I've been trying to avoid all the media about Terry Schiavo this past week (it's amazing how much time and energy I spend these days avoiding media) mainly because the exploitation of this poor woman by politicians who want to cut the very programs that have kept her alive for all these years has just about made me ill (luckily I'm not in need of Medicare yet). For all the Republican breast beating about states rights and the rule of law, they seem to be willing to throw all of that out the window for a good pander to the religious right. But there also seems to be something deeper going on here.
When I was a boy I became very interested in magic. Not the J.R.R. Tolkein stuff (I got into that later) but professional stage magic of the type of Harry Houdini and the Great Blackstone. When one studies how a person who fools people for a living plies his craft, one finds that the concept of "misdirection" is central to how one does this. A large part of how a magician fools the public has to do with using "patter" to direct people's attention away from the technical part of the trick. The more effective the patter, the more effective the misdirection, and the more hidden the trick.
We've got 150,000 troops in the Middle East with no clear idea of when they are going to come home, a stagnant economy, a record deficit with countries like China and Japan holding our markers, and all we've seen for the past four months is a Social Security "crisis" that will take place in 40 years and pious pronouncements about the sanctity of life while the administration plans to cut the funding for healthcare for the poor.
Misdirection? Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.