Plonque. by TARQUIN O’FLAHERTY
Way back in 1938, during that time when we all believed every single word that issued from the radio, the actor Orson Welles frightened the life out of his fellow Americans. He adapted H.G.Wells’ 1898 novel ‘War of the Worlds’ for CBS radio. Trouble was, it was so lifelike, so professionally done, newsreel style, that his listeners were taken in, hook, line and sinker. People believed America had been invaded by Martians! There was absolute panic, bedlam reigned and Welles had to go back on radio to assure people that it was just a hoax.
At the same time the lunatic Hitler was convincing radio audiences that the Germans were the master race and anybody who didn’t come up to the ‘Aryan’ standard should be bumped off. Unlike now, people of the time believed what the radio told them, except, of course, those sub-standard people who couldn’t believe their ears. Whilst they stood there, in sub-standard disbelief, Hitler killed them. Herr Hitler, Europe told us,in the papers and on the radio, was an economic genius, a man of powerful vision, and we should look to his economic model as a guide to the future. After he had invaded a few more countries and killed a few more people, we still thought he was a good chap. Eventually, his economic interests threatened ours to the point where we had to bump him off.
Both Orson Welles and Hitler used radio to an astonishingly effective degree. At the time people believed that the radio told the truth. There was no reason to suspect otherwise.
You may, then, have begun to wonder why this piece is entitled ‘Plonque’?.
Propaganda, the art of manipulating opinion, is what we’re concerned about here.
A Californian winemaker, Robert Hodgson, through the California State Fair’s long established Wine Competition, proposed a long term tasting experiment. With the approval of the State Fair Wine Committee he has been entering his own wines for tasting since 2005. His test is a simple one; each group of judges would be presented with the same wine, from the same bottle, several times, without their knowledge.
The results have rocked the American wine industry. Hodgson, with a background in statistics, discovered that of the cream of US wine judges, only about ten per cent were consistent, and then only for one particular year. Next year the same ten per cent would be indifferent.
Astonishingly, when presented with what the judges believed to be a better quality wine, their comments were, almost always favourable. But when presented with the same wine as ‘plonque’ their judgements were consistently negative!
In 2001, Frederick Brochet, of Bordeaux University took a some red and some white wine, and presented it to 54 French wine experts. Not one of the experts realised that it was the same wine, fifty percent of which had a tasteless food dye added!
The Guardian Weekly, 5.7.13. Discovery. has all of the above information, in a splendid article by David Derbyshire.
And for years, I believed the propaganda, all of the knowledgeable blokes who commanded my attention with all that ‘left side of the vineyard’ and ‘terroir’ tosh. Insidious stuff that convinced me years ago that I lacked the ‘palate’ to understand the refinement, the subtleties involved in all this.
To hell with it. I’m off to to Aldi for a dozen of the best and to hell with the ‘bouquet’, the ‘blackcurrants’ and the bullshit!