David McElroy

I have a confession to make. Over the last 20 years, I’ve regularly been a part of an ongoing scheme to exploit school children. If you live in a district where one of my past political clients has run for office, you’ve see the evidence. If not, I guarantee you’ve seen someone else engage in the same fraud.

So what’s the exploitive scheme? You can see Barack Obama doing his version of it here. I could show you dozens of examples of my own past clients doing it, but I won’t do that, because I don’t rat out my own clients. (When I get bought, I stay bought.) Here’s how it works.

Let’s say you’re running for a seat in your state legislature. Or mayor. Or city council. Or president. Or dog catcher. I don’t care what you’re running for, this works. Find a school with a principal or teacher who’s friendly to you. Show up there and pose for pictures of you with the students. You might do a shot such as Obama’s where you’re playing the big shot explaining the world to the kids. Or if you get younger kids, you gather several of them tightly around you and take a picture of the candidate reading to the kids. (That was one of my specialties.)

Then you plaster these warm and fuzzy pictures (or lofty and commanding pictures) of you with kids onto brochures and TV ads — and you make vague promises about how you will “work to fix schools” and that you’ll “make sure our kids get the education they deserve.” If you’re in a Republican-leaning district, you’ll make some vague promises (not too specific, of course) about more educational choice and cutting school waste. If you’re in a Democratic-leaning district, you’ll make vague promises about increasing funding, but never specific enough that anyone could accuse you of wanting to raise taxes.

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I didn’t want to live with a cat. I certainly didn’t want to live with a cat in my house. I was certain that I didn’t like cats. I was wrong.

Years ago, my ex-wife wanted a cat. She had grown up with felines and had great memories of them. I had grown up with a father who would sooner spontaneously combust than have an animal inside his perfect house, so I knew very, very little of cats or dogs from experience. At best, I was indifferent. But Melissa wanted a cat, so I decided to find one for her.

It was my sister, Mary, who found a stray kitten in Mountain Brook, which is an upscale Birmingham suburb very close to the local zoo. I had mentioned to her that I was looking for a cat, so she called me to come take a look when Melissa wasn’t around — so it would be a surprise for her. I went to Mary’s apartment to see this tiny furball who seemed more like a starving street urchin than the healthy kittens I’d seen in cat food commercials.

I got got down on the floor with him. He came over to me and rubbed against my face — gingerly at first, but then with abandon. I smiled and suddenly felt warmer inside. I didn’t want a cat, but something inside me did. What was I getting into?

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I took this picture just after sunset Saturday night near where I live in a suburb of Birmingham, Ala. The sky around me was so perfect — and the trees providing the frame so perfect — that I didn’t feel I was responsible for the art I was making. I felt more as though it was being handed to me on a silver platter. All I had to do was click the virtual shutter on my iPhone. When that happens, it feels like magic.

Most people who spend their lives concentrating on politics and power and governing philosophy don’t seem to spend much time thinking about the meaning of life. It’s all about rights and control and fighting someone else for supremacy. When I was much younger, I could understand that coolly rational way of looking at political discussions, but I’m way past that. For me to think it matters anymore, I have to have a reason why it matters insofar as living life. Experiencing such stunning beauty as I photographed last night — and playing a humble role in making it into art — helps make it all make sense to me. Please indulge me while I try to explain what I mean.

I have no desire for power over other people, so politics for that reason alone doesn’t interest me. I have trouble getting excited about tremendous wealth just to live a life of decadent luxury, so the thought of that bores me. I’m ultimately interested in power and money only if they can serve something I see as a higher purpose. My love of life and my love of beauty give me that purpose, because they give me an instinctive understanding of why I was placed here by “the all-wise Author of nature,” to use Adam Smith’s poetic title for God.

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