Believe It

Bill O'Reilly told Donald Tsump that he was lagging behind in the polls with women. That's when Mister Locker Room replied, "I'm not sure I believe it."
Let's take a moment or two to take apart this interaction. First of all, what is Fox News doing lately? With the possible exception of Sean Hannity, who seems to be in his element defending the indefensible, the rest of the crew that Roger Ailes once put together seems to be finding exception with the presumptive Republican nominee. Megyn Kelly took down Mike Huckabee and his amusing tale about sharks and coarse men, and laughed when it was over. At each moment when things seem their most surreal, a new level of surreality is reached. Down is up, up is down, red is gray and yellow white, and we decide which is illusion.
Then there's the theater in which this is all playing out. Shakespeare would have blushed to think that Lady Macbeth and King Lear would show up on the same stage. This is the place where legacies are extended or recreated. I have lost complete track of the substantive points of the campaign, policy measures and suggested reforms, and the rest of the country seems to have slid off this precipice along with me. It was Dwight Moody who suggested that "Character is what you are in the dark." If this is true, who are we under the bright lights of the twenty-four hour news cycle? Are we just watching outtakes from the next season of Game of Thrones?
Or are we merely waiting for this circus to pull up stakes and move on? And what will be left in their wake? The Democratic Process is a strong one, and has certainly suffered its slings and arrows over the history of our great republic, and those that came before. We will continue to fine tune this beast and refine our practices until we can come up with something that resembles political discourse once again.
And from somewhere, far away, I hear a voice say, "I'm not sure I believe it."