Have you ever paid attention to some of the clichés that politicians, business leaders, celebrities, and motivational speakers use when they talk to the public? Some of these poor souls have to deliver so many speeches that I imagine that they just want to switch on the autopilot and let it do the work.

Nevertheless, they often do inject their personality either to make a point or pretend that they are just like us average folks. To do this, they often use the phrase “People come up to me on the street and ask me…”

I don’t know if this is unique to American culture, but I find it really quite amusing and even a bit embarrassing for the speaker. Not because I am cynical and purposely seek out little mannerisms in someone’s speech to criticize, but rather because it is just so folksy, so down to earth, and often quite far from the truth.

First of all, how many important people are just “walking down the street?” These days, important people ranging from rock stars to chief executives to diplomats have bodyguards and they rarely, if ever, are just “walking down the street.” Often, when they are going somewhere, they are shuffling from one limousine to another. Indeed, politicians work the rope line and shake hands with the public, but I have not seen too many men or women of rank just walking around the sidewalks of the world. They are very well guarded and I doubt that anyone can just “walk up to them” when there is a robust security detail present.

Two, if you did happen to see an important person walking down the street in your hometown would you immediately rush over to ask them some life-changing question? Would you pepper then with questions as to how they have accomplished what they have and what pearls of wisdom they would give us so we can get through life’s tough times?

Last month I wrote about the tyranny of self-help books and it is no surprise that it is often the self-help motivational speakers who are the champions of this little verbal sleight of hand. They want to portray themselves as being approachable and so they mention how often people come up to them and ask questions.

Now I think it is safe to say that the general public does not often get to hang out with the important souls of this world. This means that I cannot imagine that the average person gets to join these luminaries on their private jets and repeatedly succeeds in bypassing those very aides whose chief duty is to keep the restless public at bay.

I think, however, that we can forgive some of these speakers this trick. After all, they have to make a comfortable living and what better way than to portray a relationship with the average man and woman? No, where it gets annoying is when the really elite business leaders and politicians try to pull this off. It is so phony that its painful.

One famous example of this was the American Ross Perot. Perot, if you remember, ran against George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton for the position of the U.S. presidency way back in 1992. In fact, many say that he pulled so many votes away from Bush that this is what gave the victory to Clinton. Either way, Perot was a Texan, a Naval Academy graduate, and a businessman who made millions in the software services business at the head of a company called Electronic Data Systems (EDS).

He worked hard to portray himself as a folksy man of the earth and perhaps deep down he was just the guy next door. He certainly had some true peculiarities—such as requiring his male employees to wear a three-piece suit even though it was a fashion that was years out of date—and that is assuming that it ever was in fashion among men of discriminating and classical taste. Sartorial splendor aside, it was the persona that he adopted that was not quite believable and left me wondering—he talked as if any employee could just saunter into his office and chat. As we all know that is something that does not “just happen.”

No, politicians and other powerful people are some of the most inaccessible people on the planet so I have serious doubts as to how many people get to walk up to them and ask for advice. After all, these days we can often just look on Google or watch a YouTube video to find out what we need to know!

Yet I imagine that this little phrase will remain in our culture. We will pretend that the elite are like us and they will pretend that they have the public walking up to them and asking life’s important questions. I guess this is the way the game always has been, and will continue to be, played.

An Interesting Geographical Fact

My pilot colleagues and I love maps, charts, globes, and atlases and I imagine that we are not alone. There is something that is simply enchanting about looking where things are on the face of the earth.

I thought I had a pretty decent knowledge of geography, but recently I came across a question that I had no idea how to answer. The question is where, out in the ocean, is the furthest spot from a land mass where someone could launch a rescue operation for you? In other words, if you were sailing around the world, where is the point that you are furthest from land and then, in turn, help? Are they even the same?