| VALUES


We Interrupt This Broadcast! O


The Worse Person You Can Fool Is Yourself


n Oct. 30, 1938, the Mercury Theatre of the Air did a broadcast in which the scheduled programming


was interrupted with a series of simulated “news bulletins” reporting a Martian invasion. Orson Wells served as narrator and played a famous Princeton astronomy professor. During the program, reporters were giving supposedly live descriptions of the panic and mayhem, until they themselves were vaporized by death rays. Wells gave a disclaimer at the end, saying it was their way of putting a sheet over their head and saying “boo” on Halloween. But many believe CBS executives insisted on this addition because of the hysteria it caused. In fact, the impact was so great and


so effective that conspiracy theorists actually believed the broadcast was a psychological warfare study paid for by the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1949, Leonardo Paez produced a


by Eric Wright


A respected author and speaker, Eric Wright


is the assignment and copy editor for Spacecoast Business magazine and the founder and pastor of Journey Church in Suntree.


Spanish-language version for Radio Quito in Ecuador. The people there, however, didn’t find it quite so amusing. In the days preceding the broadcast, El Comercio, a local newspaper participated in the hoax by publishing false reports of UFO sightings. The broadcast set off panic in the city as they braced for the expected alien invasion. After they realized it was fictional, the panic morphed into a riot and hundreds attacked Radio Quito and El Comercio, resulting in six or more deaths. Paez left the country.


Gotcha! When we “fool” someone, whether it is


with a practical joke or a surprise party, they usually laugh and say, “You really got me that time.” However, it is when we fool ourselves that we tend to respond like the


mob in Quito, Ecuador. And our vulnerability is well documented. William James, who some identify as the


father of modern psychology, pointed out, “There’s nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.” We could fill an encyclopedia chronicling the scientific, legal and sociological falsehoods that, having been repeated like a mantra, are accepted as fact. I grew up in the Woodstock era, where somehow a connection was made between universal peace and personal enlightenment and being stoned on drugs. The moral and relational genocide this plague let loose on Western culture seems to have no end in sight.


Fooling Yourself But usually the real damage comes from


those subtle slights of hands, which we concoct ourselves, that can undermine our personal character or cause us to think our compromise or indiscretion is pardonable, if not justifiable. When later, we are confronted with what we have forfeited, the head banging begins. Often, this happens when we mute our conscience or fail to see what is right in our hands. I think of Danny Simpson, a 24-year-old


Canadian, who went to jail for robbing a bank in Ottawa while the gun that he used in the heist went to a museum. You see, he was arrested, found guilty of robbing a bank of $6,000 and sentenced to six years in prison. But his .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol turned out to be an antique made by the Ross Rifle Company of Quebec City, in 1918 – it turns out the pistol was worth up to $100,000! If we, like Danny Simpson, could just see


what is right in our own hands, I don’t think we would make such foolish decisions.


“There’s nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.” 96]OCTOBER2010 spacecoastbusiness.com


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