Penn and Teller take on Mount Rushmore
This week’s episode of Bullshit had me rolling on the floor I was laughing so hard at the ignorance of the American people. Penn and Teller tackled the extreme patriotism that people associate with the Mount Rushmore monument, and then systematically break down how that patriotism is blindly freewheeling and is actually anti-patriotism itself. Oh, and goes against what the very founding fathers fought for.
Many people say Mount Rushmore is actually a monument to the decimation of the Native American peoples on U.S. soil, and I tend to agree. Every man depicted, no matter how much good he did for white Americans, also destroyed entire Native American populations and stole land from its rightful owners. The very area the monument is built on was once Native American land!
Penn and Teller decided to test the American people’s propensity for blindly following anything deemed patriotic, and so sent out groups of people bearing two different petitions. These petitions were sent all over the country, one attempting to ban protesting from happening within 300 feet of the Capital Building, and the other stating very “my dad can beat up your dad” that America is the best country ever.
And people signed them. Over and over, people signed them.
Giving some hope to the general brain mass of the American population however, many more people would not sign these petitions promoting hatred and exclusionist thinking. Petitions that would take away one of our rights handed down in the very Constitution.
The show ended with a clip from a Penn and Teller magic show in Las Vegas, in which they played with an American flag, a copy of the Bill of Rights, and people’s beliefs and thoughts. Shorter than some other episodes, this one really got me thinking about what it means to be a patriot vs. blindly following whatever our government says I should do, and also about the treatment of many of the people in this nation in the name of expansion and The American Way.
Showtime, Penn and Teller, Bullshit, Mount Rushmore, Native Americans, American Flag, Bill of Rights, Vegas, patriot, anti-patriotism, Capitol Building
May 12th, 2007 at 3:23 am
Sounds good, I missed it, off to a Bit Torrent site I go.
May 12th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Sometimes I wish I had someone sitting next to me, gently patting my hand, explaining to me what those wacky magicians are going to do or say next.
Thank god for your updates.
I miss Showtime. And barley.