David McElroy

Have you noticed that politics is becoming more like television? There was a day — long before we were born — when politics was about ideas. Well … ideas, money and power. But at least there were real ideas involved back when politics was communicated solely through spoken or written words.

Today, politics is all a show. But it’s not just a spectator thing. It’s like a giant game show. With the help of the media, politics has become an elaborate version of the old game show, “Let’s Make a Deal.”

You all know how the game is played. Hundreds of people dress in ridiculous costumes, hoping for the chance to trade their dignity for unknown riches — just like those of us who line up like Dorothy and her pals asking the Wizard of Oz for gifts. But that’s mixing metaphors. Let’s look at the ways in which democracy is like “Let’s Make a Deal.”

First, everything’s apparently orchestrated by a slick huckster. In the TV show, we have Monty Hall. In real life, we have Monty Media. Yes, the media are there to make sure the right ideas are discussed, absorbed and approved of, shaping the conversation and excluding points of view they consider to be “outside the mainstream.” By shaping the conversation and guiding the process, the media decide which players get to play and what games they’re allowed to play.

Keep Reading

I have a confession to make. Up until the day he resigned in 1974, I was a fervent supporter of President Richard Nixon, because I thought he was a victim of political opponents and the “liberal media.” Of course, I was a mere kid at the time, but I was still a True Believer of the worst kind.

When Nixon resigned on Aug. 8, 1974, I finally accepted the truth that had been right in front of me for a long time. I sat down and wrote the letter you see here and it ran on Aug. 18 as a letter to the editor in The Birmingham News. The paper had no way to know it was running a letter from someone who wouldn’t even be eligible to vote for years to come.

I don’t bring this up just to point out my own gullibility — although there’s that, too — but to point to something painfully common. People have a natural instinct to trust politicians who they agree with. They have a tendency to accept almost anything from the ones they like, even though they hold their enemies to a much different standard.

I think about this every time there’s a scandal involving a popular politician. I’ve thought about it recently when it comes to supporters of Barack Obama, who are determined to keep supporting their candidate, even though it should be clear by now that he’s just a black Democrat playing the part of George W. Bush.

Keep Reading

I would have sworn that Jack and Martha were newlyweds if they hadn’t been quite a bit on the older side. When they first came into the fast food restaurant where I was having dinner Monday night, they seemed like a young couple in love. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw them sit at a booth together — side by side instead of across from one another. What I didn’t know then is that they were newlyweds. They just got married Monday.

Jack fell in love with Martha more than 50 years ago, but he was too timid to approach the girl he said was the prettiest in the school. Besides, Martha always had plenty of dates, so he didn’t think she could possibly be interested in a skinny boy with little confidence and no apparent future. That was in the early ’60s at a high school near Birmingham. Neither knew that they would end up together in 2012.

Jack graduated from high school two years ahead of Martha and headed off to college. He kept a picture of Martha that he had gotten from one of her friends. Unknown to him at the time, Martha had wanted Jack to ask her out, but he had never shown any interest.

Keep Reading