Medicine Men

When I was a small boy, back in the "Dirty thirties" there was scant family entertainment. We had no TV or computers, no CDs, DVDs, cassettes, 8-track cartridges, I-Pads, etc.  We did have 78-rpm records and an old Victrola wind-up record player, but with titles like "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime" and "May I Sleep In Your Barn Tonight Mister?", records were not very entertaining.

There were movies, but they cost money, which we did not have. Also, my straight-laced parents disapproved of Hollywood and their products. Movies were off-limits.

But, we did have "Medicine Shows"! The name, medicine show, was dreamed up by the public... the same way we call certain TV dramas "Soap Operas". (Only because they were often sponsored by soap or detergent manufacturers.)

A Medicine Show was a kind of vaudeville show, live, usually in a big tent. I no longer remember the entertainment, but I certainly remember the "Pitch". Sitting through the pitch was the price you paid for the free entertainment. Halfway through the show, the pitch man came on stage. An extraordinarily persuasive, smooth-talking guy, his perfect presentation glorified the product they were selling.

Usually the product was some kind of tonic - sold as a magic cure-all for any and every ailment. I always bought into the pitch and wondered why my father never bought a bottle. Many others did lay out their 25¢ or 50¢ to acquire a bottle of the expertly sold tonic, on their way out of the tent!

When TV came along, medicine shows moved from the tent to the studio. The entertainment improved. The products changed, But the concept did not. You could sell anything to a gullible public with a carefully crafted message. And, the message crafters have become ever more skilled.

This morning I visited a doctor's office.  The receptionist, with whom I have discussed politics in the past, remarked that "We are still scratching our heads", a reference to the presidential election which gave us four more years of Barack Obama.

The answer to her unanswerable question, of course, is medicine men, that is, very smart persuaders who correctly read the public's mood and crafted a message that convinced millions of Americans to buy a bottle of Obama on their way out of the tent.

Were Obama's policies good? Didn't matter. Were Romney's policies bad? Didn't matter. Obama's medicine men succeeded in selling their tonic. Romney's did not.