It took me a while to realize that a significant number of people actually pay to be lied to. The classic situation was depicted by the Evil Queen in Snow White. “Mirror, mirror on the wall …” The reason why people surround themselves with toadies is precisely so that they will be lied to. How long would a stylist last if he/she told his clients what they really looked like?
Many people prefer not to know. Take it away, I don’t want to deal with it. For example, the BBC received a torrent of complaints after it aired a video showing the Palestinian who drove the front loader used in a recent terrorist attack being shot by the police.
BBC News has received 61 complaints after its 10pm bulletin on BBC1 showed police shooting dead a man who drove a bulldozer into vehicles in Jerusalem.
Viewers last night saw shots being fired at the man in the cab of the bulldozer and his final moments. It was shown a minute into the programme. … Craig Oliver, editor of the 6pm and 10pm news, explained on the BBC’s editors’ blog why he had taken the decision to show the shooting.
“I took a different view at Ten – deciding to run the pictures in full with a clear warning that the audience was about to see images of a man being shot dead. This was not an easy decision – we never want to shock for the sake of it, or to sensationalise the news,” he wrote.
There’s an enormous reluctance among many to know how sausages are made, or what terror and counter-terrorism involves. In one Obama video, a beautiful celebrity says, “I just want the war to end”. But a little later in the video, if I recall aright, someone else says, “I want my children to be safe”. What some people really mean, perhaps innocently, is “I want my children to be safe but don’t tell me how you do it.”
A population like that really wants to be lied to. And this phenomenon is not confined to Liberals. Conservatives are also like that sometimes. Most people to a certain degree want to be shielded from hard choices. Back when I’d be asked to go to see the corpse in the mortuary, or attend the actual cremation of a person’s remains because the relatives couldn’t bring themselves to do it. I understood and you really don’t blame people for feeling that.
Like it or not there is a market for a candidate who will say, ‘I will make it all go away. Charm our enemies; make friends. End racial prejudice. Guarantee your job. End the war. Keep you safe. And if it sounds too good to be true, don’t doubt it. Yes we can.’ My guess is that the more sophisticated liberals understand this is rhetoric to some extent. But for many it is a salvational promise. Unfortunately, Obama’s just a man, a man from Chicago.
