about Hillary Clinton and 2016]: Obama has a 30 percent– 37 percent approval rating on foreign policy. So she’s going to have to be different.
ROSIE O’DONNELL: But don’t you think the reason ISIS was created was because when Saudi hijackers [Rosie makes quote signs with her fingers because she believes, and has stated more than once, that the U.S. government intentionally allowed the Twin Towers and the Pentagon to be attacked on 9/11] attacked us, we invaded a different country that had nothing to do with it? That would incite people to radicalize, right? Why is it that taking the troops out that caused it?
WALLACE: Well, the one thing about ISIS is no American president of any party does anything to make terrorists hate us. Because what they hate about us is our values, our way of life. They hate our freedom.
O’DONNELL: I don’t believe that. I have heard that on Fox News a lot. But I don’t believe that. I think that the reason that —
WALLACE: You think we do things to make them mad?
O’DONNELL: I think we have to be responsible for our actions. And if Saudi hijackers did what they do on 9/11 you don’t invade Iraq and kill innocent people in the process.
WALLACE: What do you think we should have done instead?
WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Let me put you on hold for a seconds. . We’ll come back and finish this conversation because I know it’s meaningful.
…
O’DONNELL: Here’s my point as a mom: I think you can never do anything to kill an innocent child. That’s what I think, a child that’s alive. Adults do horrible things to each other, but once you drop a bomb and kill a baby, I’m sorry. It’s over for me. I know what those people did in those planes were horrific. But I don’t think by killing each other we’re going to solve the world’s problems.
How wonderful it would be if Mark Cuban, or somebody like him, burst onto the set from behind a potted palm like Marshall Mcluhan in “Annie Hall,” and said, “No, Whoopie, it isn’t meaningful at all, and you ignorant fools are all a disgrace and a contagion in American society. You are passing out false information like candy at Halloween, making your viewers even dumber than they already are (they are watching you, after all), and gibbering like lemurs. Talk about something you have the knowledge and sophistication to discuss competently, or shut up, and Rosie, being a Truther should disqualify you from being taken seriously about any topic, ever.”
At least what he did on “Shark Tank” is a start.
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Sources: Mediaite, Newsbusters
Ethics Alarms 
I think as the 20’s-30’s generation moves up into leadership roles you’ll see a ton more skepticism and a ton more questioning of people’s assertions. I think a lot of it derives from no longer assuming people are being forthright.
On the flipside, I think a lot of it will derive from an unhealthy cynicism and you will also see a lot of needless skepticism also, because questioning even the obvious (when associated with a culturally accepted level of snark) is a quality that earns points in the younger generation.
20’s and 30’s? Yeah, the 85 to 95 crowd is really just starting to move up in the world.
Chuckle
Wow…. Case in point, eh? Snark and needless skepticism.
On the other hand, maybe our leaders will start to send us $5 in a card every Christmas.
I wouldn’t count on it helping. They may question more, but they have less ability to independently determine the truth. The people in that age group are more and more dependent on other people’s opinions. They have been groomed and programmed more by the school/prison system and they have no basis for independent understanding. They accept ‘facts’ from authority figures without questions or thought because they have very little understanding of how anything works.
I don’t think it generational as much as it’s experiential. There may be fewer people in their thirties who have grown up doing real things. But, those who have come up doing real things are very aware of how things work and how they don’t work and how things that should work are thwarted by the systems that are supposed to help.
To clarify, when I mention “culturally accepted level of snark” I mean what Steve-O-in-NJ described on September 12, 2014 :
“Unfortunately first we’ve developed a sitcom culture where a snappy comeback is supposed to mean you won, and smug deflections or laughing questions or criticism off have become par for the course, so we shouldn’t be surprised that culture has bled to the highest levels of a government that’s tried to be an extension of popular culture.”