David McElroy

One of the most important and noteworthy celebrations of the year rarely gets enough notice on the calendar. But if you’re one of those who believes that grammar deserves more recognition than it typically gets today, please join me in celebrating National Grammar Day.

It’s March 4, so we’re to march forth — get it? — to celebrate our love of being obnoxious about correct word use — or at least what passes for correct these days.

If you’d like to celebrate by making your computer desktop look stylish, here’s a collection of desktop wallpapers that’s sure to attract some interest, including the simple design above, available in various colors.

So embrace your nerddom. There are more of us than you might think, even if we make far too many errors to be especially cocky about it.

Now go celebrate. March forth.

Leaving political brochures on my doorknob is about as useless as trying to sell Avon products to the local Mary Kay sales rep. I’m certainly not buying, but I like to flip through the brochures and make fun of the attempt to sell to me.

When U.S. Rep. Spencer Bachus started having ethics problems last year, other Alabama Republicans smelled blood in the water. With the primary election only nine days away, State Sen. Scott Beason has emerged as the leading shark.

I haven’t looked at any polling and I don’t know how much money Beason has to spend, so I don’t have an informed opinion about whether he has a chance. My gut says he’ll probably lose, but that’s simply because an entrenched incumbent such as Bachus is hard to beat, even if he is a lightweight with no real credentials.

This is the first campaign cycle in more than 20 years when I haven’t done any work for a campaign, so it allows me to experience an election from the outside for the first time in a long time. It’s an interesting point of view. I’ve done hundreds of brochures and cards similar to the Beason literature that was hung on my door Saturday. So I’m going to invite you to take a look at a typical campaign piece — through the eyes of someone who used to write and design them.

The Beason brochure isn’t terrible and it isn’t great. It’s pretty garden variety as campaign literature goes. I guess that’s what makes this so interesting to me. You could change the name and photos on this brochure and use it for pretty much any conservative Republican district. (Change the wording and the issues and you could come up with a similar template for a typical Democratic district.)

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I was checking out at a store Friday when I handed the cashier a box containing individual items that she needed to count in order to charge me for. I told her there were six of them and she rang it up without checking.

“Well, if you’re going to take my word for it without looking, there were really only two,” I jokingly said to her.

“Oh, you wouldn’t lie to me,” she said quite seriously and confidently. “I can tell. Most people would, but you wouldn’t.”

My first reaction was to be grateful that someone could see my sterling character all the way through the fat and ugly exterior. It’s kind of nice to be trusted, isn’t it? And to be honest, this is something I’ve heard strangers say to me all my life. I seem to have a trustworthy-looking face.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that her reaction wasn’t really that great. In fact, it’s the sort of poor judgment people use all the time when they turn their lives over to politicians who they’ve decided they can trust.

Have you ever heard someone say — of a politician or actor or someone else they’ve never met — “I really like him”? We all seem to make instant, intuitive judgments about people, and we’re oddly sure that our judgments are correct, even if it’s absurd for other people to make such silly snap judgments.

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