Here at The Fireside Post, we intend to drive home our suggested connection between the elements of this election cycle and the the kooky world of Frank Oz.  Allow me, if you will, to expand on it a bit.

There are some great messages of hope and tolerance in the Wizard of Oz.  The movie is whimsical and fun.  The story has been told and retold so many times that it has become part of the fabric of our culture.  Broadway even got involved and created a masterful work of social commentary and beautiful imagery.  Yes, the Wizard of Oz is as American as hate speech and unilateralism.

See, here is the problem.  We have had an opportunity in this election cycle to embody the values and the moral backbone that we claim runs in the very blood of our nation.  We have seen monumental changes in the viability of minority and female candidates.  We have had more competent politicians involved in this campaign than the previous decade had in Congress.  Candidates from all ranks of the political process, from all walks of life and all  ages, ethnicity, religions, and both genders.  What an opportunity for this great nation to show its true colors, to rise to the occasion and show some fortitude beyond our petty differences.  We have had a chance to bring a smile to the spirit of Frank Oz in our midst.

But we haven’t.  We have made enormous gains, for sure, but to say that lingering hate, sexism and racism are not so bad because we have improved is to give in to the evils of our society and deny the hope that all of us might be seen as equal in the eyes of one another.  This is the potential of our system, this is the foundation of our country.  Hope and tolerance.  The belief that there might be a place where we can all live together, disagreeing in peace and changing regimes without bloodshed,

I dare say that we have not made it.  We are still short of that goal, after several hundred years of the greatest experiment in government ever to be attempted, we fail to reach beyond ourselves and to see the fruit of the seeds planted by our Founding Fathers.  It is not Christian fruit, it is not the fruit of Democracy throughout the world, it is the fruit of brotherhood and peace.

If the truth were to be infused into the great story of Oz, displaying the true American sentiment and the nature of our political debate, I am afraid it might look a bit more like this: