When we were quite young, several of us in the younger generation of our family liked to make bets about little bits of obscure information, in effect, an ongoing tournament of Trivial Pursuit, avant la lettre.  This has carried on, though the betting phase pretty much ended when the payoff was forbidden by parental authority.  I don’t think it ever diminished the competition or the love of both trivia and broader knowledge. Hence, the Jeopardy reference:

Well, This Is Television, Isn’t It, Alex?

I believe it was this gentleman, a teacher from Massachusetts, who, as part of the between-rounds patter was cited for teaching his own class in critical thinking. Queried as the the nature of the curriculum, Mr. Barrieu replied that he was teaching his students to sharpen their “malarkey filters”. There was a brief pause for all to absorb just what that might mean, following which Mr. Barrieu added: “Well, this is television, isn’t it Alex?”, after which the host moved quickly to resume the game.

I’m not sure that I agree that critical thinking consists solely of having a functioning malarkey filter, but it certainly is a good starting point, and an item woefully lacking from the armoury of an awful lot of citizens are missing as they degenerate into simple consumers. A degree of skepticism and a willingness to dig into the available information would essentially do an end-run around the obfuscation and window dressing that is the bulk of what comes out of the disseminators of information, written and broadcast press, a group that, in turn enables people like Rob Ford, Stephen Harper, Christy Clark and the like to spout misdirection, meaningless and distractive factoids, half-truths and outright lies. Even with the euphemism, this man’s forthrightness is refreshing. It may eventually, carried to its logical conclusion, lead to some serious questions and to the the demise of post-political personalities, à la Sarah Palin, a trajectory that could soon be the destination for Rob Ford.