Truth is a niche market

2008/12/11 — 9 Comments

It’s almost a cliche by now to complain about the lies and laziness of the corporate media. But an important question to ask yourself is, why is no one getting rich by telling the truth?

A grand conspiracy of the powerful?

No one would advertise in such a medium because it wouldn’t put people in a buying mood?

Another theory … The truth hurts.  The truth is inconvenient.  “You can’t handle the truth.”

According to Carlo Carafa

Populus vult decipi. [The people wish to be deceived.]

According to Don Marquis

If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; But if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.

According to political humorist Bartcop

Don’t EVER tell the truth in a political campaign. People want to be lied to.  […]  If you doubt me, ask President Mondale about telling the truth.

Carafa (1517-1561) was a solidier and nephew of Pope Paul IV, who made him a cardinal.  Carafa was strangled per a death sentence by Pope Pius IV that was later declared unjust by Pope St. Pius V.

For more about New York newspaper columnist Don Marquis (1878-1937), see here.

Lie to us!

Lie to us!

9 Comments

  1. According to Kat McGowan in “The second coming of Sigmund Freud” (April 2014 Discover Magazine cover story)

    Studying how brain damage affects thoughts and behaviors is one of the oldest techniques in neuroscience. Solms began to systematically evaluate the hallucinations and delusions of his patients in the light of Freudian concepts like denial and wish fulfillment. Simply put, these two ideas propose that we prefer to see the world as we wish it were, rather than as it truly is. Facing the facts is difficult, requiring sustained mental labor and a high-functioning brain. A person who cannot sustain this effort winds up living in a fantasy world.

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  2. According to Jim DiEugenio

    In the face of this continuing denial of a full accounting of Kennedy’s assassination on the 50th anniversary, the public should ask two simple questions: What really happened to President Kennedy in Dealey Plaza? And why the unending resistance from the news media to present the new evidence to the American people?

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  3. According to Homer Simpson

    It takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen.

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  6. According to Adam Kirsch

    Rand’s particular intellectual contribution, the thing that makes her so popular and so American, is the way she managed to mass market elitism — to convince so many people, especially young people, that they could be geniuses without being in any concrete way distinguished. Or, rather, that they could distinguish themselves by the ardor of their commitment to Rand’s teaching. The very form of her novels makes the same point: they are as cartoonish and sexed-up as any best seller, yet they are constantly suggesting that the reader who appreciates them is one of the elect.

    Source: “Ayn Rand’s Revenge”, New York Times, November 1, 2009, p. BR1 of the New York edition.

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  7. Amazingly unrealistic comments by Stefan Forbes

    Everyone always talks about how shallow the American public is. It’s about how the lowest common denominator sells. Everywhere Boogie Man has gone, I’ve seen this incredible hunger for the truth. The media can actually make lots of money doing vigorous reporting. Doing well done investigative reporting—doing stories that haven’t been heard.

    and

    And, there’s always a hunger for the truth. Don’t sell the American public short. There’s a huge appetite for real news, and if the people have to go to the Internet to find it, it will just make newspapers and TV irrelevant even faster. If you want to stay relevant you’ve got to have real content, and that’s what’s going to win in the end.

    Yet this is soon after he said

    It’s like on websites—people go to the sites where they agree with the people who are talking.

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  8. According to Hilary Mantel

    On that topic, one of her personal and revealing assumptions is that “most people do not like authority and do not feel that others have the right to authority over them.” Is that historically true, or is it wishful thinking by someone who would prefer history to be different? If you extrapolate from animal behavior, as French does in Volume I, to draw out truths about human nature, you cannot overlook the fact that most social animals are hierarchical and that the urge to conformity has been a powerful shaping force in human affairs.

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