Matt Kielty

To put together the principles of what we might call healthy self-esteem.

They even hired researchers at Berkeley to devise studies looking at self-esteem in six major areas of social concern.

Crime and violence, alcohol and drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, child abuse, welfare dependency, educational failure or success.

To try to answer this question, does having high self-esteem actually lead people to being a better citizen, being more successful?

Now, while that's going on, do you know about Doonesbury, Latif?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah, yeah.

It's hard to understand today how influential this comic strip was.

It is huge.

The power that these Doonesbury strips can have.

It was in almost every newspaper.

Everybody read it.

Is that Gary Trudeau?

It's Gary Trudeau.

In 1987, he found out about the task force and decided to make jokes about it.

He created a new character, Barbara Boopsy Ann Boopstein, who was an L.A.

actress and spiritual medium who had been invited onto the task force on the basis of her 20 years of feeling good about myself and out-of-body experiences.

And it's just like joke after joke about this task force and it's woo-woo nonsense.

And this goes on a two-week run, day after day, just making fun of the self-esteem task force.

And the whole nation.

Absolute ridicule is what happens.