David McElroy

During the huge Chick-fil-A debate a few weeks back, I encountered someone on the pro-boycott side claiming that women should boycott Chick-fil-A because the company doesn’t want female managers. Since I happen to have known a number of female managers with the company — including the general manager of the store nearest my house — I knew it wasn’t true. So I challenged him.

He pointed to a lawsuit by one female manager at a Georgia Chick-fil-A. She has been a manager for decades, but the lawsuit alleges the she was forced out as a store manager because the chauvinistic upper management had decided she needed to be home with her children. I pointed out to the guy that this was one woman who had made one unsupported allegation, with no proof. I also pointed out that the vast number of female managers in the company make it obvious that there’s something unusual about that particular case, so it’s unfair and dishonest to use that allegation to state something as fact with no evidence.

“Do you think they’re fair to us?” he replied. “Why should I care about the facts when they’re the ones who are wrong?”

That was a snapshot of much of what’s wrong with political debate in this country. Almost nobody cares about facts, honesty or fairness. The latest example is that of U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, who claimed Sunday that a woman who is raped won’t get pregnant.

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There was a fire Friday morning in the Eagle River community of Anchorage, Alaska. Janet Seitz’ house sustained an estimated $70,000 worth of damage. I don’t know what all she lost, but I do know that her world was saved when a firefighter brought her cat, Max, to her from the still-smoking house. Seitz broke into tears when she got Max back safely in her arms.

Here’s the original photo at full size. Blow it up and see the emotion on the woman’s face clearly. Feel the honesty and immediacy of real life as it happens. This is news that matters to me.

We have something on television today called “reality TV.” It’s about 80 percent fake. It’s a phony. A lie.

We also have something we call news. It’s on television, online and in print. Even though I spent more than 10 years in news, I suggested last week that news is really just trivia that makes us feel smart and educated, but it’s almost all worthless — and it diverts us from things that matter in life.

Maybe this story from Eagle River is an example of news that matters, because it’s news that connects to the part of all of us that feels emotion — and we can briefly connect with an emotional and overjoyed woman.

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Director Frank Capra was a great filmmaker, but he used his talent to promote a utopian vision that never existed and never can exist. Capra was a progressive who clearly believed in the perfectibility of man — if only more people would faithfully follow the civic religion that worships the goodness of the “common man.”

In “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” Capra’s Jefferson Smith (memorably played by Jimmy Stewart) is a small-town nobody who’s suddenly propelled into Washington politics when he’s appointed to the U.S. Senate. Smith is a wide-eyed innocent who’s surrounded by crooks and thieves. He just wants to use the power of government to do good — for the boys of an organization he works with, mostly — but everyone else is in it for money and power.

It’s a good movie, even if it’s really corny and wildly two dimensional. If you watch it, you have the idea that everything could be great in this country if we would just trust the simpletons such as Smith, who live in the uncorrupted small towns of the country, far from the influence of the evils of Washington.

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