NCAA Coach Won Championship but Lost Trust & This Week in Bad Celebrity Logic
Michael Cooper Inducted in Basketball Hall of Fame, Bethenny Frankel Says NYC Too Violent, MTG Says Eclipse & Earthquake Are God's Warning to Repent, What I'm Watching, Queen Sings "Bohemian Rhapsody"
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: Everyone talks about “communicating,” but who knows how to do that effectively?
Michael Cooper Inducted into Basketball Hall of Fame: My former teammate and close friend deserves every accolade he gets.
This NCAA Hoops Coach Might Be Violating Her Players’ Religious Freedom: No one wants teachers telling students what to believe, why should we allow coaches to push their faith on students?
Kareem’s Video Break: Never has a ride on the subway been this entertaining.
Bethenny Frankel Says Seinfeld Was ‘Wrong’ About NYC After Getting Punched: She claims NYC is more dangerous than ever, even though statistics say the opposite.
Marjorie Taylor Greene's Solar Eclipse Post Gets Brutal Fact-Check: If I said almost anything she says, I’d be too embarrassed to show my face. The fact that she isn’t, tells us everything.
Roseanne Barr warns of baby blood-drinking Democrats in bizarre communiqué from Mar-a-Lago: I’m all for holding celebs accountable for misinformation, but in this case, there may be mental health issues involved.
What I’m Watching—Movies: Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a fun and entertaining day at the movies. Wonderful effects.
What I’m Watching—TV: 3 Body Problem is a clever and complex sci-fi thriller about an impending alien invasion.
Queen sings “Bohemian Rhapsody”: Six minutes of one of the most creative, original, and fun songs in rock history.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.
Cool Hand Luke
Back in the 1960s, everyone from self-help authors to relationship experts was preaching the gospel of “communication.” Divisiveness between couples, family, work colleagues, races, religions, and political parties could all be resolved by better communication. Just sit down and talk.
Today, this buzzword is still being offered up as the cure-all for any conflict. The problem is that there is an art and skill to the process of better communication, and most people advocating its curative effects really don’t know the intricacies of how to communicate.
Most people believe that communicating means both sides of a disagreement share their opinions and somehow the disagreement will dissolve under the sudden shared understanding. Or they think it means spouting their opinion, which is the correct one by them being rich or in power.
The quote is from one of my favorite movies, Cool Hand Luke, in which a prisoner (Paul Newman) keeps trying to escape the chain-gang prison he’s been sentenced to for drunkenly cutting off the heads of parking meters. Luke’s unwillingness to accept his fate, as determined by corrupt bosses, leads him to not only keep escaping but turn him into a Christ-like symbol of freedom to the other prisoners. The warden (Strother Martin) utters this famous line after striking Luke for mouthing off. The line is meant to parody the use of the phrase at the time by the powerful who pretended they were listening to the people but were in fact ignoring them.
The warden is putting on a show of “communicating” with the prisoners, but if anyone expresses a different opinion, they get punished. True communication isn’t just about having an opinion, it’s about being able to support an opinion with facts, statistics, experts, and logic. Yes, we need to understand another person’s biases, but we are not obligated to accept them. Neither should we be defensive about our own biases. Communication means approaching each other with respect as individuals and then analyzing what is being communicated, not to justify the prejudices of lazy thinking, but to discover a truth. Listening to what the other person is saying is crucial, but so is listening to what you’re saying—and recognizing when it is not worth defending.
For communication to be effective, both parties must value truth over ego. Otherwise, no matter how many words they use, they’ve got failure to communicate.