JON LOVETT DOES NOT FAIL: The Art of Bull$#!t
By Kelly Kinas ‘17
So this guy walks into a classroom a couple minutes late and tries to find a seat near the front. He then gets up to talk in front of the room holding over 200 people. I would probably already be asleep if this was a normal classroom. But this is not a usual classroom. Usually, I wouldn’t expect this guy to be cussing, relating to the students, and encouraging these students to become more politically active and not simply take what the media gives them so willing. But on Monday, December 1st, at 8:00pm, a former speech writer for the President of the United States and a current comedy writer for NBC came to speak to talk about the complete and utter bull$#!t our media is consumed by and how to overtake that. Jon Lovett spoke in that classroom, bursting with students, and it was throughly entertaining as well as enlightening.
USC Speakers Committee has brought us speakers like Barack Obama and Stan Lee and Jon Lovett was no different. Lovett began his speech talking about how the media has completely taken over how we get our news. It is not longer about what is right and what is wrong; it is now about perception and what seems to be. News tells you what people are saying, and not talking about the news. Now, perception trumps reality and perception trumps truth.
Lovett spoke about how our world became so obsessed with perception. We live our lives for the performance of social media.We have serious things we need to do but so much of our culture cannot be trusted. No one trusts anyone else. We think we’re better than everyone else? Not really. We lost trust in things that don’t deserve to be trusted.
Luckily, there are some people who are speaking out against how insane the news has become. John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Louis C.K. who don’t take the bull$#!t, and tell their version of the truth. People may not agree with their version because people should not believe everything they hear or see on the news, MSNBC and Fox News alike. Sound bites don’t mean as much, we get our news in different ways. Quotes were the shit on the nightly news. We see more through retweets or shared posts on Facebook. This might be seen as bad but it also allows for honest dialogue between politicians and the people they serve.
Lovett states that the best, strongest moments for this type of media are moments of unexpected honesty– raw sincerity because the interests of politicians and the people become more aligned. This is often done through jokes and comedy. Comedy is becoming more important– It’s so difficult to get news to the people. Humor connects us, we get each other, we share the same idea that something is ridiculous.
My favorite quote from the night: “Culture tells you that it’s okay to lie, that networking is more important than friendships, that promotions are more important than doing the right thing.” Jon Lovett doesn’t want us to constricted by this culture.
Think for yourself. Use technology but know its weaknesses. Be funny and serious.
To see for more speakers at USC, like USC Speakers Committee on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/USCSpeakersCommittee
Fight on!
