Political Thoughts
That’s a headline that may have gotten many to roll their eyes and ponder not to read this. I hope you know me well enough by now to know one of my favorite sayings is “nothing ever turns out the way you think it will”.
Luke is my 15-year-old son. I could go on and on about how proud I am of him for many things, but what I really love is how interesting I find him.
Our family celebrated my youngest son’s birthday by heading to San Diego for the world-famous Comic Con. Not Luke’s scene, but he loves his brother and joined us for a family trip. We took a tour of the U.S.S. Midway, the aircraft carrier museum. It’s pretty awesome, 5 stars. But the best part was walking back to the hotel.
My wife is one of the fastest walkers you will ever meet. And our boys have become protective of each of us, so they will take turns walking with one or the other parent. We laugh in my house that we need to keep our eyes on mom, because she will not turn around to see if we have stayed in her vicinity. So one son walks with me, who walks at a regular human pace, and the other jogs to accompany his mother.
Luke walked with me. We talked about how cool it was that there were so many people at the Midway not speaking English, and from different backgrounds. They were fascinated by the sheer scope of the ship, even if it was outdated technology. I saw a sense of pride in these people. My take: they are new citizens who are immensely proud of their country. Others from different nations were in awe of what the US is capable of.
This led to a discussion of politics, and Luke asked me why politics has become so mean and personal. I knew this was an important conversation, and I quickly asked God to help me navigate this topic.
I explained my take, which was based on my industry. When I first started in radio, every station was pretty much “live and let live” with their competition. We were all just trying to find our audience and serve them. Then Howard Stern changed all that.
Stern was the first truly syndicated broadcaster, having his show based in New York City but carried by many stations, mainly on the East Coast. He declared himself the King of All Media. The company that carried Stern would offer his morning show to other stations at a very nominal price, and that station would get the national attention that Stern brought.
That’s when things changed. Stern would go to each market he was in, and absolutely attack the morning shows he faced, starting with whomever was playing the music he was competing with, and then moving on to all the stations.
He would broadcast outside of the competing station, saying truly horrible things about the other on-air hosts, and encouraging his listeners to harass them as well. He made one guy cry on air by talking about how the guy’s wife just died and horribly making fun of it.
And the audience loved it. He brought being mean to the forefront. He became the national sensation he had always dreamed of being. He would bring people on the show and belittle them, he would have celebrities on and ask them humiliating questions, and mock them if they didn’t want to answer.
You may think I hate Howard, but you’re wrong. He was brilliant in approaching radio in a completely different way. He was willing to face the backlash; he surrounded himself with security because of all the threats. He became a recluse, saying he only felt like he was himself when he was on the air, and the imposter was the guy off the air.
My take is you can say and act anyway you want, but only if you are prepared to deal with the repercussions and not act like the victim. Howard Stern did that.
And our culture took it from there. Michael Douglas played Gordon Gekko and was famous for his line “Greed Is Good”. Simon Cowell became famous after he was willing to be seen as mean on American Idol. People forget that the show started in England, and Simon was a record rep, but one not afraid to truly say what he thought. The producers of that show knew it would be a hit anywhere, so they brought it to the Home Of The Brave. And that’s what you better be if you’re going to go down that road.
The Weakest Link was a game show that featured a stern English woman who displayed no warmth whatsoever, who dismissed contestants with the abrupt “you are the weakest link, goodbye”. Mean became fashionable.
Radio continued to do the mean thing, with morning shows trying to sabotage their competition in more and more demeaning and personal attacks. The sitcom Married With Children showed a farcical and dysfunctional family that became a big hit. It was funny, and I enjoyed it.
Did we think that Washington, DC, wouldn’t notice this trend? Now, let’s be clear, dirty politics has always been around since the formation of the country. The term “muckracker” was popularized in the 1700s by gossip sheets that would publish unfounded rumors. Thomas Jefferson was known to employ them to target his rivals, including John Adams and Alexander Hamilton.
Barry Goldwater, Edmund Muskie, Michael Dukakis, John McCain, and Adlai Stevenson are just some of the names of presidential candidates who withstood smear campaigns, and the fact that none of them won shows the effectiveness of those tactics.
It was no longer viable to attack an opponent’s politics; it was now how Howard Stern did radio. Make your adversary a lesser human being. Making them a monster to be feared or derided kept you from acknowledging their humanity. It’s sad, but true.
And once you go down the demeaning road, you keep having to go further and further. Once upon a time, someone could be slandered by being labeled a rapscallion or a ne’er-do-well. Richard Nixon once announced his opponent was a homo sapien, and it worked. But as we have found with dangerous drugs, you have to up the dosage to acquire the same effect. Corrupt and dishonest were soon by-passed. Currently, we are at Nazi and Fascist.
My son wanted to know where we go from here. This is where I tried not to panic, cause I knew the answer was important.
We can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Social media will always allow for the worst of society to try to bring out the worst in the rest of us. Their joy is making all of society as miserable as I believe they are. But I also think America is learning on a sharper curve than we ever have. Look how quick we are to be suspicious of anything we see online, because not only do we know that most people have an agenda, but we are very aware of the dangers of artificial intelligence.
If you see someone post a picture of something amazing, look at the comments section. Instead of a government conspiracy about the Pentagon hiding Bigfoot or aliens, the first to respond are usually very suspicious of AI. Which is probably what the government was hoping for all along. Hey, not all paranoia is bad. Wrong often, but not always bad.
I told him that his moral compass will be more important than it has been in the past. His values are what he should base his decisions and convictions on. I asked him if he would be interested in running for office one day. He replied that maybe, but he wasn’t sure.
“You’d make a fine leader. I believe you would do it because you want to help. People are going to say bad things about you no matter what you do, but as long as you and those who love you truly know who you are, that stuff is just outside noise to be ignored. You have learned from my job that I only care about what people I love and respect think of me. If I make them suspicious, then I need to check myself. It’s not any of my business what other people think of me. I hope you believe in a cause enough to be willing to risk the slings and arrows, because our country needs strong people with an empathetic heart, who want the best for all of us, but are still pragmatic enough to approach problems with a clear head. I pray that you are that person. I know you are, so maybe I should pray that you believe it, too.”
He responded with the teenage shrug, but I’ve been a parent of a teenager long enough to know that’s not a negative body language.
Everything is cyclical. Howard Stern no longer attacks other people in broadcasting, though he has branched out to politics. He doesn’t demean civilians on air, but carries out long-form interviews. He has shown a nicer side, but he is also guilty of claiming people he disagrees with politically are terrible humans who want to (insert slander here). Pros and cons with everything.
Simon Cowell doesn’t do the mean thing anymore either. Simon judges America’s Got Talent, and you feel he is honestly rooting for all the contestants. Becoming a father and also having some pretty serious health issues seems to have adjusted his views on humanity. He brings a joy with him that I think the Simon on American Idol would either sneer at or secretly envy.
I’ll wrap this up by telling you that I shared with my son that I don’t need him to follow my politics. I want him to study issues and come up with his own opinion, and all I really desire is for him to be able to explain it to me. I also shared that if I’m talking to someone who has a differing opinion, I offer them this: I will tell you five things that I really don’t like about what my side that I mainly support is doing, and then you do the same. Let’s start with something we can both agree on, and I think we will each learn something.
Some people refuse, and that tells me all I need to know. But I have had some great conversations with people who are open to it, and I think we both have walked away feeling better about not only ourselves, but our country. Feel free to try it and let me know what happens!