1. It will be buoyed up by an immense and irrational hope shared, as cultural movements tend to be, by a small number of like–minded people who only have the haziest notion of, and generally rather despise, what the majorities around them want.

2. When you add to that the fact that Hilton is the arbiter of the contestants‘ fate, of course, she takes on an almost godlike role for them. (Watch all of these reality television figures‘ entrance and exits÷ they practically have the tenor of annunciations.) The groups of contestants become little worshippers at the Cult of Kathy (or Tommy, or Donald), and there‘s something eerily worshipful about their comments, something true believer–like about their feelings towards someone who (in Hilton‘s case, at least) they probably had only the haziest knowledge of before the show began.

3. Neither message was inculcated; instead, the state chose to focus on the murder victim and to glorify him, to the absurd point of conducting a desperate search for "his legacy." The price of this error can be seen in the mechanical manner in which the assassination is taught in the schools (primarily, by going over the highlights of Rabin‘s life); in the multiplication of memorial sites with only the haziest connection to Rabin; and, in its most serious form, in the booing of Beitar Jerusalem soccer fans, in the shameful posters showing President Shimon Peres wearing a kaffiyeh that have appeared on walls in Jerusalem recently, and in the veiled threats to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that have been voiced in response to his speech to the Saban Forum this week.