MARY WISNIEWSKI
Assistant Living Editor
California may be the “golden state,” but sometimes I wonder why it ever earned the nickname. The Gold Rush is over, and it can’t just be the sunshine — it snowed in Malibu a couple of weeks ago. It could be Hollywood, a town that markets itself on beautiful images, even though they are doctored up. After all, beauty sells.
Pepperdine itself markets its view of the Pacific Ocean; college guides rank it as the most beautiful campus. The college is more than just a view, but we aren’t a top 50 school according to U.S. News and World Report and certainly this goes unadvertised. Pepperdine is undeniably pretty, but beauty fades, and its initials are P.U. But why highlight the negative, when, it is so easy to overlook? But, all to often, overlooking transforms into blatant lying.
Years ago, I learned not to believe what everyone tells you. (One lesson my brothers managed to teach me.) In short, I learned the Bogey Man would not emerge from my closet; “voulez-vous couchez avec moi?” does not mean ‘hello, how are you?’; and, the Easter Bunny would not jump on top of me and smash my bones. By age 10, I got it: People lie. Even our own President bends the truth.
President Bush, using loaded rhetoric, tries to convince us that war in Iraq is not only inevitable but necessary to our well-being and in the interest of national security. Couple that with the Patriotic Act, and our government is not only telling us what to do but inspecting us in the process and to vocalize opposition is, well, unpatriotic.
President Bush isn’t the first to have deceived his country— all presidents bend the truth as a means to keep control of the nation. But, it can lead to trouble — a talented speech writer and orator, capitalizing on the fears of his citizens, has the power to persuade them into doing terrible things.
If we accept that our leaders lie, then we must examine what we hear ourselves and accept nothing at face value. For campaigners and advertisers, business executives and politicians will razzle-dazzle you with slogans, speeches and songs. Their aim is to persuade an audience. It is therefore essential to discover, by means of investigation and inquiry, what is real and what is true. And that’s what college is all about.
I spent the summer interning in New York City at Cracked Magazine and waitressing. I also campaigned for the Democratic National Committee. I lasted a day. The campaigners, eager to instruct me how to persuade passers-by into donating money to the party, made use of a prepared, pre-packaged speech. But, I used only the words that came to me unrehearsed. It worked, but it’s not what they wanted to hear.
From that I learned that even if you believe in something, trying to sell that idea often leads to manipulation. Despite my best intentions, I couldn’t say what they told me to say. I may be liberal, but persuasion is not my goal; having a voice is.
Don’t get me wrong. Despite my qualms with the world and its deceptions, I’m an idealist at heart but a practical one. I believe people are generally good, but they can go crooked, too. Let’s not forget as the Gold Rush went wildly on, and greed led would-be millionaires to abandon everything they had, only a few got the gold. So as students, those who love to learn, we ought to remember what’s at stake in the real world: what really happened, what’s happening now, what might happen if we do nothing.
02-01-2007