Ryan, Debi, and Toren Cragun's Blog

Dave Barry’s Money Secrets: Like: Why Is There a Giant Eyeball on the Dollar?

Author:
Dave Barry

Publisher:
Brilliance Audio

Date of Publication:
2006

ISBN:
1597371653

Rating:
7

Summary:
Dave Barry tackles many of the most common financial questions people have… using humor, sarcasm, and satire. The topics he addresses range from: investing in the stock market to buying a home to how to perform well as a CEO. The real irony, of course, is that despite his humorous treatment of all of these topics, the book basically does reflect a pretty accurate understanding of many of these financial issues: (1) the average layperson is very likely to get screwed financially over the course of their life, (2) wealthy people will remain wealthy but probably become even more wealthy, and (3) poor people may as well give up hope now.

Review:
I’m a regular reader of Dave Barry’s columns and have always found his writing witty and entertaining. Barry has a keen ability to paint normal human behavior with the brush of humor. Barry’s style of humor is well-suited for this topic, even if the book isn’t uproariously hilarious throughout (it’s pretty funny, but not consistently funny).

As I mentioned above, the real irony in this book is that, despite blatantly poking fun of these topics, Barry is often right about them. For instance, Barry explains that paper money only has value because we all agree to behave as though it has value – which he considers to be laugh-out-loud hilarious in and of itself (and, in a sense, it is). He is, of course, right – that is the only reason paper money and electronic currency have value. His explanation of the economy (that no one really understands how it works – especially economists) is also pretty accurate. Barry takes on popular “financial gurus,” like Suze Orman, as well. I loved his satirical treatment of her books, which he ultimately points out is how Suze Orman makes her money – by selling people books, not by doing what she tells them to do (why else would she be writing these books?). Barry skewers CEOs as bumbling morons (literally, he uses the word “moron” dozens of times). He talks about how office furniture must give off “moron-rays” as there is no other explanation for how: (1) CEOs make such stupid decisions; (2) corporate boards decide to keep these CEOs despite their stupid decisions; and (3) CEOs make so much money. According to Barry, the only explanation is moron-ray emitting office furniture. Barry also skewers stockbrokers, who only give one piece of advice, ever, “Buy stocks” (because they’re stockbrokers, of course!) and stock analysts who basically have no idea why stocks go up or down and are about as good at predicting stock price changes as psychics are at actually reading your mind. Barry’s thoughts on the stock market: You’re better off betting your money at a casino than on the stock market. At a casino you know your odds; in the stock market you have no idea if there are even odds and even less of an idea what might happen to your money.

I think my favorite chapter – probably because it is currently relevant to one of my major preoccupations at the moment – is Barry’s advice on buying a house, “Don’t buy an old house, it will fall apart. Don’t buy a new house, it will fall apart.” In short, don’t buy a house – or, at least, don’t expect any house you buy to actually make you money. Barry details all the many ways he has lost money on both old and new homes, illustrating that it really doesn’t matter what you buy, homes are expensive to own.

Overall, for a good laugh at the rather ridiculous sphere of life we call “money management,” this book is worth picking up. As with most of Dave Barry’s humor you have to know what he is talking about in order to get the humor. As a result, the book won’t really teach anyone anything, but it is mildly entertaining.

(Note: I listened to this book as an mp3 on my iPod.)

The Truth (with Jokes)

Author:
Al Franken

Publisher:
Penguin Group

Date of Publication:
2005

ISBN:
0786561785

Rating:
8

Summary:
Back when Al Franken was on Air America and it was streamed online for free, I used to listen to him regularly. I don’t agree with all of his political positions (“some” is more accurate), but he does have at least one additional attraction: he really is quite funny. Combining politics and humor made his show appealing and I enjoyed it. This book came out about the time I was listening to him regularly (almost two years ago now) and I have wanted to read it ever since. I finally found a little bit of time, so here’s what I thought…

The book has two aims: (1) explain how George Bush won in 2004, and (2) illustrate how terrible the Bush Administration is (in particular) and Republicans are (in general). Franken’s arguments concerning number one boil down to three components – fear, smears, and queers. The first part should be fairly apparent – the Republicans used fear as the primary component of their campaign. In the run-up to the 2004 Presidential election, the Bush Administration tried to cast the decision between Kerry and Bush as a decision for or against terror. To do so they invoked fear, or as Franken puts it, “And that is almost literally the choice that Bush offered America’s voters on November 2, 2004: Vote Republican, or be ripped apart by dogs.” (p. 33). It wasn’t actually dogs, but more along the lines of “mushroom clouds” (actual quote) and terrorism (no need to quote; this was the 2004 Republican platform).

The second component Franken illustrates by dissecting the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads and claims. He basically illustrates that their claims were bald-faced lies and clearly were designed to smear Kerry. The most unfortunate thing about these claims is that so many people took them seriously and it actually seemed to work.

Finally, while accurately minimizing this component, Franken also points out that a hot-button issue was on the ballot in many states – amendments to state constitutions banning gay marriage. Franken draws on the work of political scientists to illustrate that these amendments did, in fact, have some influence on conservative voter turnout and that may have helped push Bush over the edge in pulling out a victory (though the other two components were more probably more important).

The second aim of the book is actually more implicit, as he does this just in passing. For instance, Franken attacks the current situation in Iraq and places the blame squarely on the Bush Administration, “If you’re curious why Iraq is in the crapper, it’s because everyone one of these eminently reasonable recommendations fell not on deaf ears, but on ears into which fingers had been deliberately inserted.” (p. 398). The recommendations to which Franken is referring are the many plans and ideas suggested by consultants and the military during the planning for the war. Franken builds a fairly persuasive argument to indicate that the Bush Administration quite literally ignored all of this advice, resulting in the quagmire that is now Iraq.

Review:
I read Barak Obama’s latest book “The Audacity of Hope” shortly after reading this one (but obviously before writing this review). The tones are quite different and I think reading Obama’s book has led me to soften my views on Franken’s book somewhat. Don’t get me wrong, I still agree with a lot of what Franken writes and I think his analysis is pretty accurate in a lot of ways, but I also see the merit to Obama’s more centrist and empathetic perspectives.

That said, Franken has finally done what I think most future political writers are going to have to do: he turned to the scientific community to support his arguments. For instance, Franken draws on social psychological research in Terror Management Theory to bolster his argument that fear-mongering, particularly death-related thoughts, leads people to prefer charismatic/visionary leaders (e.g., Bush) over task-oriented or relationship-oriented leaders (e.g., Kerry). In terms of beliefs, thoughts of death also lead people to favor preexisting cultural worldviews (e.g., conservatism) as opposed to more liberal or radical worldviews (e.g., liberalism). The fact that Franken actually cites some peer-reviewed literature was encouraging. He doesn’t claim to be an expert, but he does at least recognize the importance of basing his claims on empirical science and not just on opinions. It was a breath of fresh air in an otherwise empiricism-absent political arena.

For most individuals who keep up with the news and current events, much of the information in this book won’t be surprising (and by keeping up with the news and current events I mean reading something other than the Wall Street Journal and watching something other than Fox News). But a few of the things Franken noted surprised me. For instance, Bush claimed the loss of 3 million jobs from 9/11; the Bureau of Labor Statistics put the number at 125,637 (pp. 56-57). The fact that a politician misstated numbers isn’t surprising (this isn’t something unique to Republicans, of course), but I just hadn’t heard the BLS numbers before. The most surprising datum, however, was this one about post-conflict casualties in former wars, “Bush partisans like to point out that after World War II, it took years to form democratic governments in Germany and Japan. What they won’t tell you is that the total number of post-conflict American combat casualties in Germany, Japan, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo is zero, a number invented by Arab mathematicians like Ahmed Chalabi.” (p. 466; I like the joke at the end, too). I had heard that post-conflict occupations in Germany and Japan took a long time (a lot longer than four years), but I had not heard that there had been no casualties. Making this comparison, then, is really like comparing apples with oranges and is a disingenuous comparison for Republican spinners to make.

Overall, I think Franken does a good job of building and supporting his arguments. While he is probably overly partisan (he seldom criticizes Democrats, who certainly aren’t immune to criticism), he does make a lot of good points. And, he’s funny (in fact, laugh-out-loud funny at times). As is often the case in the U.S. (as Barak Obama points out in his excellent book), the people who read this book are more than likely going to be people who agree with it to begin with. That’s unfortunate, as it does have some compelling arguments. But at least Franken’s choir-directed preaching is laden with jokes, which does make the book well worth reading.

I’m in Nashville with Debi, who is attending a professional conference. I have plenty to do to keep me busy, but I thought I’d read outside to enjoy the good weather rather than sit, cooped up, in our hotel room. I checked a local map and found a park by the river just a couple of blocks from our hotel. When I walked down to it with the textbook I’m reading for a class I’m teaching next quarter I noticed a number of homeless people walking through the park. There were other people walking through the park as well and I didn’t really give it a second thought. I found a nice, grassy location under a tree and sat down to read.

About an hour later, just as I was getting ready to go to lunch, I noticed two of the homeless men were walking toward where I was sitting. I looked up and listened in to their conversation. I couldn’t hear much and wasn’t really paying attention, but they noticed me observing them and they raised their voices so I could hear what they were saying. I’m still not sure what it was, but their conversation was laced with the word “nigger.” When they got close enough to me, one turned to me and said, “Lots of niggers around here, aren’t there? They’re all over the place.” My response? I just kind of shrugged.

Now, there are several interesting things going on here from a sociological perspective that immediately occurred to me (there are probably more, but these are the ones that hit me right away). First, of course, is that I didn’t even bother to say anything to them about what most would consider inappropriate language. I immediately rationalized this by saying to myself, “They were walking too fast and what good would it have done anyway?” I don’t think anyone would hold that reasoning against me, but it bothered me nonetheless.

After I reconciled my inaction, I had another, more interesting thought… Most social groups have a tendency to look for out-groups (groups to which they do not belong) to find a category of people they consider inferior, often in an effort to bolster their self-esteem or sense of self-worth. This is probably not true of all social groups, but it does seem to be true of most. In this case, these two, middle-aged, white, homeless men who were probably carrying all of their possessions with them on their backs looked to blacks as their “inferior out-group.” I thought, “How interesting… To many people, the homeless are one of the “inferior out-groups” that they use to bolster their self-esteem (e.g., “At least I’m not homeless.”).” Here I saw that the homeless still engage in self-esteem boosting by criticizing an out-group. Certainly this was not conscious on their part, and there are probably all sorts of complicating factors, including complex life histories for both of these men. Even so, I found the entire experience fascinating.

It is a human tendency to find “inferior out-groups” regardless of one’s social position. The really fascinating thing is that all social groups find “inferior” out-groups despite no humans being, of course, inferior. But the fact that all social groups do this actually indicates that no social group is “inferior” as there is no group of humans that considers itself completely inferior. It’s kind of like an M.C. Escher painting, where the stairways all go up even though you know they can’t all go up because of the way they are drawn. If all groups have an inferior, then all groups are both inferior and superior…

Debi and I have been in Tampa house hunting and otherwise too busy to post anything, but I plan to write up a trip report soon. Until then, you can check out this article in the NYTimes on some issues facing the Sociology department at Moscow State University. I usually like it when my chosen profession makes headlines, but this isn’t really one of those times – sounds like the department is having some serious issues.

Title:
The Home Teachers

Summary:
Brother Parker is the anal, uptight, uber-TBM Mormon who has to get his home teaching done, every month, 100% of the time. Brother Blazer, on the other hand, is the “every-male-Mormon” who fails to see much importance in the home teaching program and would rather spend every spare minute of his time watching football or other sports on his massive home TV/theater system.

The movie begins as an Elder’s Quorum meeting wraps up. Brother Parker is taking meticulous notes on his PDA and laptop. Brother Blazer is fidgeting in the back of the room, hoping they’ll get out early so he can get home in time for that day’s big game. Agonizing through B. Parker’s closing Prayer, B. Blazer breaks for home as soon as the amen sounds. Snatching kids left and right, B. Blazer jumps in his (gas guzzling without regard for the rest of the world) SUV only to be stopped by B. Parker, who has to let him know they are now home teaching companions and, even though it’s the 31st, they still have time to do their teaching for that month. B. Blazer tells him to get back to him, then jettisons from the parking lot.

B. Parker calls B. Blazer later and tells him that he already set up all of their visits for that day. B. Blazer does what he can to get out of it, but to no avail (his Molly Mormon wife pushes him out of the house, kicking and screaming). What follows is about an hour and 20 minutes of the most improbable mishaps you can imagine: B. Blazer floods one house, ruining the house, the mother’s wedding dress, and their Sunday dinner; he then ruins a funeral they decide to (completely implausibly) attend in Vernal on the spur of the moment (remember, this is the same day); the trip to Vernal ends with B. Parker and B. Blazer wrecking B. Parker’s mother-in-law’s car off a cliff, followed by a bizarre hunting sequence that includes the requisite jab at non-Mormons (depicted, this time, as rednecks who, quite literally, are wearing the fake redneck teeth you buy during Halloween); B & B are then picked up by carjacking non-Mormons (’cause all non-Mormons are evil), only to be saved by a wacky, Mormon highway patrolman.

With most of the wackiness out of the way, B. Parker and B. Blazer eventually make it back home (somewhere in the Wasatch Front) only to realize they have one more visit to make. They go to an elderly lady’s home and try to breeze through it. It’s at this point that B. Blazer has his (over-the-top) character arc and realizes that home teaching can be helpful. He decides to double-check with the woman and finds out her dog died. They end up spending several hours there and all turns out well.

On the way home, B. Parker reveals that maybe he is too anal and that may be why his wife stayed in Texas when he moved to Utah. Presto, change-o, he has his character arc as well, and all turns out well in Never Never Mormonlandia.

Review:
I’m not sure why I continue watching these Mollywood films. It must be a form of masochism, ’cause it truly is torture to watch these. Anyway, watch them I do.

I really liked B. Blazer before his character arc. He may have still “believed” in the teachings of Mormonism, but he felt like other things were more important – even football. He was bored by the tedium of an incredibly intrusive, restrictive, quotidian religion. Honestly, who wouldn’t be? If you’ve never been bored during a Mormon meeting there is simply something wrong with you – honestly, you should go get checked out by a psychiatrist, because there are no more boring meetings on the planet than Mormon meetings (ask a Mormon; if they’re honest they’ll admit it).

Granted, B. Blazer’s honesty in being bored is exaggerated. And, I do need to admit that the idea behind home teaching is a good one – neighbors watching out for neighbors (though it is exclusive to Mormons, which means you’re overlooked if you’re not a member of the club). But the movie, while poking fun, does hit at the core of the problem: at least 80% of the people who receive regular home teaching visits absolutely don’t need them and don’t want them. It’s just one more busy-work task the leadership of the religion assigns its members to keep them too preoccupied to meet non-Mormons or study their religion (either of which might lead them to reconsider their affiliation). B. Parker and B. Blazer seem to draw closer to this understanding by the end of the movie in their terrible character arcs, but they still miss the point – they shouldn’t shoot for 100% visits but rather for 100% NEEDED visits and just visit the elderly lady who needs company and not the other young couples who have more important things to do.

Okay, so ranting about home teaching aside, the biggest strike against this movie is the absurd story. Even if the home teachers lived in Provo or somewhere near there, there is no way they could have trekked to Vernal (with numerous pitstops on the way) in the short afternoon they had, gave a lesson at the funeral, ruined the funeral, and then got lost on a backroad and still had any day light left. But in the movie they still had a good three or four hours of daylight – enough time to be hunted by rednecks and picked up by carjackers. All that, and they still made their 8:00 appointment back home. Yeah, right. So, the story is ridiculously implausible. I’ll give them the wacky stuff in the interest of (attempted) humor (i.e., broken toilets, ruined funeral, dog burial, etc.), but they don’t get a pass on the unnecessarily absurd.

Speaking of which, the carjacking and hunting, completely unnecessary. The whole subplot about the mother-in-law’s car being destroyed was also unnecessary. And the home teachers having to take the mounted deer head home is not a convincing set up for the 30 minutes of filler in the middle of the movie. This story could have been and should have been told in 1 hour, with all the junk in the middle cut out.

There was one redeeming character in the movie, B. Blazer’s daughter (or maybe daughters, but at least one of them had the right idea). She was “wise beyond her years.” For instance, B. Blazer didn’t bless his food. His wife insisted that the rest of the family do so. One of the daughters asked the perfect question, “Is dad going to get sick for not blessing his food?” The answer from the preening mother, “No.” The daughter, again, was right on when she replied, “Then why bother?” But they did it anyway. If all the time spent praying over food was spent preparing healthier food, maybe Mormons would actually receive some health benefits from their food (praying for it to be healthy doesn’t make the calories go away) and maybe they wouldn’t be heavier than non-Mormons? The daughter also recommended that B. Blazer fake an injury to get out of home teaching… An idea he tries, but fails to carry through. The daughter seemed to see the absurdity of it all. No one else did. I sense the presence of a future apostate!

There were a few other moments in the video that were humorous. At one point B. Blazer describes the scriptures on CD (which is what B. Parker sells) as “the sound of hell.” Never a truer statement was said (though Twain’s “chloroform in print” comes awfully close). B. Blazer also knows his scriptural defenses, that if you don’t do something with real intent, it doesn’t profit you in the end (granted, I think any argument based on scripture is hogwash to begin with), but I have to admit I remember thinking that exact thing more times than I care to admit (a lot, a lot, a lot). Finally, I think this last incident was intended to poke fun, but I’m not sure… B. Parker claims he forewent a scholarship at Yale because he thought BYU was better. I hope that was truly meant to mock the idea that BYU is better than Yale. BYU-Provo is better than at least one school, BYU-Idaho, but that’s not saying much. That’s like saying BYU-Provo is better than high school. (Okay, I’m just kidding here; I know a lot of professors at BYU and they do really good work. Even so, it’s not Yale… Mormons need to stop kidding themselves on this.)

Overall, I think I’m going to have to extend Richard Dutcher’s argument that movies like these are destroying Mormon cinema. He argues that they don’t take Mormonism seriously and that they aren’t art but poor forms of entertainment. While that is certainly true, there is a more compelling argument to be made. Movies like The Home Teachers take an element of Mormonism and mock it relentlessly (in this case, Home Teaching). They then try to turn the mockery into an object lesson in the end. I’m not Richard Dutcher and I no longer feel a connection to Mormonism like he does. That frees me up to see the slightly less obvious – that mocking ideas for object lessons lies at the heart of Mormonism. The mockery isn’t generally humorous, but it is absurd. The idea of caring after your neighbors is a good one. But Mormonism turns it into a burdensome duty for club members only. The idea of spending time with family is also a good one. But, again, Mormonism mocks this idea by claiming it is pro-family but then mandating far too many meetings and too much time spent in church and not enough time with family. The formula of these movies is not at all surprising because it reflects Mormonism – mock the good, miss the point, take things way too far, then claim there is something good in all of that. Mormonism in a nutshell.

Overall… The acting is awful, the script and story are terrible, the character arcs are absurd, and the cinematography is cheap and full of low-budget gags, but… the film quality is acceptable and the sound mastering is okay.

Do I recommend The Home Teachers? No. But I’m going to keep watching these Mollywood monstrosities. They say a lot about Mormonism, just not what their creators intend to say.