David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

media

We live in Reverse World, where black is white and good is evil

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When I moved to the small town of Clanton, Ala., many years ago, I knew it would be different from what I had been accustomed to. The small city of about 8,000 is about halfway between Birmingham and Montgomery. It felt very rural and provincial. I felt out of place.

A newspaper chain had hired me to be general manager of the larger of the town’s two newspapers. Shortly after arriving, my ex-wife and I dubbed the place Reverse World. Everything which we knew to be good was considered horrible by the people of this newspaper. Everything which we knew to be bad was praised and valued there. The culture was broken.

Very quickly, we realized everything about the city felt that way to us. The people were generally nice folks — and I don’t hold any ill will toward them — but we felt as though up was down, in was out, black was white, and good was evil. Everything in this place felt backwards. It was disorienting, because I had to constantly question everything I knew to be true.

If I had discovered that frogs were dissecting students at the local high school, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

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Public discourse is distorted by constant outrage over anecdotes

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If you want a nation to follow you, don’t convince them of your principles or policies. Just tell the public carefully chosen stories. Sell images.

Adolph Hitler did this well. His marketing consultants flooded Germany with pictures of a smiling Hitler and happy children. (In the picture above, Hitler is with a young Jewish girl named Rosa.) People saw these images of a benevolent leader with adoring children — and they found it easier to believe he was a good man they should follow.

Joseph Stalin did the same thing in the Soviet Union. Chinese communist dictator Mao Zedong did it, too. How could these men be cold-blooded murderers if they loved children and children loved them?

Unfortunately, the rest of us have learned the same techniques in this age of video storytelling. Our politicians sell themselves this way. Companies sell products this way. In the era of social media, we have adopted the same techniques to convince others that we’re right about whatever we believe.

But it’s something I don’t want to do anymore.

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KKK-loving newspaper owner has always been a nut; this isn’t news

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When I stepped into the offices of The Democrat-Reporter in Linden, Ala., I was stepping into enemy territory. I was the newly appointed editor and publisher of The Demopolis Times, a larger newspaper about 15 miles north of Linden.

Goodloe Sutton was the owner and publisher of The Democrat-Reporter, which was my only local competition, so I wanted to meet him and establish a friendly relationship. My paper was far more successful than his, enough that his paper wasn’t really competition for the readers and advertisers we targeted.

I asked for Sutton and explained who I was. The person at the front to whom I introduced myself looked startled and went to another office.

“I don’t want to talk to anybody from the Demopolis Times,” I heard a belligerent voice bellow from the back a few moments later. As the woman walked back toward me, he called after her, “And tell him not to come back.”

That was my one and only interaction with the strange man who has lately achieved national notoriety for his bizarre editorials calling for the Ku Klux Klan to “clean out” politicians in Washington, D.C.

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