Every week I dutifully listen to Bill Maher's show via free podcast on my itunes, not having HBO on the tube at home. I love Bill Maher, I think he's hilarious. I look forward to that hour each week.
But I just heard something that disturbed me. Bill said, and I'm paraphrasing here, that he didn't know what the Federal Reserve was, and didn't know what they did. He said he wasn't sure if the people who are supposed to be experts understand our financial crisis on the basis that he does not understand it.
It's clear that Bill is a comedian and he says things for his audience and to kind of represent the people during his panel discussions...but I was really surprised to hear him say that. And even more surprised that one of his panel members after expositing a lot of finance facts also admitted that he didn't know what the Fed does, as if to dismiss it altogether, and when his ignorance was pointed out he excused it by saying, "well, I didn't go to Harvard."
What bothers me about this is that it is exactly the kind of attitude that allows people to remain uniformed and allows those big bad corporate guys to bully the "little guys" around. Liberals love to throw themselves a pity party and make themselves would-be martyrs against the guys with the money, but to use a well known quote from Eleanor Roosevelt, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." Not having the courage to try to understand something that seems overwhelming is giving up before you hit the starting line.
This is episode 162 of the show, btw, and what I'm talking about happens around the thirty minute mark. Also, if one wants to know what the federal reserve does, he/she has only to google it. That's like a savings of about 80 grand on Harvard tuition. And you don't have to have attended to know that.
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