I wonder how many people that recommend SICP have actually learned to program from it or even read it. I did way back as in undergrad (with severe MIT envy) and I would not recommend it as a first book for beginner programmers. Also, I wouldn't recommend Lisp or Scheme as first languages to use for beginners wanting a taste of the practice (despite how much better off the world would be if we all programmed in Lisp :). Unless the questioner is a math (or idiot) savant, I would only recommend these as first programming languages to someone if I wanted to scare them out of the profession or didn't really like them.
Today, I would probably recommend JavaScript with the browser DOM.
In my experience, to normal people who are simply math students, but without any previous programming experience, C syntax is ugly and Lisp syntax is clean and beautiful.
Lisp is so much easier for them, that I think that your statements do not take into account familiarity and most people are just being too used to a particular syntax.
SICP is a hard book to read, however. There are much easier books to learn Lisp.
Today, I would probably recommend JavaScript with the browser DOM.