Azaroth

Traditionally, I’ve found the most entertaining thing about cheesy illusionists to be that, once in a while, you come across one that seems very convincingly to believe his own bullshit. You’d swear it was an act, but this spandex-sporting cocksmuggler honestly seems to believe he has some kind of magical powers — and he’s full of himself over it. Just the other night I wanted to reach through the television and strangle some asshole named Keith Barry while he was interviewed on Conan. What’s worse are these assholes who pompously call themselves “mind magicians” and “mentalists”. Everything they do IS a trick, but they rely on stupid people to make these tricks work – someone has to believe the shit. Problem is that so many people are stupid that I assume these guys start living in a fantasy world at some point. Hell, I’ve had stoner friends in the past who honestly believed that David Blaine had magical powers.

Penn and Teller are exactly this kind of asshole, just in different clothing. They’ve ditched the spandex, but are just as pompous and full of it as any other professional bullshitter. It’s what they do for a living.

Which is fine. Television is entertainment. But impressionable young minds often times don’t understand this, and Penn & Teller take careful steps to tilt every segment of their program in the direction of their predetermined view on a subject, trotting out the dumbest fucks they can possibly find for interviews from the side of the opposing viewpoint and providing twisted snippets of information and quotes from anyone with a degree willing to take their side. They even go so far as to present all of this in a condescending atmosphere that attempts to make someone feel stupid if they disagree.

Their evidence usually can’t stand up to serious discussion or criticism for the simple fact that their tactics mostly consist of setting up strawmen, firing off their own version of facts without any sort of backing to prove them, yelling obscenities and using as much out of context footage as possible. Almost every experiment I’ve seen them conduct has clearly picked the two or three most influencing out of context examples and discarded 99% of what really happened, making it seem like EVERYONE is stupid and should agree with them. The entire premise of their show.

This show universally seems to agree with anyone who can’t seem to form their own opinion, but would really like to have one that’s edgy and prefer it to be fed to them in convenient, mindless thirty minute installments. Unfortunately their journey toward consciousness is molested by these jackasses, and I find that offensive.

They do what they do well enough to trick a lot of people. It’s kind of embarrassing to watch kids scream from the rooftops what a great show this is and how Penn & Teller are right about EVERYTHING because, well… anyone who speaks loudly, swears a lot, presents a “cool” counterculture point of view and manipulates footage and arguments without actually proving anything (but being very entertaining) must be right, I guess.

In fact, I think the most educational part about this show is having enough of a brain in your head to not just eat up everything Penn and Teller present as fact, but to sort through it and recognize the tactics being used to insult your intelligence and assume you’re stupid enough to have your opinions shaped in such a shameless, basic, and UNintelligent display of TV tricks and opinion shaping methods.

So watch the show. But remember to watch for the slight of hand and hopefully you’ll notice where and when Bullshit is… well, complete bullshit.

Perhaps the finale for their show should be on gullibility and the ability to shape the opinions of the public with cheap tricks. They don’t even have to make it about their own show. Just pick a major news outlet.