From the Mouths of Experts

Historical precedent suggests that those ‘experts’ whose knowledge touches on race relations, comparative intelligence, multicultural ‘harmony’, integration, diversity, equality, and whatever other names you want to give the beast—could very well be wrong in their predictions and prescriptions.  What follows are a selection of quotes taken from the book The Experts Speak, by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky. Notice that the quotes are not taken from ‘just anybody’, but from prominent figures and figureheads in various industries, as well as in journalism and politics. Will we live to see Trevor Phillip’s or Tony Blair’s pronouncements appear in such an ironic light as do these below?

But first, a very concise description of the modus operandi with which the media pursues ‘truth’:

The mainstream media, and particularly television, have as their principle narrative convention the citation, quotation, and interviewing of experts. While argument ad hominem is frowned upon, argument ad veredundiam, or argument-from-authority, is celebrated. In the mass media, where anchors and reporters are not permitted to have opinions of their own, expert opinion is all that is left. If the Institute of Expertology is right, then, TV is a medium where a person who is wrong at least half the time is interviewed by another person whose chief qualification is that he has no opinion on the subject. From this encounter the truth is supposed to emerge.

The Great Depression:

“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” –Irving Fisher (Professor of Economics at Yale University) October 17, 1929. 7 Days later stock values plumeted $6 billion.

“In most of the cities and towns of this country, this Wall Street panic will have no effect.” –Paul Block (President of the Block newspaper chain) editorial, november 15, 1929.

“I don’t know anything about any depression.” – J.P. Morgan, Jr. (American Banker and financier). c. 1931

Man’s Glorious Future:

“If we are to begin to try and understand life as it will be in 1960, we must begin by realizing that food, clothing and shelter will cost as little as air.”
-John Langdon-Davies (British Journalist and Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute), A short History of the Future, 1936.

“In all likelihood world inflation is over.” –Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, 1959.

Ending Poverty and Crime:

“So here is the Great Society. It’s the time—and it’s going to be soon—when nobody in this country is poor.” –Lyndon B. Johnson (President of the United States), 1965

“Hasn’t anyone noticed that the worst criminals have been corrupted, since their infancy, by injurious reading? Hasn’t anyone beheld them, in the course of their trials, confessing that it was sordid literature that dragged them onto the road which ended fatally at prison and at the gallows?” –E. Caron (Director of Education for the city of Paris), Un coup d’oeil sur la mauvaise presse, 1874.

“[The populace will be] so educated and refined [that] the confinement and punishment of criminals will occupy but little of the thougth and time of the men of 1993.” –Terence V. Powderly (head of the Knights of Labor) prediction on the eve of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago 1893.

The Cold War:

“Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.”
—Nikita S. Khrushchev (Premier of the Soviet Union) addressing Western Diplomats at the Polish Embassy in Moscow, November 17, 1956.

Flora Lewis, New York Times columnist writing in 1984:
“Any realistic sense of the world today leaves it clear that there isn’t going to be any German reunification this century nor probably in the lifetime of anyone who can read this.”

“Sex without class consciousness cannot give satisfaction, even if it is repeated until infinity.” – Aldo Brandirali (Secretary of the Italian Marxist-Leninist Party) in a manual of the party’s official sex guidelines, 1973.

Perpetual Peace Is Always Right Around the Corner!:

“Everything announces an age in which that madness of nations, war, will come to an end.” –Jean-Paul Rabaut Saint-Etienne (French protestant Philosopher), Reflexions politiques sur les circonstances presentes, 1792.

“No more hatreds, no more self-interests devouring one another, no more wars, a new life made up of harmony and light prevails.” –Victor Hugo (French poet, dramatist and author) assessing the impact of lighter-than-air balloon flight 1842. (!!!)

“[I]t seems pretty clear that no civilized people will ever again permit its government to enter into a competitive armament race.” –Nicholas Murray Butler (President of Columbia University), quoted in the Literary Digest, October 17, 1914.

“This [World War I], the greatest of all wars, is not just another war—- it is the last war!” –H.G. Wells (British writer and Historian), 1914

“[R]adio will serve to make the concept of Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men a reality.” –General James J. Harbord (Chairman of the Board of the Radio Corporation of America), 1925.

“This solemn moment of triumph, one of the greatest moments in the history of the world.. this great hour which rings in a new era…is going to lift up humanity to a higher plane of existence for all the ages of the future.” –David Lloyd George (Prime Minister of Great Britain), Armistice Day, speech at Guildhall, London, November 11, 1918.

….And my personal favorite quote:

”By 1982…power in the international sphere, once jealously guarded by separate bellicose ‘sovereign states’, will be in the hands of the World Community, with its common written language—ideographs—and its universal system of justice.”
—Lewis Mumford (American social Philosopher), The Forum, December 1912.

        I   D   E   O   G   R   A   P   H   S   !  !  !

Do you cherish impotent historical analysis from the mouths of cretins? Then savor this distillation:

“The Crimea conference was a successful effort by the three leading nations to find a common ground for peace. It spells… the end of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries—and have always failed.” –Franklin D. Roosevelt (President of the United States) addressing the U.S. Congress after meeting with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin at Yalta. March 1, 1945.

The Unpopularity of Fidel Castro

“A great percentage of …[Castro’s] officers are believed ready to rebel against the government at a given moment, taking their troops with them.” –U.S. Air Force Intelligence Report, citing “two clandestine sources in Cuba who have furnished reliable information in the past.” March 1961.

Agent I-Say-Whatever-Will-Lead-To-My-Advancement has truly been a valuable source over the years.

Invention of the Television, Invention of the Computer:

“For God’s sake go down to reception and get ride of a lunatic who’s down there. He says he’s got a machine for seeing by wireless! Watch him—he may have a razor on him.” –Editor of the Daily Express (London), refusing to see John Logie Baird (the inventor of television), 1925.

“Television won’t matter in your lifetime or mine.” –Rex Lambert, editorial in the Listener, 1936.

“Worthless.” –Sir George Bidell Airy, K.C.B., M.A., LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S., F.R.A.S. (Astronomer Royal of Great Britain), estimating for the Chancellor of the Exchequer the potential value of the “analytical engine” invented by Charles Babbage, September 15, 1842.

If you have 18 letters after your last name, your opinion must carry a lot of weight.

The Iroquois Theater:

“Absolutely fireproof.” –Advertisement for Chicago’s new Iroquois Theater (opened in November 1903).

On december 30, 1903, during a performance of the play Mr. Bluebeard, fire broke out in the Iroquois Theater.

“Keep your seats. It is nothing. It will be out in a minute. Play, Dillea, play!” –Eddie Foy, stepping out of his role of Sister Anne, to calm the audience as a rain of burning particles descended on the stage.

591 people died that night as a result of the fire.

Tobacco, PCBs, Thalidomide

“I don’t believe that nicotine or our products are addictive.”
-Joseph Taddeo (President of the U.S. Tobacco Company)

Binghamtom, New York had just experienced a fire in an 18-story office building and Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) were spread throughout the skyscraper. Concentrations of PCBs as low as one part to a million parts of normal water are considered a serious environmental hazard. The governer of New York tried to reassure the people by saying:

“I offer here and now to walk into Binghamton in any part of that building and swallow an entire glass of PCBs and run a mile afterward…” –Hugh Carey (Governer of New York), press conference, March 4, 1981.

“We have firmly established the safety, dosage and usefulness of Kevadon [brand name for Thalidomide] by both foreign and U.S. laboratory clinical studies.”
—William S. Merrel Company executive, at a special conference held to present its introductory marketingn plan for thalidomide to its sales force, October 25-26, 1960.

“[A]n outstandingly safe medication.” –Letter from a participating physician in the William S. Merrel Company’s “clinical investigation” program for its new sleeping pill Kevadon (thalidomide), spring 1961.

Many flipper-babies had to be born before Thalidomide was finally taken off the market in 1961.

Fun Factoids and KrazY Kidz StuFF: Rocket Mail and Zambia’s Space Program

“[Before man reaches the moon] your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to England, to India or Australia by guided missiles…We stand on the threshold of rocket mail.” –Arthur E. Summerfield (U.S. Postmaster General), January 23, 1959.

“I’ll have my first Zambian astronaut on the moon by 1965….[W]e are using my own firing system, derived from the catapult…I’m getting [my astronauts]…acclimatised to space travel by placing them in my space capsule every day. It’s a 40-gallon oil drum in which they sit, and I then roll them down a hill. This gives them the feeling of rushing through space. I also make them swing from the end of a long rope. When they reach the highest point, I cut the rope—this produces the feeling of free fall.”
—Edward Mukaka Nkosolo (Director-General of the Zambia National Academy of Space Research), November 3, 1964.

Nkosolo’s Austronauts did set one record: they were the first astronauts in history to die of internal bleeding without having completed a single mission.

Paint Fumes’ Effect on the Brain:

“[W]hen it [the beaver] is pursued, knowing this to be on account of the virtue of its testicles for medicinal uses, not being able to flee any farther it stops and in order to be at peace with its pursuers bites off its testicles with its sharp teeth and leaves them to its enemies.” –Leonardo Da Vinci (Italian Artist and Scientist: 1452-1519).

Posted by Potential Frolic on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 04:35 PM in
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