University of Virginia Library

Ch 11: The March of Folly

A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.

--Leon Festinger, et al.,
WhenProphecy Fails

I was... brought, in 1818, at the close of my two years' study of the Scriptures, to the solemn conclusion, that in about twenty- five years from that time all the affairs of our present state would be wound up," wrote William Miller in his autobiography, Apology and Defense. [1] Initially the New England farmer was reluctant to share his conclusion with others. In fact, it was not until after another five years of study and checking his calculations that Miller began to speak cautiously with a few trusted neighbors and clergy friends about his forecasts regarding the imminent return of Christ.

Gradually, private discussions about his prophecy of the coming of the millennium in 1843 gave way to public lectures. His following grew steadily, and by early 1843 he was filling the largest halls in the towns where he spoke. And in Boston, Miller's followers constructed a tabernacle with a seating capacity of 3,500.

Also growing rapidly was opposition to Miller s heretical views. He was condemned from pulpits and in newspapers. But followers were not dissuaded by the negative publicity. By 1843, approximately 50,000 souls, mostly concentrated in New England and the Midwest, were proud to consider themselves Millerites.

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Until that year, William Miller had been vague as to the exact date of Christ's return. Then, on the first day of January, he announced to his followers, "I am fully convinced that somewhere between March 21st, 1843, and March 21st, 1844, according to the Jewish mode of computation of time, Christ will come." [2]

Christ, of course, did not return during that time, nor in the years following, although some of Miller's followers forecast alternate dates. Common sense would suggest that such a failed prophecy would result in the rapid and widespread dissolution of a movement-especially if the leader were to confess his error and acknowledge his disappointment, as Miller did. But it didn't happen that way. In the face of negative evidence, the ranks of Miller's followers swelled.

There was, ultimately, a limit to the amount of disconfirming evidence that Miller's followers could accept before the movement began to break up. But the idea of Christ's imminent return, even if the precise date was not to be known, as well as several other theological peculiarities, survived. Today virtually all Adventist churches in America can be traced to William Miller. His impact on the spread of premillennial thinking in America has been profound.

Perhaps what is most striking about the Millerite movement is not the fact that Miller's followers persisted so long, but, rather, the almost ordinariness of the phenomenon. The annals of history are filled with such incidents.

One of the most fascinating was studied midway through this century by three social psychologists, Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter. Using the method of participant observation, the three scholars infiltrated a group of people who believed they had been forewarned by extraterrestrials of impending planetary doom. [3]

The founder of the UFO cult, Mrs. Marian Keech, was a housewife who had previously dabbled in several fringe groups, including Theosophy, the I AM movement, and Dianetics (the early form of Scientology). According to her testimony, Mrs. Keech was awakened one night by a strange sensation in her arm. As she seized pencil and paper, aliens allegedly began communicating with her, initially through the spirit of her dead father, by "automatic writing" that allowed her hand to transcribe their message without her conscious effort.

These extraterrestrials from the planets of Clarion and Cerus eventually revealed to Mrs. Keech and her small circle of believers that

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the earth soon would be visited by a terrible disaster: the Great Lakes would flood the interior of the United States, the Atlantic seaboard would submerge, a new mountain range would be thrown up in the central states, and not only would Egypt's deserts be made fertile but the continent of Mu would rise in the Pacific.

Specific dates predicted for the arrival of flying saucers to scoop up the faithful came and went without the slightest confirmation. As the group attracted publicity, pressure mounted from fellow believers and the media for them to affirm their beliefs further or to defect. Eventually, the members split: Some persisted in believing in the UFO message and others abandoned it.

Festinger and his colleagues found that what distinguished the faithful from the defectors was the amount of social support they received at the time of disconfirmation. Shared beliefs bring people together; intense interaction works like glue to bind those of common sentiment even closer together. Interacting with people who believe as you do, then, is a powerful antidote against negative evidence coming from outside the group.

As simple as this observation may appear, it is one of the truly remarkable discoveries of the social sciences during this century. Group solidarity and oneness of mind can set people off on noble crusades or lead them down the path to tragedy. It helps to explain much social behavior that is otherwise inexplicable-how a bright young man or woman can fall under the mesmerizing influence of a religious guru; how World War I soldiers could march to their almost-certain death against a wall of machine guns; how a crusading political candidate can be tamed by a Washington bureaucracy.

Given a social milieu in which virtually everyone thinks alike, the newcomer almost always comes to see the world through the lens of the group's conventional wisdom. Those who do not will become disillusioned and drop out of the group, or, if they remain, fail in the performance of their duties as a member of the group.

The whistle-blower in a government bureaucracy or a major defense contracting firm is an archetypical example of someone who refuses to go along with "group think." He is unable to rationalize excess spending waste disregard of the environment or of human beings, and so on and he "tells it like it is." The American mass media love a government whistle-blower almost as much as the British press loves

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a sex scandal. But the sad truth is that whistle-blowers rarely win, and few survive unscathed the ordeal of being banished from the group they exposed.

The popular BBC television program "Yes, Minister" portrays a former radical-liberal editor, elected to high political office, struggling to overcome a deeply entrenched and intransigent civil-service bureaucracy. His occasional victories are amusing, even as the evidence of the bureaucracy's awesome power is instructive. Resisting the pressure of the group is not easy. Most of the time, most people come to see the world through the eyes of the groups to which they belong, groups that envelop the consciousness. These groups include coworkers, families, professional organizations and lodges, and, of course, religious institutions.

In The March of Folly Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Barbara Tuchman studies why certain governments throughout history have failed to act in their own best interests. Tuchman substantially solves the riddle she poses, but then misplaces the object of her insight. Having examined incidents of "folly" from Troy to Vietnam, Tuchman answers the question in terms of the life of the contemporary chief executive:

The emphasis here is misplaced because the incumbents of the offices of a bureaucracy, including CEOs and heads of state, understand very clearly that their actions serve their own interests and, often, the interests of the bureaucracy as well. What is missing is a broader context for viewing and understanding a problem.

Later, Tuchman introduces a concept that captures the essence of the social psychologists' concern with the power of the group to create and enforce meaning that molds human behavior. "Wooden- head-

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edness," she writes, consists of "assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs." [4] Bureaucracies function in terms of fixed notions because past experience confirms the workability of those notions. To introduce change is to risk disruption of a system. Those who work within a system have a vested interest in the relative stability of that system.

It is not only bureaucrats who fall into this category, but virtually everyone who functions in terms of preconceived notions. Winning coaches continue to do what they think has been responsible for their past successes. So, also, do the successful businessman and the accomplished sportsman. Teachers repeat lectures they believe were well received by their students. Politicians emphasize those stands that the press, constituent mail, and pollsters suggest are popular.

Thinking and acting in terms of preconceived notions is an entirely natural and normal human activity. And mostly we continue to act "normally" because our lives are entangled in a web of group affiliations. Our social groups reinforce us when we do the right things and write the right thoughts. The price of straying too far from conventional behavior or wisdom is to be banished from or ignored by the social group.

Today an army of political reporters looks at Pat Robertson and, without resorting to Tuchman's language or the concepts of social psychologists, sees him and his spirited followers as a living example of wooden-headedness. When has anyone ever ignored so much evidence that would caution against the folly of running for president? And who but a group of religious zealots, unwilling to abandon their preconceived notions, could so badly misread the mood of the American people?

But "group think" can exist in any group. As evidence began to mount that Pat Robertson was putting together a campaign of considerable significance, the media mostly continued to ignore it. Their certainty that his prospects remained "slim" and "none" suggests that it was they who were being duped by collective wooden headedness.

"The most important thing ... that we can know about a man is what he takes for granted," wrote sociologist Louis Wirth a half-century ago. "And the most elemental and important facts about society," he continued, "are those that are seldom debated and generally regarded as settled." [5]

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Herein lies an important clue to how the media have been victimized by self-inflicted wooden-headedness with respect to Pat Robertson and the Other Americans. "At least since the Enlightenment," write Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge in The Future of Religion, "most Western intellectuals have anticipated the death of religion." They continue:

This belief in the inevitable demise of religion is anchored in a sweeping worldview known as "secularization theory." In a nutshell, secularization theory holds that the Protestant Reformation and the Renaissance set in motion the forces of modernization that swept across the globe and loosened the dominance of the sacred. The technological, industrial, scientific, and cultural revolutions of the Western world are the result. In due course, the theory holds, the sacred shall disappear altogether-except, possibly, in the private realm.

Western scholars have long assumed that this view is the product of rational analysis and objective research. Perhaps, but growing numbers of social scientists are no longer so sure. Notwithstanding, secularization theory has permeated Western culture, trickling down from the mandarins at the apex of higher education until virtually everyone who has passed through any but the most parochial of colleges and universities has been indoctrinated with its assumptions.

When confronted with evidence that religion persists as a vital force in the hearts and lives of men and women in the modern world, scholars, intellectuals, and opinion leaders become incredulous, clinging stubbornly to the fixed notions of the past quarter-millennium.

It is primarily through journalism that we have the opportunity to see the effects of the secularization paradigm in everyday thought. The world is filled with events beyond our firsthand experience, of which we are afforded glimpses through the lens of the mass media. What we know about the world is determined largely by the reporters

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and editors who define what is news and by commentators who decide what is worthy of analysis.

In a very profound sense, as Michael Schudson concludes in Discovering the News, "the daily persuasions of journalists reflect and become our own." [7] The media give us more than a disembodied message about some event they have judged to be "news." In subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) ways, they provide a perspective-a way of looking at and thinking about what they report.

That the carriers of the news also shape the news is not a recent discovery. Fifty years ago, Leo C. Rosten asked Washington correspondents to comment on the possibility of pure" objectivity in reporting the news. Almost two-thirds agreed that it was "almost impossible to be objective." [8] Still, Rosten found that journalists hold high the ideal of objectivity.

It may come as a surprise that objectivity has not always been a goal of journalists. In fact, before the twentieth century, it seldom occurred to anyone that newspapers should report the news objectively. It was taken for granted that newspapers were instruments for achieving the goals set by those who controlled them. One of the reasons the late Walter Lippmann is high in the ranks of America's most revered journalists is that he did much to promote belief in a "new professionalism." And central to that philosophy was a commitment to rational standards and constant vigilance in the pursuit of objectivity.

Lippmann's crusade for objectivity was more than a journalistic goal; it was a moral philosophy. In American inquisitor, written in 1928, he set forth an ideal standard through the voice of "Socrates":

From the 1920s to the present day, print and broadcast journalists have struggled with the issue of objectivity. Most have never been completely comfortable with the idea. Objectivity may be the "ideal

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type," but, many contemporary journalists find, the concepts of "fairness" and "balance" are more realistic for their profession.

Fairness from whose perspective? Balance relative to what standard?

For years conservatives have complained about a liberally biased press. And there has been much anecdotal evidence to support the claim. In fact, many liberal reporters have admitted it, but they fail to see it as a problem. As far as they are concerned, they are more capable of sorting through the evidence to present the truth than a mass media in the hands of conservatives.

Only in recent years have there been systematic data to assist in understanding the attitudes, beliefs, and values of American journalists. Stanley Rothman, professor of government at Smith College, is the architect of a study initiated in 1977 to investigate elites in the public-interest movement, the federal bureaucracy, and the media. The study has now expanded into an investigation of elites in a dozen sectors of American culture, and Rothman has been joined by S. Robert Lichter and Linda S. Lichter as co-investigators.

Some of the preliminary findings of their media study began to appear as early as 1981. The first major volume is entitled The Media Elite: America s New Powerbrokers. [10] Data include interviews, a survey, psychological tests ("Thematic Apperception Test"), and content analysis of print and broadcast materials.

Lichter, Rothman, and Lichter claim not to be interested in exposing the biases of journalists. Rather, they define their goal as understanding "the relationship between the journalists' perspectives and their product." [11] In short, they are not interested in assessing "blame," but in understanding how the backgrounds, beliefs, and experience of journalists affect the final product.

The data confirm the widely held assumption that mass-media personnel are generally liberal. Indeed, the study documents a large chasm between media elites and the general public. But for Lichter, Rothman, and Lichter, the question is Why? The answer is that the media are a fairly homogeneous and cosmopolitan group. They are highly educated and come disproportionately from upper-middle-class homes in the northeast and north- central states.

"The typical journalist," write Lichter and colleagues, "is the very model of the modern eastern urbanite. [12] They are politically liberal

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and aloof from traditional norms and institutions, as are most people who possess their demographic and educational profile.

On the behavioral level, journalists have voted overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates. For example, in 1976, 81 percent of the media personnel surveyed voted for Jimmy Carter over Gerald Ford, compared to 51 percent of the general public. And in 1972, an identical proportion picked George McGovern while 62 percent of the general public voted for Richard Nixon. In 1964,96 percent of the journalists selected Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater. [13]

On a broad range of social and moral issues, journalists express more liberal views than "the man in the street." A few examples of personal morality issues: Whereas 71 percent of the general public believed homosexuality to be morally wrong, only 38 percent of the media elites agreed. Sixty-five percent of the general public, compared with 35 percent of the media group, believes abortion to be morally wrong. And by a margin of 57 percent to 22 percent, the general public was more likely to view smoking marijuana as morally wrong.

Almost twice as many people in the general public (47 percent to 24 percent) believe that living with someone of the opposite sex outside of marriage is wrong. And, by approximately the same margin (52 percent to 27 percent), the general public believes that divorce should be more difficult to obtain. [14]

On these and a number of other moral issues, only about half as many journalists as members of the general public expressed a socially conservative point of view. Media elites would likely interpret these data as evidence that they are more tolerant of individual choice in a pluralistic society. But through the eyes of conservatives who feel strongly that abortion, premarital sex, and drug use are morally abhorrent, the data provide proof positive of the press's tolerance of immorality.

The study also shows that media elites are on the average much less active religiously and less orthodox in what they believe, confirming another suspicion of evangelical conservatives. Furthermore, it is quite probable that the average person of deep religious conviction will attribute the media's "tolerance of immorality" to their lack of religious values.

Comparison of the religious behavior of the media elites with a

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national survey conducted by the Gallup Organization during roughly the same period reveals further dramatic differences. Whereas half of the media sample professed no religious affiliation, 68 percent of the national sample reported being church or synagogue members. More than nine out of ten in the national sample expressed a preference for a religious group. In an average week in 1981, Gallup reported, 41 percent of the national population attended church. Only 8 percent of the media elites said that they attended religious services weekly; 86 percent reported they seldom or never attended. [15]

These figures add up to some whopping differences between the values and behavior of media elites and the general public. But the data do not prove that the generally more liberal values of media elites on social issues, and high levels of alienation from traditional institutions and authority, result in a distorted presentation of these issues in their reports. Nor does their low level of religious involvement mean that they are either overtly or subtly biased against religion in a way that would affect their ability to assess objectively the role of religion in the political process.

At the same time, the possibility of systematic bias cannot automatically be ruled out. Lichter, Rothman, and Lichter bring some fascinating data to bear on the issue as a result of their testing. A Thematic Apperception Test is a psychological test that measures the impact of underlying values. Researchers present a series of pictures and ask individuals-in this case the media elites-to construct a story about each one. The pictures are deliberately ambiguous so that the stories people tell are projections of their own consciousness, a mirror of what they think is important and how they understand the world. Lichter, Rothman, and Lichter argue that this technique is useful for understanding journalists because it shows how they "fill in the gaps between what they know and what they assume when confronting a new situation." [16] Here is what they found:

When the journalists were shown a picture that could be interpreted as an authority figure, they "tended to evoke fantasies about abuse of power in the form of greedy businessmen, deceitful lawyers, conniving politicians, intimidating policemen, and sadistic military superiors. [17] On the other hand, when presented a picture interpreted to be an average man, the media elites tended to see individuals victimized by "malevolent higher- ups or an uncaring social system." [18]

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The researchers conclude that these subconscious projections of social reality are, at least in part, a demonstration of how reporters see and interpret stories. The journalist's presuppositions are at work from the beginning of every assignment: (1) What is the nature of the story? (2) Who qualifies as an expert or resource person in investigating the topic? (3) What is sorted out as a peripheral idea or not a credible source? (4) What constitutes an interesting angle on the story? (5) How do preexisting values and attitudes affect how the story is finally shaped in the writing stage?

Lichter and his associates thus conclude that journalists are not the tough-minded, independent thinkers they like to believe themselves to be, but, rather, "captives of conventional wisdom [and] carriers of intellectual currents whose validity is taken for granted. [19] Whether they define their own goal as objectivity or fairness and balance, they are not apt to step outside of themselves, so to speak, and see the extent to which they are captives of their own values and the values of those whom they trust. "Even according to an arbitrary standard requiring that each side receive equal coverage," report Lichter et al., "the results were consistently one-sided." [20]

And how do the media elites respond to this assessment of their work? A theory emerged from Festinger's investigation of the UFO cult members called the "Cognitive Dissonance Theory," which contends that when individuals are confronted with dissonant or contradictory information (that is, two things that don't logically fit together) they will experience discomfort, then do something to reduce the dissollance. There are three possible types of action: (1) change their beliefs opinions, or behaviors so that the contradiction is reduced or eliminated (2) acquire new information that may reduce the dissonance, or (3) forget, ignore, or deny the validity of the information that produced the dissonance in the first place [21]

Smoking when there is evidence that it causes cancer is as good a way of illustrating the dynamics of cognitive dissonallce as it was three decades ago when the theory became popular in the social sciences. The discomfort produced by the knowledge that smoking causes cancer can be reduced by (1) ceasing to smoke, (2) concluding that the evidence is not yet clear (the posture promoted by the tobacco industry), or (3) denying the validity of the research and avoiding contact with those who transmit the dissonant information.

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Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance lays out the options for journalists confronted with the Lichter, Rothman, and Lichter study. Changing their own behavior is difficult at best. Nor are they likely to change the opinions of the study's authors.

There remain two more options. First, the study does not claim to be an indictment of bias, merely an analysis of how values affect reporting. In fairly short order, then, it can be ignored and forgotten. That is not too hard to arrange when the media elites substantially control whether the study receives wide or scant attention in general and who will review the work in particular.

There can also be a call for new information, such as the testimony of other experts and reviews by recognized authorities on the subject that dispute the findings. Discrediting the authors is another means; if they can be successfully labeled as conservatives, then their findings can be dismissed as a biased attack on journalism.

In fact, the media elites employed a bit of all of these strategies to deflect the discomforting notion that they might be responsible for some distortion or systematic slanting of the news. Perhaps the slickest cognitive trick of all was to extract a radically different message from the study: Rather than showing them to be way out of step with the masses, the data prove instead that journalists are more tolerant, more committed to pluralism, and therefore more in step with the traditions and values of American culture.

And that leads to another very important conclusion of the media elite story. The media, according to Lichter, Rothrr an, and Lichter, try to uphold two contradictory self-images that are not easily reconciled. On the one hand, they see themselves as cool, nonpartisan reporters struggling to get the news. But beneath the veneer of the objective reporter coexists a social reformer. The problem is not just that journalists all went to the same schools, read the same newspapers, and, hence, all operate from the same narrow liberal paradigm. "Probably just as important" is that a fair proportion "desire to exert moral power, as patrons of outsiders and victims with whom they identify, against traditional restrictions and institutional authority [emphasis added]." [22]

This is a subtle but consequential characteristic. Even Walter Cronkite, perhaps the most beloved broadcaster in the history of television, has failed to recognize its power. Once asked whether journalists were

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biased toward a liberal perspective against established institutions, he said no but added that his profession was prone "to side with humanity rather than authority. [23]

One may reasonably ask, So what? The answer rests in an understanding of how these beliefs and behavioral patterns affect the way religion is reported in the news or analyzed as an element of the political process. Journalists are not, as a group, very religious; some of them even disdain religion. Furthermore, they interact daily with colleagues who also feel indifferent or negative about religion. Thus, living in a subculture that shares their ambivalence or hostility toward religion, they come to believe their viewpoint is normative and widely shared by the general public.

There are many reasons why the media have misunderstood and misreported the story of an ascending New Christian Right. Clearly their liberal bias is an important factor. But if Lichter and his colleagues have correctly characterized journalists as "closet reformers," there is another crucial ingredient in the mix. Like-minded reformers can be championed. Reformers with different but not antagonistic goals can be tolerated. But reformers of a different stripe pose a threat of immeasurable proportions.

When Jerry Falwell was discovered by the mass media and believed to have a huge following, he was terrifying. Only after his image was trimmed down to size were his presence and his message tolerable within a pluralistic society. The dissonance was reduced by the information that Falwell did not have the television audiences and Moral Majority following he claimed.

Now comes Pat Robertson, and the mechanisms for reducing cognitive dissonance are being summoned anew. But it is more difficult this time The media's interpretation of the resources Robertson has available to launch a significant campaign clashes badly with the overwhelming evidence And therein lies the essence of their woodenheadedness-they assess religion in terms of their own preconceived, and mutually held, notions of its irrelevance in the modern secular world. From this follows the belief that the New Christian Right could never be a force large enough to upset the status quo. And because these views are reinforced during interaction with other media people, they are inclined to ignore, discount, or reject evidence that would suggest the contrary. In the U.S. bicentennial year, Jerry Falwell

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staged a series of patriotic I Love America rallies, which he took to the steps of all fifty state capitol buildings as well as the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. During the same period, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon and his tiny band of followers gained lots of attention with their patriotic rallies.

A charismatic Korean prophet whose followers believed him to be God was a "sexy" story. But a Baptist preacher holding patriotic rallies was just another humdrum story. Falwell and his operatives were utterly frustrated by their inability to attract media coverage, even in April 1980, when the Washington for Jesus rally drew at least a quartermillion people to sing, pray, and lobby.

The Republican National Convention in July of 1980 was a critical turning point for Falwell. His Liberty Baptist Singers appeared in prime time, and Falwell and his right-wing preacher colleagues met with Ronald Reagan. Finally Falwell had the attention he had been seeking. The media concluded he must have some clout.

A month later, Reagan helped reinforce that perception when he accepted the Religious Roundtable's invitation to address the National Affairs Briefing. Suddenly the press became really curious. They showed up 250-strong for the two-day briefing, reinforcing the 100 or so who were traveling with the candidate.

Reagan sounded a lot like the people he came to address. At a press conference, he said he doubted the theory of evolution and that if it is to be taught, "the biblical story should also be taught." In his speech to a packed Reunion Arena, his harangues against the Supreme Court; the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; the Federal Communications Commission; the Department of Labor; the National Labor Relations Board; and IRS "bureaucrats" were as strong as anything the preachers, right-wing military generals, and New Right operatives had been dishing out. He decried the government becoming "morally neutral." He linked rising crime, drug abuse, child abuse, and human suffering to the education of our youth without ethics.

Most of the press corps probably doubted the sincerity of Reagan's speech. But that he would address such a radical group, and employ their rhetoric, was scary stuff.

From that moment on, Jerry Falwell and the other politically minded televangelists had little difficulty getting media attention. The Moral Majority and the sudden appearance of millions of Christian zealots

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was one of the hot items in the campaign and in the post- election analysis.

The media, thus, were slow to discover the presence of a conservative movement in America.

The media's liberal bias helped keep a big story bottled up for a long time. Once the story finally broke, the bias kept right on working, as clearly evidenced by their failure to ask the right questions. Another indication is their failure to seriously analyze Reagan's role in encouraging the development of the New Christian Right movement. When this question does occasionally arise, the media seem more interested in Reagan's own religion. Again, the wrong question. Reagan's personal religious views are simply not very important. Throughout his presidency, Reagan has periodically invoked pious religious rhetoric. Even if he is insincere and uses religion for his own political aims, his ongoing courtship of the New Christian Right has been a big boost to their own commitment and enthusiasm. And, as noted earlier, he has repeatedly addressed conservative religious groups while ignoring mainline Protestantism. The press has consistently failed to deal with the political implications of this.

The media have focused on two questions. First, How big is the movement? Lacking any background on the movement, the media first tended to accept the claims of its leaders, especially Falwell, uncritically. And he assured them that the answer was "very big." Falwell claimed television audiences in the range of 17 to 50 million for his "Old Time Gospel Hour" and 3 to 5 million members of the Moral Majority, and he took credit for registering 4 million voters. When the election was over, he claimed credit for the Reagan landslide and the defeat of liberal congressmen and senators.

Every social movement that is perceived as powerful can be expected to face organized opposition, both from preexisting organizations and, almost always, new organizations that emerge specifically for the battle. People for the American Way and Americans for Common Sense were the most visible of a dozen new organizations created to battle the right-wing threat of the Moral Majority, the Christian Roundtable, and Christian Voice. Common Cause and the American Civil Liberties Union were the most visible existing organizations to turn their attention to "saving America from religious zealots."

Just as the New Christian Right had a vested interest in persuading

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the media that they were very large, so also did the countermobilization organizations. Unless the Moral Majority was indeed a serious threat to society why would anyone give money to People for the American Way? So they repeated Falwell's claims and made up some statistics of their own to show that the threat was real.

Implicit in the formation of a countermobilization effort is a second question, namely, How unconventional is the threatening movement? And the answer (no matter what the cause or the nature of the group's activities) is always "very unconventional." If not, there would be no need for a countermovement, since they could simply be accepted as one of the many competitive interest groups in the political arena. By labeling them unconventional in the extreme, the opposition aims to brand new movements as illegitimate. If allowed to operate unchecked, the argument goes, they would constitute a grave threat. In this case, the New Christian Right is seen as a threat to the very stability of the political system.

The perception of the New Christian Right as very large-coupled with the perception that their beliefs about religion and politics were very unconventional-led to a brief period of hysteria, when it seemed as though America was in grave danger of being overrun by fundamentalists. Gradually, the exaggerations became evident. When that happened, the media radically restructured the "born-again Christians-turned-politicians" story to make it consistent with the new evidence that they were not so dangerous after all. Jerry Falwell was recast as a bit player rather than a star.

But Jerry Falwell has refused to get off the stage. On a rather steady basis, he does things and says things the media cannot ignore. So, the media flip-flops between warning Americans about the dangerous zealot from Lynchburg and announcing his impotence or imminent fall.

When Pat Robertson got the attention of the national media with his prospective presidential bid, the media returned to the same questions they had earlier asked of Falwell. First, How big is his audience? (Or, alternatively, How many evangelicals are there in America?) And, second, How unconventional are his views about religion and politics?

On the face of it, the answers are again the same. Robertson has a large audience (or, there are a lot of evangelicals) and his religious and political views are highly unconventional. But, as with Falwell,

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these are the wrong questions. Or, at the very least, they are questions of misplaced emphasis.

The number of viewers of Robertson's "700 Club" is not unimportant, but it is secondary to the total array of resources-of which his television audience is only a part-he can bring to bear on a presidential bid. Similarly, the question of how many evangelicals there are in America is relevant, but more important is the likelihood of his coalescing those evangelicals into a solid voting bloc.

What about Robertson's beliefs? Compared with the media, there can be no question that his theological and political views are unconventional- very unconventional. But this is a supreme example of wooden-headedness. Comparing Robertson's views with those of the media can be terribly misleading. As we have seen, the views of the media are not very representative of the public at large.

Obviously, it makes much more sense to examine Robertson's beliefs (theological and political) in light of the views of the general public than some standard of conventionality established by the media and by Robertson's adversaries.

If the press were to take that task seriously, a door would open to the understanding that they are more out of step with the general public than Pat Robertson is. Anything short of a successful presidential bid can be retrospectively judged as a march of folly. But that judgment may miss the more fundamental reality that Robertson's candidacy has served to solidify a nascent religious coalition not previously mobilized. And, further, that coalition could have a significant impact on American politics well beyond the Reagan era. Should that happen, history will surely judge the media as the ones on a march of folly in 1987-88 because they refused, even in the presence of overwhelming evidence, to recognize the importance of Pat Robertson's candidacy and the significance of the constituency he represents.

Notes