Asif Mandvi Cures Liberalism

Since the election, I'm time-shifting the Daily Show to a reasonable hour, and so just got a chance to watch the episode from Thursday night (Dec. 4).

Asif Mandvi had a hilarious story in which he played a doctor, trying to diagnose and cure a young progressive Nebraskan named Adam Hintz of his political beliefs. The sequence combines multiple riffs on media techniques -- the Bollywood musical, the rotating human head, the A B C D four-point quiz with computer graphics -- with a recent news story I meant to write about a few months back, but never got around to.

Basically, University of Nebraska political science professor John Hibbing has found that conservatives tend to have a more fearful perspective overall, while liberals are less fearful. And from this, the Daily Show came up with Mandvi's report about curing Hintz of his political beliefs.

(This more detailed description of what Hibbing's research found comes from the National Science Foundation: Hibbing's research "shows the process for testing a person's physiological response to disturbing audio and visual imagery. By monitoring skin for electrical conductivity, which indicates emotion, arousal and attention, and measuring how hard the eye blinks in response to a sudden, jarring noise, the researchers were able to quantify physiological response. The results indicate that knowing a person's physiological response to disturbing stimuli is a predictor of his or her political views on 'protective policies' such as defense spending and immigration.")

Here's a link to Hintz's page on Lincoln Green Scene, which appears to be Facebook for progressives in Lincoln, Nebraska. (I love the site's self-effacing tagline: "Sharing what 'green' we have to attract what we lack.")

Given my predisposition, though, my favorite part of the Mandvi story was an incidental part of the establishing shot of the Meadowlark Coffeeshop owned by Hintz: it's located right next to Open Harvest Co-op, the only natural food co-op in all of Nebraska. Go co-op!