Incompleat Iconoclast » Hyperbole

Exercise #28: Movie Star

Edward F. Gumnick — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 04:45:54 +0000

Hollywood, CA—Entertainment industry sources are buzzing today with the gossip that the world’s last remaining noncelebrity, Phil Stackfield, a tax accountant from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is engaged to become the fifth husband of model, country singer, and celebrity cage-fighting phenom Darla Chartreuse. Chartreuse, 27, who began life as Darlene Carter, is the platinum-blonde star attraction of Fox Ultra Reality Channel’s Celebrity Death Match and the singer-songwriter who scored Grammy gold last year with the crossover smash hit, “Baby Ain’t No Use.”

Little is known about Stackfield, 38, a graduate of Linn County Community College, except that the accounting firm in which he’s an associate is a member of the Cedar Rapids Chamber of Commerce, and he professes to like spending time outdoors, playing video games, and hanging out with his friends. His secretive relationship with Darla Chartreuse began three years ago when the country diva’s tour bus experienced transmission failure outside a diner on I-80 where Stackfield was eating creamed chipped beef on toast.

Chartreuse admits to having been charmed by the fact that Stackfield was the only diner patron not live-tweeting his meal or shooting cell-phone video of himself. In a March interview with Ellen Degeneres, she described Stackfield as “quirky and cute in that offbeat way people sometimes get when they spend a lot of time off-camera.”

A spokesperson for Chartreuse said that the singer is writing at her Nashville home and couldn’t be reached for comment.

Note: The prompt was to write about a movie star. I decided to go in another direction. (Do I need to say that this is a work of fiction?)

This post is an exercise that I wrote as part of the Fall 2008 50/50 Workshop, on which I began work in September 2008. (I’m still—again—working on it as of August 2010.) Read a description of the 50/50 workshop, or view all of the Fall 2008 50/50 posts.

Boot Camp Day 10: Can I Get a Witness?

Edward F. Gumnick — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:54:07 +0000

I received an e-mail today from Patty Gras at KUHT (Houston PBS). She’s a producer and the host of a “health and lifestyle” show called Living Smart. The show features topics related to health, alternative medicine, diet, self-improvement, and so forth. Here’s what she has to say about an upcoming show:

“Did you know the happiest man on the planet is a Buddhist monk? Scientists checked his brain waves and found him to be the most joyful person on earth, so we decided to talk to another monk, Master Jian Xiao Shih, so he could share some of the secrets to happiness!

“Master Shih of the Chung Tai Zen center of Houston will share the art of happiness this Sunday at 3 p.m.”

Now, let me start off by saying that I like Patty Gras. She’s a talented singer—I used to enjoy going to hear her group Barandúa, which played music in a variety of Latin American folk styles, and I’ve also heard her perform with a group called Quartus and as part of a duo. She seems smart, cool, liberal, and keen on social-justice issues that I care about. But sometimes her show ventures too far into the area that I like to call “woowoo,” and the promo above is a prime example.

Let’s take a look at the claim she makes in this e-mail message. “The happiest man on the planet is a Buddhist monk.” Hm. Right off the bat, my hyperbole detector is registering dangerous readings. The happiest man in the world? By what measure? I want to ask. And then she’s right there with an explanation: “Scientists checked his brain waves and found him to be the most joyful person on earth.”

Wow. There’s a lot of information in that statement. If this is true, it’s big science news that hasn’t made it into any of the science blogs or magazines I’ve been reading. Have scientists really found a way to use brain waves to detect joy? Is happiness an emotion that can be measured by bioelectric activity? I am inclined toward skepticism, but I’m entirely willing to believe that this assertion is based on research about which I’ve never read. (I’ll get to googling at my earliest opportunity.)

But my skepticism rises to an irresistible level when I get to “…and found him to be the most joyful person on earth.” Even if I accept as a given that scientists have found a way to measure happiness, is she asking us to believe that they’ve found a way to measure brain waves remotely for everyone on the planet? I, for one, have not had my happiness brain waves measured yet. At least not that I know of.

Is this merely careless language? Or is it careless thinking? I almost hope it’s just a poor representation of an inexact understanding of some real findings of some real scientific research. But how can an intelligent person put forward an assertion that’s so ridiculous on its face? How much credulity can one successful professional broadcaster possess?

I worry, though, that there’s something worse going on here, which is a disturbing disregard for the very nature of science. Science is about evidence—about observation, experimentation, and the testing of hypotheses. And although I don’t mean to suggest that everyone should be expected to test and verify any claim that’s presented as having a scientific basis, I believe that intelligent people—especially intelligent people who make it their business to communicate with the public about important issues—have an obligation to apply a measure of skepticism to such claims. In other words, if you’re planning to go on television and say, “Scientists have proven this thing I’m telling you about,” then you have a responsibility to find out exactly what the scientists had to say, and then to present it to the public in a way that honestly represents the science involved.

In fact, let’s make it a rule. Why not? We have FCC regulations governing decency and obscenity, why shouldn’t we have one simple rule about scientific truth: If you make a claim on television or the radio and you invoke the name of science, you should be required by law to cite your sources and provide an honest statement of what the research proves.

And if it turns out that there’s no real science behind the claims, then journalists with integrity have a responsibility to present that information, too. Or come clean and say, “I just like the idea that this Buddhist monk is the happiest person on the planet.”

Note: I decided to totally disregard the suggested topics for my tenth and last Boot Camp submission.

“The Language of Marketing”

Edward F. Gumnick — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:47:06 +0000

A client raised my hackles recently by asking me to redesign a brochure with “more of a marketing appeal.” She presented an example—a mockup of a brochure cover with a huge photo that had nothing to do with the content and a few sparse blocks of words conveying little real information. The meager text referred to “all new world-class courses” that would offer “everything you need” to meet deadlines and budgets and would give you business analysis skills to “ensure flawless execution.” It sounded like unsustainable hyperbole to me—empty, meaningless phrases—but the client’s reaction to the piece was, “This is what I mean about a fresh sexy look. If you read each category you see the language of marketing coming through.”

My reply: “Maybe you need to look for a designer and/or writer who believes that the ‘language of marketing’ is a good thing.”

A week or two later, I received the following letter from Wells Fargo offering to lend me the spectacular sum of $1,076.55 at an enticing interest rate of 19.99 percent.

> Click on the image to see a larger version. <

When I read the first paragraph of the letter, my first thought was, “Behold the language of marketing!” Is this the kind of thing my client wanted? Using ridiculous hyperbole to persuade someone to buy something he doesn’t want or need on terms that are completely at odds with his own best interests?

Editor’s note: A follow-up to this posting—last week, I received another copy of the same letter from Wells Fargo. I was surprised to see that the new copy didn’t say, “This may be the second-most-important piece of mail you will ever receive, next to the one we sent you before.”