Don't Say I Didn't Warn You

Alessandra Stanley writes about modern Cassandras while reviewing Showtime's Homeland in The New York Times:

In his book “The Big Short,” Michael Lewis focused on the Wall Street misfits who bet against the subprime mortgage bubble. The White House counterterrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke was an alarmist know-it-all in the Bush White House until Sept. 11 proved he had a point. Even “60 Minutes” spiked a 1995 interview with the obsessed tobacco industry whistle-blower, Jeffrey S. Wigand.

How does this third example work?  The first two Cassandras were arguably warning people about stuff they'd rather not think about. Wigand said what everyone wanted to hear.  By the 1990s, people couldn't get enough about how evil Big Tobacco was, whether it was true or not.  Wigand was silenced due to legal reasons, not because people didn't want to hear what he had to say--in fact, most believed it even before he said it.

If I recall, Wigand's claim was tobacco companies manipulated the ingredients in their product so customers were more likely to return.  Like every other company and every other product ever made.  The only problem here was the product itself, which was harmful (but legal).  Somehow, this was considered news.

Stanley finishes her thought:

Cassandras are easy to dismiss because being around them is so hard.

Maybe, but a better reason to dismiss many present-day Cassandras is that so many of them are wrong.  (Though if you're wrong can you be a Cassandra?  Her curse was that she could predict things correctly but no one would believe her.)