Again, "playing to his audience" is certainly not unique to salesmen and politicians, nor is it rare in religious circles. Bottom line: Us sheep are so comically predictable and so easy to manipulate regardless of the product being sold. Just take a quick look at breakfast cereals or automobiles for instance. Like most products or programs, they are basically carnival barker (snake oil forefathers) like marketing, sales, and promotion organizations. WE the people ALL buy one brand or the other for a variety of pretty darn shallow reasons. Embarrassingly enough number one (#1) of those reasons is self image. I want to be known as a Cheerios man and/or a Ford guy. Impressive. What's more we can grow to be very defensive and territorial about the brand/banner/team we choose for projecting our image or defining our judgement on the finer points of eating cereal and driving to and from work. We the peeps generally SUCK at making informed choices.