Combining conspiracy theorizing with 1980s board games, Glenn Beck used Connect Four (!) on his show yesterday to illustrate his claims about radicals in the Obama administration:
Beck, who has a penchant for bizarre visual aids, previously boiled a fake frog on his show:
Other visual aids have included wild chalkboard scrawls and arboreal metaphors of supposed left-wing conspiracies:
Personally, I welcome this move toward using classic board games. Maybe Beck can analyze Obama's naval strategy using Battleship? Counter-insurgency tactics using Stratego? The possibilities are endless...
My wife recently retired as a professor. Her experience was that in order to get good student ratings, an instructor had to be somewhat of a show person. Cogency, clarity, and accuracy weren't enough.
So, I'm glad Brendan is paying attention to Glen Beck's visual aids. He might be able to use some of them in his teaching.
Posted by: David | October 30, 2009 at 08:30 PM
I'd be fine with Beck's visual aids if he also had cogency, clarity and accuracy. Instead it's just baffling -- the Obama coin made a connect-4 with four pre-existing, unlabeled coins. What's that even supposed to mean? Showmanship is fine, but pointless, obfuscating showmanship is really annoying.
Posted by: eric | October 31, 2009 at 02:39 PM
Glenn Beck's blackboard looks to me a lot like the garage in "Beautiful Mind," after Nash goes out there and indulges his insanity to make connections and see numbers.
And, I think it is for the same reason. That other great user of visual aids, Ross Perot, turned out to completely batshit.
Posted by: Mike Munger | October 31, 2009 at 07:22 PM