Searching For The REAL Bob Basso

Bob Basso is a pioneer of REAL wellness who spreads a message of humor, fun and happiness, even (especially) at workplaces.  Bob has enjoyed a long career as an entertaining motivator-trainer, captivating speaker and corporate workshop leader. I have long enjoyed Bob Basso's work as well as his friendship.  He is terrific as a humorist and promoter of fun.  He is, in my view, an effective advocate for happiness, a key element of REAL wellness.  His passion has been helping employees make work fun - or at least more enjoyable.

Lately, however, he seems to have given up on fun.  Lately, Bob has become a seriously bent-out-of-shape character performing an act on YouTube as Tom Paine. Basso's Paine character calls for a The Second American Revolution.  Basso as Paine sounds more like Glenn Beck bloviating on Foxx News.  It's a dreadful act, in my opinion that reminds us that free speech works for and against the people who enshrine and protect it.  The freedom to speak freely gives us the right to say what we like and the duty to tolerate speech we consider ridiculous.  We are wise to do both with equal vigor - and with civility.

Bob Basso's Paine is no fun at all. The rant elicits no laughter, no joy, no happiness and certainly leads not to creativity, spontaneity or exuberance.  Bob has gone from fun to fury, from a message that brings people together to one that divides Americans into warring camps.  It's hard to believe, but Bob Basso has turned into a Thomas Paine few historians not Right Wing Republican fundamentalists would recognize. Basically, I think Bob Basso's new role as a revolutionary anti-government rabble-rouser is simply awful. The impression he does of Paine is also a terrible disservice to the legacy of the great man's memory and ignores his humanist philosophy that got him in so much trouble with the very types of orthodox religionists to whom Basso's Paine appeals.

A British citizen at the time of the Nation's founding, Thomas Paine was a writer and intellectual, as well as revolutionary leader.  He played a key role in helping advance the independence of the American colonies.  He was a friend of Jefferson and other Founding Fathers.  He promoted Enlightenment ideals.  He wrote Common Sense, Rights of Man and Age of Reason.  He challenged Christian doctrine while promoting rational thinking. You would never recognize the real Thomas Paine in the screeching impression Basso offers on YouTube.  However, Bob Basso's reactionary distortions of Paine's ideas and current problems in America are a big hit with the estimated three million viewers who have tuned in to the rants. C'est dommage.

Of course, there are indeed very good reasons to oppose much that Congress has done with its egregiously excessive perks and junkets, privileges, spending and multiple abuses of the public trust.  Unfortunately, Basso's scattershot screaming and hollering (while dressed as Thomas Paine) offer no distinction of good from bad policies, nor does he provide specifics or a focus on identifiable evildoers.

Wellness Report adviser Bob Ludlow looked at the YouTube show and wrote this assessment of Basso's performance: More right-wing paranoia. Every point he so pompously pronounces as though handed down from on high, or from the Founding Fathers, is debatable. What garbage. Sounds like he took writings from Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, put them in a blender and came up with a pretentious, indigestible word salad.

As Ludlow noted, not everything attacked by Basso/Paine is ridiculous - some criticisms are on target: if you keep throwing mud balls at a wall, some of them will stick. Congress DOES rip off the public, but that is something nearly everyone agrees on.  It's a small part of the overall rant.

Ludlow concludes: There is no question that this country is deeply, hopelessly divided: the lunatic descendants of the John Birch Society have multiplied profusely and have come home to roost, and they're armed to the teeth. Now they look to people like Limbaugh, Michelle Bachman, Joe the Plumber, and Sarah Palin, among others, for their sanctimonious, simple-minded platitudes. The only group I hold more contempt for are young-earth creationists, who think people put saddles on dinosaurs and rode around on them.

Another adviser, David Gresko, thought Basso's transformation from a cheerful positive humor promoter to angry extremist seemed unpleasantly familiar: One day a friend seems fairly normal, then gets a bump on the head and turns into a Rush Limbaugh follower. You have to wonder if his true self is the guy promoting fun at work or the maniac on YouTube.  It always makes me laugh when a Right-Wing extremist quotes the founding fathers.  Most of them, particularly Thomas Jefferson, wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of election today.  A commitment to separation of church and state would be too controversial.  Jefferson once took it upon himself to rewrite the New Testament.  Imagine a Presidential candidate found guilty of rewriting 'God's word.'

The lunatic Right loves the anti-government ranting, but as a friend of Bob Basso the humorist, the former REAL wellness artist, I find it hugely disappointing.

I prefer to write about the Bob Basso I knew years ago, the one who wrote, This Job Should Be Fun: The New Profit Strategy For Managing People In Tough Times. (Written with Judi Klosek.)

I want to be clear about one thing: Unlike the biggest moral charlatans in American politics, particularly Republican Representatives Robert Livingston, Mark Foley and Newt Gingrich, Senators Larry Craig and David Vitter and most recently Governor Mark Sanford, my friend Bob Basso is no hypocrite.  He may be distorting Tom Paine and serving as a propagandist for the far Right, but he does not say one thing (be pure and righteous, protect the sanctity of marriage, love God and so on) and do another.  He IS, however, doing one thing (urging workers and others to lighten up) while inspiring the worst among us to screaming anger.

I like the old Bob Basso more than the new (and faux) Tom Paine.

When I wrote about Bob Basso's work a few years ago, he wrote back, signing off with these words: Your article, as usual, is lucid, simple and always on point.

I'll let you know if Bob writes again, and if he still finds my articles lucid, simple and on point.  (At the time this was posted, attempts to contact Bob had been unsuccessful  If he's willing, a follow-up story with his own perspective on the Paine performance - and his responses to this essay, will be provided.

For a fuller understanding and appreciation of the other, happy and cheerful Bob Basso, enjoy this essay about his earlier work (posted this week at SeekWellness.com).  The title of the essay is “??Bob Basso - A Pioneer Of REAL Worksite Wellness Humor, Fun And Happiness.”

Don Ardell is the Well Infidel.  He favors evidence over faith, reason over revelation and meaning and purpose over spirituality.  His enthusiasm for reason, exuberance and liberty are reflected in his books (14), newsletter (497 editions of a weekly report) and lectures across North America and a dozen other countries.  He is very old (over 40) but very fast (national and world triathlon champion).