Who’s to Blame if Pipe Dreams Burst?

By Greg Dawson
The Orlando Sentinel

Surfing the cable seas the other night, I landed on a channel where a man was pitching his amazing plan for fast wealth through the buying and selling of foreclosed property.

It was not William J. McCorkle of Lake Mary, charged by a federal grand jury with fraud and money laundering in connection with his infomercials promising fast wealth through the buying and selling of foreclosed property.

Now, I am not a lawyer, but to my eye and ear there is no difference between the infomercial that earned McCorkle (and his wife and 3 associates) a federal indictment and the one that continues to air with apparent impunity.

Both seem to be selling the same impossible dream – so why is it only McCorkle who had to make arrangement for bail?

I t could be, ironically, that he was a little too good at what he did – like Charles Givens Jr. over in Longwood who got rich teaching others how to make money and is now fending off claims by unsatisfied customers.

Maybe you can sell only so many impossible dreams before some of the dreamers wake up and smell the coffee.

I confess to a fascination with cable pitchmen such as McCorkle. His boyish exuberance and high energy are contagious. I marvel at his polish and audacity as he implores me to fulfill my destiny and the American dream by forking over $69 for his plan.

Never have, though, because a voice keeps whispering clichés in my ear: "If it seems to be too good to be true, it probably is." "You don’t get something for nothing." "You get what you pay for."

These are clichés because they tend to be true. Whether McCorkle’s salesmanship crossed the line from slick to criminal will be decided by the courts.

But on one level I couldn’t help feeling sorry for McCorkle as I watched him on TV being escorted to jail. At that moment he looked to me like a minor symptom of a wider epidemic in a culture increasingly addicted to silver bullets and impossible dreams.

Is McCorkle’s vision of instant wealth really more outrageous than the promise of salvation and answered prayers from bejeweled televangelists with 800-number donation lines?

Is it any worse than the infomercials for exercise machines that require nothing resembling real exercise for the mail-order customer to achieve a body worthy of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue?

Is it more fatuous than the smarmy psychobabble of motivational gurus who peddle "success" at seminars where they charge hundreds of dollar per head for old whines in a new bottle?

Is it desperately bogus as a homemade signs tacked on power poles: "STOP SMOKING IN 1 DAY"?

It can’t possibly be as ludicrous as the infomercials for spray-on hair.

Clearly, William J McCorkle had plenty of competition when appealing in the public appetite for shortcuts to nirvana. Maybe it’s something in the water or the air.

It’s hard to sit in Orlando – which has become synonymous across America with fantasies and dreams – and not smile at the federal indictment, which says that the mansion, yacht and jet in McCorkle’s infomercials were nothing more than props to lure customers.

Much of central Florida’s economy is built on props meant to lure customers – to Disney World, Universal Studios Florida, Sea World and the rest. All legal, of course but also insidious in the culture spillover.

Consider the city of Orlando’s feverish effort to concoct a new image for downtown Orlando so it can compete with Downtown Disney, which is not really a downtown.

The air of unreality extends to the straight-faced marketing of a residential subdivision – Celebration – as a "town," whose props include a water tower that holds no water.

For me, the McCorkle story raises anew the question of how far society should go in protecting people against their own greed and willful ignorance.

As adults shouldn’t we be responsible, at some point, for knowing when something doesn’t hold water?