Malcolm Gladwell: evaluation

Transcript context

…I know people who enjoy their own pessimism in a strange way. Also I don’t think you could be an athlete — to come back to running, you can’t really be an athlete and be a pessimist. Why? The whole point of being an athlete is you’re building toward something, right? You don’t just work out to work out. You work out because there’s something out there that you’re trying to . . . Anyway, that’s a side point. But here’s a good example: on the Affordable Care Act, I’ve changed my mind six, seven times. And I’m not toggling back and forth between pro and con. I feel like I’m jumping around, I’m eminently persuadable on it. And what that has done is, it’s been very, very useful now because now, it’s very fashionable for liberals to be super into the Affordable Care Act because it’s under fire. And I feel myself being sucked in that direction. But then I remember, “Wait a minute. I’ve been bouncing around for five years on this. Why am I suddenly — just because it’s politically expedient — running to defense of this thing?” Which literally a year ago, if you cornered me at a party, I would be the guy saying, “And here’s another problem with that . . .” Right? And still the best book I read about health care was an out-and-out attack on Obamacare. That to me is really useful, to accept the fact that 50 percent of the time, you’re going to be wrong on these kinds of things, but that’s fine. It’s been said that satire sometimes reaffirms power, while poetry affirms only its own power. You have a podcast where you express a worry that Tina Fey, by mimicking and satirizing Sarah Palin, actually made her more acceptable and more likeable in doing so. So fast-forward to the current moment: we have Saturday Night Live. [laughter] Alec Baldwin and Donald Trump. Is that useful satire? Is it not sufficiently negative? Should we be deploying poetry or is that the effective medium for social commentary?…

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