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Neel Kashkari Is Not A Motivational Speaker
New York, 1:11 AM
Wed Dec 2
50 posts in the last 24 hours
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Neel Kashkari Is Not A Motivational Speaker |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
10/26/09
As promised, I would take a stroll down the street to our convention center where the all-day GET MOTIVATED! seminar is happening and get a little gist of it on video, exclusively for Gawker! :[]
Rachel Maddow spoke with the co-founder of this seminar series ( [www.msnbc.msn.com] ) and in my clip you'll see I have some bits of her on stage doing her schtick.
I wanted to start my clip off by kindly asking the COASTAL ELITES (lulz) to not judge my awesome little city by the patrons you were about to witness. While Fort Worth is very much indeed in flyover land, I just needed a minute or two to explain that it's not all wagon wheels and tumbleweeds. Onward!
So basically they have the entire auditorium packed with all sorts of salesy-looking figures, and while they would not disclose the order of speakers (to keep Al Qaeda guessing, I suppose?) at the time I strolled in there was a fellow on stage trying to fire up the crowd in a most humiliating of ways; however, it didn't take long to realize you don't really humiliate yourself in front of a crowd *like this*. It was a man named Leon Patillo (of www.leonpatillo.org fame, looks a bit like Smokey Robinson) who was trying to get the crowd to actually sing along to that horrible 1959 Isley Brothers song "Shout!". After the obligatory "How 'bout them Cowboys!", they bring on the wife of the duo that founded this silly "series", Tamara Lowe! Who? NM, Applause! Yay!
She begins by boasting about how she's been to 70 countries and have been "featured in" the Wall Street Journal and... People -- Which, we all know go hand in hand. She makes the crowd repeat after her something to the effect of "Today it's all about ME", and after a half-hearted attempt by the audience, she then makes them "Oo, Girl?®" it up by making them say "Uh uh, baby, it's all about me!" K.
Then we go through the three tenets of guaranteed applause-generators. She shows a photo of her family and describes her husband as the "hot redhead", applause. Mentions how they just celebrated their 22nd anniversary, applause. WHO GIVES A SHIT, I DON'T KNOW WHO YOU ARE, LADY, WHERE IS GWB, GET OFF THE STAGE! Oh. Then we must applaud for the hard-working tech crew that put up all the screens and lights so we can unquestionably see some eventual Powerpoint slides. Applause!
Mrs. Lowe then proceeds to tell us how she was a drug dealer, user, and has an 8th grade education. Gasps! Followed by "there IS a God", wild applause. Yay, there's a God! All of a sudden, she starts to go on this nonsensical 2002-style Pro-America Anti-France shit routine by affirming that not only is America the greatest nation on the planet, but "France can moan and complain all they want.. I've got nothing against critics, I love every bone in their heads!" Ah, ok, now it's clear, she has decade-old pre-scripted guaranteed audience-pleasers and is trying to pine for the people with the eagle teardrop bumperstickers. Interesting. One more self-aggrandizing brag and we'll move on to the motivating! She completed her masters, applause. (She actually said "you're so sweet!" after this one), and actually said the phrase "So I went from LSD to a PhD, what a country!" Yes. What a country indeed, where you can trip balls, lay in a field and wax about the mechanics of file cabinets to the penguins who are listening -- and still become a PhD!
She then has everyone put their hand on their neighbor's hand and take turns having "control" moving it about. Way to spread H1N1, lady! The moment the Powerpoint was switched on, though, it appeared people had enough of this shit. She was describing how your "Motivational DNA" (Drive, Needs, Awards) determines how you attain motivation differently from anyone else, when suddenly about 50 people passed by me towards the exit. They were BOLTING in single-file, and that really said it all. They had enough of the horseshit, as did I. I wasn't able to stick around for George Dubya, but I'm not sure I could have stomached much more than what I sat through.
In a quest to be servicey,
yours,
Lobstr
( The clip.. it's 255 megs so I had to megaupload it..pull it down and do as you please with it:
[www.megaupload.com] )
#tips #motivation #seminars #gwb
11/10/08
Bald liars!
I come here Sikhing wisdom.
11/11/08
11/11/08
Norma, I think I was the one who first avoided the Cash-n-carry pun, at the Calculated Risk blog as soon as they announced his selection. But you've hit it. That is the one that Hamilton is not referring to.
11/10/08
11/10/08
So, we shall now eat more cheaply, less healthily, and die earlier. Financial crisis SOLVED. In the immortal words of Josef Stalin - "No people, no problem."
11/10/08
I can't be the first person to wonder whether he was selected purely on the basis of having the best surname from which to generate an obvious politcal pun.
11/10/08
It's one thing for Hanky Panky Paulson to let Lehman drop, but an entity that would slice into his stock options? Oh, no, no, no... that won't do.
Meanwhile, you thought this jingle was merely to the humble tune of $700 billion? Try $2 trillion and counting. And who's received that $2 trillion? The Fed doesn't want to say. Bloomberg news is suing to try and get answers. Good luck with that.
So much for transparency--although that's the least of the crimes going down. Ah, but why worry? In the end, when you give control of our treasury and economy to private interests operating in secret, I'm sure only good things can happen. It's all about the little people.
[www.bloomberg.com]
I mean, as long as they say their actions are "necessary," that's good enough, right?
11/10/08
11/10/08
Thank you.
11/10/08
11/10/08