David McElroy

Most of you shouldn’t waste your time listening to this. It’s not for everybody. It would bore most of you.

In Hermann Hesse’s great early 20th century novel, “Steppenwolf,” the protagonist, Harry Haller, encounters a strange place with a sign out front which says, “Magic theater. Entrance not for everybody. For madmen only.”

I feel almost like attaching such a sign here, because what I’m posting tonight is not for everybody. But for the few with the madness to want to go down this rabbit hole, I’ll offer it to everybody once — with a warning.

I’m recording something with no script or plan. It would bore most people. Honest. But I hope the right people might find it — maybe you — and somehow connect with me because of where this continuing conversation could lead. If you think there’s some madness about you that might eventually connect with the “magic theater” in my mind, enter by tapping or clicking below.

It’s really not for everybody.

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I’ve never had strong opinions about Urban Meyer. I knew he was a good college football coach — at Utah, Florida and Ohio State — but I didn’t know that much about his personal life. I knew he talked vaguely about faith at times, but many public figures do, so I didn’t think much about it.

Early this week, media was filled with talk about two videos showing the very married Meyer acting inappropriately last weekend with a young woman at his Columbus, Ohio-area restaurant, Urban Meyer’s Pint House. I eventually watched the videos and was mildly surprised. I had assumed he was a happily married and decent man who wouldn’t mess with other women, but I was wrong.

Because the incident had no relevance to my life, I didn’t think much about it after that, but the headlines continued about whether Meyer would be fired from his current job as coach of the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars.

I felt sorry for his wife, Shelley Meyer, who I thought must be hurt and angry and humiliated about what her husband had done. But then Shelley Meyer released a statement on social media that shocked me. Bizarrely, she seemed to think her husband’s fierce critics were the ones victimizing her.

In a strange way, her statement felt almost like a way to imply, “Well, boys will be boys.” Keep Reading

My face is contorted in terror and my mouth is wide open. I’m ready to scream that you’re in danger. That you’re on a speeding train which is about to go off a cliff. But no words come out, because I know you won’t understand my warning.

Imagine you desperately needed and wanted to warn someone that something terrible was about to happen, but the two of you spoke different languages. That’s what this feels like.

My words of warning can coming pouring out of my mouth, but almost nobody will hear. Those who do hear will shrug. Even the ones who find my words interesting — or who might suspect I might be right — will go right about their business. The show must go on.

No matter what I do, the grand entertainment of modern American culture will roll right on without me. This dysfunctional culture has no time to listen to something which can’t be presented in the form of entertainment.

And I’ve discovered that I don’t know how to entertain you while I beg you to learn an intellectual and cultural context which is more terrifying than entertaining.

I tried. I really did. But it just doesn’t work.

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