I wrote in a recent post about how Fox News garners the largest share of the cable news audience by preaching to them. Americans watch Fox News because it’s fun to watch. A close friend of mine, who is a liberal Democrat, watches Glenn Beck every day because he is so outrageously over the top he can’t take his eyes off him. “I can’t help it,” he says. “The guy pisses me off so much I have to watch him.” I used to watch televangelist Robert “Saith the Lord” Tilton for the same reason.
What is disturbing about our addiction to broadcast entertainment in this context is that many Americans think it is real. Robert Tilton made millions in the 1980s selling tickets to see God. The political apocalyptists on Fox News sell fear and paranoia.
The rhetorical lynching of President Obama taking place in the popular media today is perpetuated by what has been called the “bandwagon effect,” a well-documented phenomenon in behavioral psychology. In essence, it means that “people do and believe things merely because many other people do and believe the same things.”
In other words, people are much like sheep. That is why the result of the bandwagon effect is often called the “herd instinct.” The greed of the herd is behind our stock market bubbles. The fear of the herd is behind the crash.
As any good shepherd will tell you, compelling the herd to move in unison requires only the introduction of a stimulus, say fear, along the margins of the flock. The flight instinct takes over at that point, and the herder can just sit back on his horse and watch.
In the political arena, when the herd instinct reaches critical mass, elections can be won. That is why the best shepherds – political pundits on popular TV shows — are worth so much to those who live and die by elections. In today’s political climate it is the Republican National Committee who is in that position. (Bill O’Reilly is probably the best shepherd they have in the pasture. I’m surprised he doesn’t wear cowboy boots.)
Last month an RNC PowerPoint presentation was found in a hotel room in Boca Grande, Florida, where a group of party leaders had gathered to discuss fundraising strategies. The 72-page document, which was intended to be used to entice donors to open their wallets, contained cartoons depicting the President, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as the Joker, Cruella de Ville, and Scooby-doo, respectively. The presentation encouraged fundraisers within the party to play on the negative feelings among right-leaning Americans toward the Obama administration and their fear of Socialism to raise money.
Brad Woodhouse, a spokesman for the opposing team, the Democratic National Committee, responded this way: “If you had any doubt, any doubt whatsoever, that the Republican Party has been taken over by the fear-mongering lunatic fringe, those doubts were erased today.” He added, “Republicans across the country have cheered on crowds where these very images appeared.”
Criticism of public figures through political cartoons is an honored tradition in free society, so I don’t begrudge the RNC for that. What I am concerned about is not that the RNC has been taken over by “the fear-mongering lunatic fringe,” but that the results of the next election might be determined by a stampede of spooked sheep.
The RNC’s job is to raise money to win elections. Whatever they have to do to achieve their goals within the law is fine by me. Bill O’Reilly’s job is to attract viewers to his network by exercising his right to free speech. At that, he is a master. Your job, as a voter in the American electoral system, is to help decide who gets to sit around the government table and make decisions for the rest of us. You are not doing your job if you let others take that away from you.
Don’t be a sheep.
Great article Mark! I totally agree with you…and…I promise I’m not a sheep!
Danielle Harmon
March 17th, 2010