Chauncey Devega says: So a monkey, a dog and the Jena Six walk into a bar

I am held up in a hotel room at a conference and my mind is wandering. I like short posts, those parsimonious little epiphanies that say alot, but don't require much typing.

Here is an experiment. This week researchers released the finding that monkeys, yes those damn dirty apes!!, also experience cognitive dissonance. For the less informed, or for folks with other things to do, cognitive dissonance is a mental state of being in which we are forced to reconcile the irreconcilable, to make sense of the absurd, or alternatively to convince ourselves that what we are seeing makes sense regardless of all the impulses that tell us what we are witnessing is total bullshit.

I know that we respectable negroes will be returning to this topic in force in the next few weeks, but since I am in premier Bush's hometown, the chocolate city, good old Washington, D.C., and frankly am suffering from "protest fatigue"--you know, should I boycott overstock.com? Should I march on Washington to fight nooses? Should I not have spent money last week on Black boycott day?--I just had to post this little experiment.

1. Read the following article about monkeys and cognitive dissonance. In short, monkeys, like humans, and those of us who are suffering from "victomology" and have subquently had the voodoo put on them by "poverty pimps", (i.e. like the Earl of Tawana Brawley a.k.a. Al Sharpton et al.--a man who should be on the tv show Heroes because of his power to convince the public of any truth, however absurd) have the capacity to negotiate any number of variables, as well as contradictory bits of data, in order to produce a result which we find agreeable.

2. Watch this video about those young victims and role-models for struggle and resistance, i.e. "The Jena Six."

3. Watch this video about the puppy accused of biting off the child's genitals.

4. Reconcile by substituting the public's impassioned advocacy for the little innocent puppy (you damn well know this litttle innocent pup didn't bit off any kid's equipment) with the impassioned defense made by brother Al, and folks of that stripe, on the part of The Jena Six.

5. Write up your lab report and submit it.