Penn and Teller: Bullshit! – The next four episodes from the 2006 Showtime season begin with Ground Zero in New York City where rebuilding the commercial district has come to a standstill – near-zero development – because the LMDC (Lower Manhattan Development Committee), headed by John C. Whitehead, a major contributor to former New York Governor Pataki’s political ambitions (including a platform for the presidency), is “mired in political agenda,” according to one critic. Five years after 9/11 “business sucks,” says Penn. “Disappointment, incompetence, failure” are words he uses to describe the lack of leadership for the rebuilding project, which initially elevated expectations with grandiose architectural designs for the Freedom Tower (1776 feet high – originally 70 stories tall topped by a 60-story glass atrium) to replace the original 10 million square feet of the Twin Towers and the Museum of Freedom to memorialize the dead. The site itself is “quiet, empty, deserted.” Gov Pataki promised to bring in the best minds and best people, but the results were a fiasco with changes in the architectural designs, arguments over the location (underground below reflective pools) and purpose (interpretative) of the memorial, and a lack of public input and transparency in the decision process. A group of 9/11 survivors, family members, and their supporters, calling themselves Take Back the Memorial, have fought the “reasonable consensus” formed within the LMDC, leaving Gov Pataki “looking like he couldn’t operate an ice-cream stand.” 

The second episode treats pet love. Speaking of her cat, a woman says, “She’s like a child.” One reason people respond affectionately to their pets is neoteny, transference of feelings for children to other cute animals. Dogs and cats are dressed up, groomed, taken to competitions, overindulged, over-accumulated. Selling crap to people who are nuts about their pets is easy. When a dog gets neutered, be like more than 157,400 others and buy him a pair of Neuticles, fake dog testicles (starting at $85). Or when the animal dies have him/her cremated and made into a glass object of art. Exotic pets are traded and bought at swap marts, but beware of zoanotic diseases (e.g. monkey pox). One woman featured in the show rescues strays and pets left at the pound. Penn wisely says in conclusion that the money spent on pets could better be spent on people in need, but then admits that he and Teller already live in big glass houses with more possessions and cars than they need.

The third topic is reparations: Should the US government (i.e. American taxpayers) pay reparations to people who have been harmed by its policies (i.e. white abuses of nonwhites)? Dr Conrad W. Worrill, an African-American advocate for slavery reparations, says that descendants of slaves deserve to be compensated for the 246 years that their ancestors toiled for free in America. John McWhorter, also an African American, disagrees, calls Dr Worrill’s demand of “an apology with substance” “crass,” decrying different rules for different peoples while insisting that black Americans rise up on their own merits to triumph over obstacles. Initially hesitating to enter the fray because they’re admittedly white guys, Penn speaking for himself and Teller, adds that whites didn’t invent slavery. Africans enslaved other Africans and sold the slaves to whites and Arabs. Further, aren’t African Americans today better off living in America than in Africa? At this point we’re introduced to H.K. Edgerton, an African-American resident of Ashville, SC, who proudly dresses in the uniform of the Confederacy and carries around a Confederate flag. He points out that relatively few Southerners at the time of the War Between the States owned slaves. Reparations would not be appropriate for several reasons: since there aren’t any surviving slaves from the 19^th century, payments would have to go to descendents of slaves, but these descendants have already benefited from federally funded programs (at least partly intended to make up for wrongs, including slavery, segregation, and racism, inflicted on African Americans) – welfare, education, affirmative action, etc. – for decades; payments would have to come from taxpayers and corporations, but most taxpayers have no connection with an ancestors who owned slaves (Dr Worrill irrationally counters that all whites have benefited from blacks being enslaved); some say money is insulting and ask only for equitable opportunity; certainly African Americans are not the only ethnic group who can claim they were aggrieved and deserve compensation for abuses of the past.

Obviously Native Americans (aka Indians) were mistreated even worse and in some instances continue to be badly served. Take casinos, for example. While treaties with the US government established Indian sovereignty on the reservations, allowing tribes to put up casinos even when the states in which the reservations disallowed gambling, native heritage is being lost. Worse, of the hundreds of tribes who have built casinos, trying to lure gamers to their slot machines and tables of chance, only a few have actually profited from the $18.5 billion spent. The wealthiest tribe is in Connecticut, and its members are no longer a tribe or anywhere near being full-blooded. (Need I mention the scandals involving Jack Abramoff’s unfortunate dealings with various tribes?) Nonetheless, in 1990, the federal government did apologize to a group of Americans and pay them reparations of $20,000 each. Japanese Americans who resided on the Pacific Coast at the outset of World War II were ordered to abandon their homes and jobs to live in the internment camps for the duration of the war with Japan, even though there was not a single instance of sabotage among these people. (A recent revelation shows that the US Census Bureau illegally provided names and addresses of Japanese Americans to the government, making finding them and rounding them up more convenient. A positive note, according to my mother, in Monterey, California, and possibly elsewhere the directive to remove Japanese Americans from the community was ignored, leaving these families in their homes and workplaces to live in peace.)

In the last episode, we are taught some manners. Surveys have indicated that eight out of ten Americans believe that people have become ruder and cruder than previously. One aggrieved, aggressive, antagonistic asshole refers to people who lack civility – using cell phones in public, not signaling to make a turn, cutting in lines, pushing onto crowded elevators – as COWs because they think of themselves as Center Of the World. A high-class etiquette expert who teaches manners to corporate clients informs us that good behavior wins better jobs, respect, and sexual partners. But our manners have come down to us from the Victorians with their repressed notions of what wasn’t proper in public and now they have become part of the culture war. Penn calls people who persist at insisting on such out-of-date codes as “persnickety morons” and “behavior police,” descendants of the witch-hunting Puritans. An example of someone unfairly treated is a Delta flight attendant who lost her job for posting photographs of herself in her uniform on a website. Finally we visit a strip club where the girls do expect their patrons to observe certain rules of conduct: no throwing coins at the dancers, no licking or biting. In conclusion Penn suggests, “Don’t take yourself too seriously.” 

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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