Stop Me Before I Spin Again!

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Several years ago the Plano Star Courier reported that more students had passed a particular test than the year before. While the Dallas Morning News reported that the passing rate for this test was ten per cent lower as compared to the previous year.

Both stories are true.

The facts were that more students had taken the test, so more had passed, but since more students took the test, the percentage of students passing was lower. As an example, if 500 took the test the first year and 400 passed, the percentage passing is 80%. If 1000 take the test the second year and 700 pass, more have passed but the percentage passing is lower. So not only are both stories true, but both are absolutely accurate as well.

Welcome to spin.

Spin is selective application of the truth, phrased in a way to make a preferred point, or in our case, to point out absurdity or inconsistency for the humor.

Spin has been around since man started to talk, and many of us became masters of it at a very young age.

Most humor needs a point of view, or spin. In my last post How Congress Makes Decisions, my spin was that Congress was a bunch of spineless sycophants whose only concern was getting re-elected… No wait, that’s too close to reality. My spin was that Congress was a group of money grubbing losers for sale to the highest bidder… No wait, that sounds real too. My spin was …

You get the idea (and I can’t stop)

• You know how to tell if a Congress member is lying? Their lips are moving.
• The only difference between Bernie Madoff and a Congress member is that Madoff admitted he was a crook who scammed people out of their savings…
• The Devil appeared in a Congress member’s office and said, “I can make you President of the United States, rich and powerful beyond your wildest dreams… all I ask in return is your soul, your children’s souls, and the souls of their children.” The Congress member nodded in agreement for a moment and then said “Hey! Whats the catch?!”

Damn! Stop me before I spin again!

Point-of-View gives you an outline and spin fills in the colors.

Just as liberal Democrats spin everything Republican as the work of the Devil incarnate. Conservative Republicans spin the Democrats as naive and inexperienced with no real-world business sense. Republicans think government is bad and business is good, Democrats believe business is bad and government is good.

No doubt every Congress person elected believes they will be different, but the system makes it hard to achieve real change without selling out to some extent. A vote on a less than admirable bill here, in order to pass another less than admirable bill of their own later.

There are saints and sinners in Congress just as there are in any occupation, but in most other businesses failure can’t be spun into success. Congress seems less concerned with real success than symbolic victories, in which it appears everyone wins, but in reality no one does. Because, in politics, while it is important to do good, it is even more important to appear to do good, while actually doing as little as possible.

Damn! This is supposed to be a humor blog.

Spin makes use of the cliches and stereotypes that surround us, the shorthand of popular knowledge (right or wrong,) and the simple up/down/sideways arrows of Conventional Wisdom … would that life were so simple.

Humor benefits from some distance and getting too close to a subject can blind you.  I may have gotten too wrapped up in this Congress thing, and may be guilty of Becoming Audience. Humor needs spin to work, but humor also helps us by making it easier to recognize spin when it is used.

So try this: This is an article from the March 30th issue of Newsweek, TARP Funds Get Recycled as Political Contributions spin it for the humor as a Republican might, and then as a Democrat.

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