...before I start singing

"Experts" who don't know their songs very well

A few weeks ago, I finally got around to seeing “A Complete Unknown,” the all-around terrific film about the early days of Bob Dylan’s career.

Don’t worry, I’m not gonna turn this piece into a review. I’ll just say that I enjoyed the movie so much that, for the next several days (okay, over a week), I found myself listening to Dylan non-stop, even while running or in the gym.

Perhaps more interesting, though (at least for the purposes of introducing this essay), is that, after leaving the theater that night, I jumped into my Jeep and told Siri to “play Bob Dylan.” She obeyed my lawful order and served up “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” just as I backed out of the parking spot.

Six minutes and 23 seconds later, just before pulling into my driveway, I heard the line, “And I’ll know my song well before I start singing.”

For what it’s worth, I found it pretty neat that the song lasted exactly the duration of my trip from the parking lot to my garage.

I’ll know my song well before I start singing.

My dad raised me on artists like Bob Dylan, so I’ve known that line since I was a kid and have always found it to be a potent —even imperative— reminder for me to know my shit before running my mouth or taking to the keyboard to show the world just how smart I am about a particular topic. And, for much of my life, I naively believed that most of my fellow travelers felt the same way.

How wrong I was.

Of course, we’re all accustomed to the average Joe or Jane at a bar, dinner party or other get-together, talking out of their ass about a subject they clearly know nothing about.

I had a boss at my last firm who was notorious for regularly making inaccurate, often entirely baseless, assertions to large groups of our clients, but doing so in an eloquent enough way to effectively mask his inveterate stupidity.

The point is that we automatically set relatively relaxed expectations for the informational accuracy of pronouncements from Jane, Joe, and —let’s call him “Dan.” However, when it comes to, say, professional journalists, university smarty pants, or our elected leaders, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that they know their song well before they start singing.

This past Sunday, I was driving to a catering hall in Queens for the installation of the Grand Marshall of this year’s NYC St. Patrick’s Day Parade. (Yeah, it’s that time of the year already.)

I don’t remember exactly what time it was, but I tuned into Fox News Sunday on Sirius, midway into a conversation between anchor Shannon Bream and someone whose voice I couldn’t identify. I would later find out that it was Democrat Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT)

At one point, the host asked her guest, “Should the US have some kind of guarantee or return on the billions of taxpayer dollars that have flowed into that conflict?”

“Well, Shannon, I have two problems with that concept,” the congressman replied. “One, it just looks like an episode of the Sopranos. Right? Give us your minerals, or we’re not gonna help you fight a bloody butcher. I mean, is this really what we want the greatest country in history to be known for? For, like, you know, some mafia thing?”

After making that ridiculous comparison, the congressman went on to give the audience a faulty history lesson in an attempt to contrast Trump’s current plan with a wildly erroneous version of how American leaders have handled similar situations in the past.

“Look, we’ve always stood with the good guys,” Himes reminded the audience. “We stood with Churchill against Hitler…”

He proceeded to touch on World War I and Vietnam, but he’d already said enough to demonstrate his lack of knowledge of the relevant history, even as he cited it.