Fake News, Circuses, And Hucksters–Let’s Face It, The Truth Is Boring

So against the grain I serve to produce events and do what's irrational because I am commanded to. For all their indisputable intelligence, men take this farce as something serious, and that is their tragedy. They suffer, of course … but then they live, they live a real life, not a fantastic one, for suffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of it? It would be transformed into an endless church service; it would be holy, but tedious (The Devil, Ivan’s Dream,The Brothers Karamazov)

Dostoevsky’s Devil is a vaudevillian, a comedian who serves to spice things up.  What would life be without me? he asks. “It would be holy, but tedious”.

Franchot Gunn had a silver tongue and an effusive charm, and no one could resist him. Professors, women, colleagues, supervisors, and competitors were all seduced by his grace, intimacy, and personal concern.  They had no interest in really knowing who he was, what motivated him, or from what compassionate or spiritual spring his sympathy and understanding came.  He was so good at his elegant ballet, that people were enticed, engaged, and finally hooked

They needn’t have bothered.  There really was nothing of great interest beyond Franchot’s engaging smile and direct, warm gaze.  He was complex, deeply introspective, and rigorously disciplined. He knew that the only thing that mattered in life was figuring out What Was What, wrestling with the same angels as Jacob and Job, and taking the words of the Teacher of Ecclesiastes to heart – eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow we die.

“Charm and a silver tongue will get you everywhere”, he told his young son. “The only lesson you will ever need to know.”  This bit of wisdom is of course not new, and ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’ was the the guiding principle of P.T. Barnum, the greatest huckster in American history.

Although there have been plenty of pretenders to his throne, none understood the absolute gullibility of the American consumer than Barnum.  No matter how exaggerated his claims or preposterous the creatures in his side shows, people packed his big tent and kept coming back for more.

The list of evangelical hucksters is long and storied.  Starting with Amy Semple McPherson, many followed in her footsteps - Billy Sunday, Elmer Gantry, Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Rick Warren. Every Sunday these pastors and many more like them sold a bill of goods to the faithful who packed their revival tents and mega-churches, filled the offering baskets, and wrote generous checks.

Dostoevsky suggests that Christ was the original huckster, offering man the promise of redemption and salvation but guaranteeing him nothing and consigning him to a live of hunger and misery.  Christ’s rejection of the Devil’s temptations in the wilderness and His crafting of a message of hope to billions who would follow him – “Man does not live by bread alone” – was no more than a bill of goods.

Everyone is on the snake oil circuit – salesmen, politicians, Hollywood moguls, evangelical preachers, and the Catholic Church.  Ivan, railing at Christ says that the Church never took Him seriously but were overjoyed at His words which provided the foundation for millennia of deception, manipulation, and venality.

Sissela Bok wrote Lying and in it explored the moral and ethical dimensions of lying and how the practice, although common, was never justified.  She quotes Charles Fried:

A good man does not lie. It is this intuition which brings lying so naturally within the domain of things categorically wrong. Yet many lies do little if any harm, and some lies do real good. How are we to account for this stringent judgment on lying, particularly in face of the possible trivial, if not positively beneficial, consequences of lying? (Right and Wrong, 1978)

Robert Fullinwider summarizes Bok’s “Theory of Veracity”, a very strong moral presumption against lying:

What, she asks you, would it be like to live in a world in which truth-telling was not the common practice? In such a world, you could never trust anything you were told or anything you read. You would have to find out everything for yourself, first-hand. You would have to invest enormous amounts of your time to find out the simplest matters. In fact, you probably couldn't even find out the simplest matters: in a world without trust, you could never acquire the education you need to find out anything for yourself, since such an education depends upon your taking the word of what you read in your lesson books.

However, there are so many shades of lying (white lies, tales of fantasy, half-truths, minor deceptions) and so many compelling cases for benign lies (withholding a diagnosis of terminal cancer, “Mommy will be back soon”, or “The weather will probably clear”) that most people lie without even thinking twice about it.  Yet, as Bok observes, such pervasive lying is corrosive, and ultimately destructive.

Franchot Gunn shared none of these concerns.  For him like Dostoevsky’s Devil life was a carnival complete with mountebanks, carnies, bearded ladies, babies with two heads, and sideshows.  People take life far too seriously says the Devil.  In Bok’s world there would be no carnivals, circuses, tearful public apologies, or great novels. Everyone is deceptive and deliberately so.  The fact that they get caught in their lies does nothing to alter the equation – lying is the rule, honesty a tedious ideal, and the conflict of the two the stuff of theatre.  If people were as good as Bok hoped, we – as Ivan’s Devil suggests – would be bored to tears.

Franchot Gunn’s deliberate deception worked like a dream. His silver tongue enabled him to lull even his harshest professional critics.  Hours of revisions of proposals, reports, and company white papers were avoided because of his ability to convince people of the irrefutable logic of his arguments and the rightness of his cause.  His ability to marginalize enemies and build almost universal support among the staff gave him carte blanche. His charm was so convincing that even his severest critics never knew that he had hung them out to dry. He set his own hours, worked at his own pace, produced responsibly if sometimes superficially, and had more time to himself and his personal ambitions than anyone else he knew.

Despite his repeated and continually sexual indiscretions, his wife never had a clue.  Or more correctly, suspended her disbelief at his stories because of his enchanting charm and simple, heartfelt expressions of love and consideration.  His deception was so artful and so complete that she was the last to know about Franchot’s lovers and paramours. 

When he eventually did get caught – no one said that his elegant deceptions were foolproof – he was able, thanks to his silver tongue, to blend apology, contrition, love, and forgiveness into such a reasonable and emotional package that his wife again ignored even the most obvious signs of his infidelities.

Was any harm done? Not in his mind.  His wife and colleagues were all adults with reason, sense, and will.  The free market did not only apply to the buying and selling of products, but to stories, ideas, and character. There was no right or wrong in human commerce, just transaction; and deception was always been a part of it.

“Look at it this way”, Franchot explained. “The ends justify the means” He knew that in the marketplace of human nature he might one day meet his match and be snookered, taken for a ride, or hung out to dry. “Equal opportunity”, he smiled.
As far as I know Franchot Gunn was never taken in, seduced, or entrapped by anyone else’s silver tongue and charm. He was too good and too smart.  The nice thing of it all was that no one wanted him to come a cropper.  He had fooled so many people into thinking of him as the ideal lover, colleague, and friend that no one resented his successes or the ease with which he accomplished them. He was a modern hero.