Exclusive: John Cleese Slams Ex-Wife, Terry Gilliam, Republicans, His Hotel ...

[Shallah Kali]

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2009/10/interview_john_cleese_slams_ex.html?imw=Y&f=most-emailed-24h5

As you get older, are people getting stupider?
It can be depressing. But you have to let go of the idea that this can ever be a decent and rational place. I already have quite a lot of material for a new show I will call Why There Is No Hope. I’ve tried it out. A friend said it was fascinating afterwards because the more I destroyed people’s hope that this could ever be, in any way, a rational planet, the more they laughed.

Could you give me a preview?
Well, I’m a funny kind of professor at Cornell, and there is a psychology professor there called David Dunning who discovered that in order to know how good you are at something, it requires almost exactly the same skills and aptitude as it does to be good at that thing in the first place. In other words, if you’re a really good tennis player or mathematician then you know how to tell how good you are. But it also means if you’re absolutely no good at something then you lack exactly the skills to realize your idiocy. It explains why so many idiots out there have no idea that they’re idiots.

Do you run into this in comedy?
You find this particularly with scripts. I wrote a really good script for Disney, and the woman in charge wanted to make changes which were completely and utterly wrong. She had the confidence of the truly stupid. Then you look at the Republican Party: Here are people that are so out of touch with reality that it could be screamingly funny if it weren’t so dangerous.

As politics gets more childish, does satire get harder for you?
Yes. Take Sarah Palin — so many Republicans love her. I suddenly realized that in order to actually understand that someone is not very bright — or to be brutal, that they’re rather stupid — you really have to be more intelligent than them. Most Republicans aren’t smarter than Sarah Palin. It’s true.

If there is no hope, you must not trust Obama.
No, I have real hope for Obama, because I think without the slightest doubt he is operating from a considerably higher level of mental health than we’re used to in our politicians. I think that’s what frightens the shit out of Republicans. Because if you put very mad people in a room with very sane people the mad people start feeling madder, do you see what I mean? Whereas, if you put mad people in together — if you put the Gestapo in together — they’re all sort of reinforcing each other’s madness and everyone’s happy.

[onehandle]

1. That last bit about mad people is very telling about the teabaggers. nt

[Atman]

2. Absolutely brilliant observations from Professor Cleese! K&R

:thumbsup:

.

[Zoeisright]

3. I love John Cleese.

'Fawlty Towers' remains one of my favorite shows, especially the episode with the moose.

'I speeek Eeeennnglishhh. I lerrrnnn it from a boooook.'

[BrklynLiberal]

4. KNR

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Sounds like a Godelian Incompleteness Theory for Psychology.

And of course Dunning, who coauthored a book with Douglas Hofstadter, is just the person to come up with it.

[Soylent Brice]

6. that last one is the perfect description of what's going on.

"Because if you put very mad people in a room with very sane people the mad people start feeling madder, do you see what I mean? Whereas, if you put mad people in together — if you put the Gestapo in together — they’re all sort of reinforcing each other’s madness and everyone’s happy."

there's not a more accurate description than that.

K&R

[bertman]

7. His comments on our legal system's approach to divorce settlement sound pretty right on.

I have never understood the way some spouses get what they do. Certainly a spouse deserves fair compensation but, if his description is not hyperbole, the award was over the top.

[TrogL]

8. Somebody got an account with posting priveleges there?

"Is there some sort of central website that monitors all sites upon which something derogatory / true might be said about Republicans and alerts a particular apologist / lunatic to make a comment?"

Someone should point out that it's Free Republic.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. When I was teaching Japanese, I noticed that mediocre intermediate students

were usually convinced that they really knew the language. Those of us at the advanced level are never satisfied with our knowledge--which I suppose is the reason that we have reached the advanced level. We know exactly where we're weak and keep trying to improve.

I had one student return from a semester in Yokohama and achieve the remarkable feat of being worse at Japanese than when he left. (Do I have to tell you that the typical student comes back BETTER at Japanese, sometimes amazingly so?)

Yet he was absolutely convinced that he could skip the second half of the second-year and go into the middle of third year. He really should have gone back to the middle of first year and picked up what he had forgotten, but the system didn't allow that.

Anyway, he kept insisting (in very bad Japanese) that he belonged in third year. I finally made a deal: If he could pass the second year final from the previous year, he could go into third year.

He agreed but ended up leaving most of the test blank and grudgingly agreed to join the second year class with the rest of the returnees.

[zeos3]

10. Just like the Vonnegut quote...

"The big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart."