Republicans rarely criticize Obama for lack of empathy - in part because liberals have traditionally been seen as standing up for the weak and the vulnerable. Conservatives can be just as empathetic. But they believe that in most cases it's not government's role to be the primary dispenser of empathy.
Without television and mass communication that knowledge wouldn't exist. So I think it actually has the possibility of turning people into more understanding and more empathetic people.
Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being to which we rarely penetrate for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.