STEP RIGHT UP FOLKS...!

If George Washington is the father of our country, P.T. Barnum is the father of our culture...!

To make the point, Hugh Jackman will play Barnum in a musical film scheduled for next year's 200th anniversary of P.T.'s birth. Who was P.T. Barnum? He's the name on the celebrated Barnum & Bailey Circuses still touring America today, but oh so very much more. Old P.T. was Walt Disney, Steven Spielberg, Elvis, Michael. Epcot and the Internet all rolled into one. Generations before any of these were even born. He coined the phrase show business, and as one wise cynic said of today's America: "From Hollywood to Washington, everything's really just show business!"

Barnum knew his young America loved being entertained. So he brought them year-round entertainment with elephants, lions, midgets, giants, magic, mystery, Tom Thumb and Jenny Lind. Think Las Vegas! Think 24/7 movie theatres, DVD stores, and cable channels! The hot new TV series "Mad Men" portrays advertising and marketing hustlers from the 1960s, but Phineas Taylor Barnum was already hustling Americans back in the 1860s.

Old P.T. never actually said, "There's a sucker born every minute," but he proved it. And his successors in Hollywood and Washington are still proving it. Only with far more con than charm. Barnum was hustling suckers; some of today's voices are hustling souls. They have whole cultural and political ideologies to sell you. And they've got instant, nationwide show business tools at their disposal even Barnum never dreamed of.

Most Americans like to think of themselves as thinkers. I mean, in a democracy, everyone's got the same equal right to think what they want, right? Well, yes and no. If one citizen says 2+2 = 4 but 99 insist it's 5, who are you supposed to believe? If democracy means the will of the majority, then the 99, right?

Wrong. And for a democracy to survive, it takes more than a show of hands. It takes a show of intellectual courage. Which is tough these days when we're being show-businessed to death by the enormous power of powerful interests who own today's show business tools. Hollywood studios... television networks....newspapers and magazines.....and, very often, our most colorful and articulate celebrities appearing in these multi-million dollar enterprises.

"Conspiracy theory?" Those are for the folks who want to stir up headlines. The folks we're talking about here don't like headlines. Don't like pictures and interviews. They simply like to keep us entertained into believing what they want us to believe. The Roman emperors did it with their bread-and-circuses. Barnum did it with his celebrities-and-circuses. All just different forms of show business for the masses.

But while show business then and today is essentially the same happy hustle, there's irony today. We the customers are smarter than ever, only they the hustlers have smarter tools than ever. So the hustlers may be running ahead in this race. Time for the customers to check their ticket stubs more critically before taking in the show.